It was retardedly hot in the Seahorse, but the beer was cheap, real cheap. Bad combination. Soon I was out for a slice to cool down and sober up. I have a new theory, going downtown with girls you know scares the new girls away and new girls are WAAAY better than the girls you know, at least that's what the cheap beer was telling me.
The first band blew. The guy sounded nothing like Ozzy. James, Mike and I just waited for them to get off the stage. The next cover band started up, they kick ass as usual, lots of blood sprayed at the audience, axes chopping into cabbage patch kids, he fries himself in the electric chair, he hangs himself, runs around on top of the tables with a cordless mic, throws fake money and most importantly he sounds and looks exactly like Alice Cooper.
So I walk up to get a better view. Someone has brought a tall clear block of ice and has it on their table.
"Wow!"
I stare fixated for a moment at this monumental piece of coolness in this skanking hot bar. I look at it's custodian. She looks friendly.
"Can I touch it?"
"Sure."
"Coo-wool! It's awesome! I love it. Where did you get it?" I recognize this prop from the story our friend at Stage Nine, James, told us the night before, but, it seemed like the right thing to say.
"He just found in the street, and we brought it with us, it seemed like the right thing to do."
A cloud of fake American billion dollar bills erupt from the periphery and flutter through my field of vision. They must be playing 'billion dollar babies' cool prop, but I hardly notice, I'm enchanted by this clear cold monster on the table, this piece of heaven in the dank, dark, debaucherous hell, I've paid to climb down into. She begins to stick the money to the little piece of icy happiness. Automatically I follow her lead.
"Don't cover the top."
"Ok"
"Cool."
"Fun!"
Wow. She's fun too. We stare at our masterwork, periodically touching it, adjusting the fake money, whatever to keep touching the only thing in the world holding back the wet oppressive heat.
"It's our baby!" I scream.
She smiles and looks at me in a way I've seen many times before, but on different faces, always on different faces. Maybe everyone gets this look, or maybe just me, maybe you'll recognize it. It's a moment where the looker, loses self-consciousness, looks me in the eye and evaluates me, actually sees the individual me for the first time. Part of this moment is disbelief. I know! It is the moment where the normal societal doubt is defeated, where I'm accepted as naturally harmless or honestly friendly or something, It's the subtextual/ hidden agenda scan, I think it comes up negative. But always in the reaction hides a little difference from one face to the next. This time it's a bit of happiness and warmth in the corner of her eyes and in the ends of a subtle smile. wow she's cute.
Some guy swoops in, scoops up the block of ice and carries it through the crowd over his head. Hands reach out for a precious blessing of the almighty cold. It's now a sacred thing.
"My Baby! Someone stolen my baby!" I wave my arms exaggeratedly and laugh.
He carries it to our own Alice Cooper who without missing a beat or lyric, licks it, rubs it all over his body and finally humps it on the long oak table for a few minutes, to the jubilant cries of the crowd.
"Your a terrible mother! How can you let him do that to our baby!" I point and scream, and laugh and point.
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Today's Song of the Day is "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osborne of his 1981 Album "Blizzard Of Ozz."
Crazy Fact: Guitarist Randy Rhoads was killed in a bizzarre plane accident in 1982, when his plane crashed into Ozzy's Tour bus
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She laughs, "Your a really good screamer."
"thanks."
After Alice was finished with his sacrilege, the idol of all that is cool was returned to us.
"Whoo HOO!" I cheer.
"ok," she extends her hand in the cramped quarters, "You can give me a fake one if you want, but what's your name?"
Bewildered, "Why would I give you a fake name? Anyways it's Pif though that SOUNDS fake."
"Biff?!?!"
"No. Pif. PIF!, with a pee, pif." I go through the 'draw a 'p' in the air with my finger' routine and stare at her intently waiting for a sign of recognition, while drawing my little pee in the air. I'm not sure I'm getting anywhere. The band is loud and I'm probably, definitely a little drunk. Maybe this strange hand motion is confusing her, nonetheless it's all I got, so I keep repeating myself and making my absurd little pee. staring, peeing and repeating.
James chimes in with a devious grin, "You wanna know his REAL name?"
"oh man." I roll my eyes. I hate this move. Why do all my friends have to play it. And they all do.
I turn and try to watch the band through the pointlessly crowded pillar in front of me leaning one way, then the other, dodging and looking, trying to see something, whatever people are cheering at. I can see the guitarist. What's up the soul patch, I'm sick to death of the soul patch, uck. He didn't have that last time I saw these guys.
I turn back, James has done his worst. I will come out unscathed. That is the pif way. The way of the pif. I am determined.
"My name is Pif I swear."
She gives me a look where she is trying to believe me, with a bit of the 'why is this so important to him' analysis.
I turn and look for back-up. I got peeps. I need an outside man.
"DOOD!" I put my arm around a peep a-passin by, "What's my name?"
Mike (aka Dick) looks at me questioning my sanity and then again analyzing my inebriation. I look at her, then back at Mike. He gets it, turns to her and says, "Pif!" triumphantly.
"Thank you my m'man." I release him. "See!" I screech victoriously.
"Your going to be totally hoarse tomorrow."
"No way, I scream all the time, I learned it from my friend Mairi." Meanwhile, I am stunned by my own coolness and popularity. I without a bat of the eyelash seemed to pull a random human out of the crowd and demand justice, Oh justice is what I received. I felt vigorous, bold... unstoppable!
"I'm Angela." She extends her hand again.
Alarm bells ring maddeningly in my head. Red flags fly-up flapping in the furious wind, slapping and blinding me on there way up the pole. Amidst the cacophony of alarm and alert, my own book of rules is thrust forefront in my mind, spread wide to the page banned anymore girls with names who begin and end with 'a' then the page is turned to the addendum where highlighted and underlined it further bans all girls whose name have the now dreaded 'an' sound.
shit. double shit.
I must have freaked her out by my limp handshake and thousand yard stare. If I my life was a movie, which I'm not entirely sure it's not, it would have been the moment, when Ray Stanz sees Slimer for the first time and the cigarette hangs from his bottom lip.
Suddenly, I'm splattered by fake blood, it's flying everywhere. It snaps me out of it, I look into the spray. Alice cooper is wildly chopping up a Minnie Mouse doll filled with blood and guts with a large axe.
"Awesome! WHOOOOO! HAHAHAHAH! WICKED! HAHAHAHA" I scream.
This is why I come here. Nowhere else do you get this kind of entertainment. Some crazed maniac in tight quarters hammering an monster axe into a blooded disney toy on an oak table, wailing retro metal lyrics. Minnie our sacrifice, the bar table our alter, Alice Cooper our priest. Metal his benediction. The axe his wrath. Beer his love. The Seahorse is our temple. And the crowd goes wild.
I wipe the red muck from my eye, look down at my thin white t-shirt splattered in blood. Wicked. You know I was close to the action.
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Today's Song of the Day is "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails off their/his 1994 album "The Downward Spirial."
Crazy Fact: In 1987, Reznor appeared in the Michael J. Fox/Joan Jett film Light of Day, where he played keyboards with a trio dubbed the Problems during a bar scene.
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I think she picked up on my momentary weakness, my sudden start at the confrontation with my own ill-conceived and irrational dating rules. Without understanding it's strange origins she did the only thing anyone in that loud, hot, crazy, sweaty bar would have done. With Alice Cooper's wailing screeching maddenly in her ears, she jumped me, block of ice in hand, stuffs it under my shirt and holds it there.
I squeal and laugh and squirm and squeal and scream some more. There's a lot of things to enjoy in this situation, it gives one pause. Don't struggle too hard now, we have to think about a few things here... Hmm... cute sweaty girls jumping me, I think THIS might be ok.
My scan of her hardly hidden agenda and methods, proved... that I was surprisingly NOT creeped out, which was unlikely, I don't claim to fully understand myself, I'm not sure were my comfort levels lie, but I know when they've been crossed, that doesn't lie. A rational analysis of past experiences would have suggested that these boundries would have been overwhelmed at this point, but, a hasty retreat I did not beat, so therefore I must be ok with this. It's STILL really FUNI Eventually, my pansy-assed roots got the better of me and the cold became to much to bear. I put less of my energy into laughing and giggling and more into struggling and squirming. For my manliness's sake I'd like to say it paid off, but the reality is, she let me go.
The next hour is a blur of giggling hotness and squirming sweatiness while bits of ice and hands went under shirts and into pants. Attack, counter attack. Parry, riposte. A few chases around the bar, some screaming "How can you do that to our baby!", each time pushing the envelope a little further. Sweaty sexy funness had by all, all the while entertaining the crowd and bar staff whose attention was split between Alice Cooper's Festivus for the rest of us and this spontaneous giggling mating ritual.
The show was good, but the sexy ice fight was great. By now, the table and I were soaked and exhausted. She was bigger then me so I was the wetter of the two.
Then the lights came on.
Things started to get a little awkward. The spell was broken, the service is over and reality stands at the door calling you back for supper. We're not kids anymore, I know what supper means, after supper comes bed. I don't know if I want to go to bed. I don't even know if I want her phone number. Now my comfort level is getting overwhelmed. I can feel expectations starting to rise. The social pressure is starting to build. As my energy is re-routed to the fear centers in my brain I become noticeably less animated. Things start to cool off between us as fear makes his move. I become jittery, she plays it quiet.
The encore is out for summer, the bar's been blown to pieces. All there remains is the residual bar chatter, the sounds of tables clunked black into position, chairs scraping against the floor and gear being packed up, while she and I stare forward with our fears centre stage in our minds.
James leans in, "Get her phone number."
I look at James and say nothing, hoping we are out of ear shot.
"Don't be a pansy and get her phone number. At least get her phone number, c'mon you HAVE to get her phone number after all that JUST get her phone number phone number phone number."
I look at her pig tails. I look at the lake of ice water on the floor, at James repeating 'phone number', at my soaked pants, the tattoos on her back, at my bloodstained shirt. I think to myself. I have to do something. Something, I can't just leave it at this.
"TIME TO GO FOLKS! FINISH UP AND MOVE OUT!" The general muttering is starting to clear out.
I hate social pressures. I feel like this is a gender specific sorta dichotomy, I'm the man I have to blah blah blah, though that's bullshit, lots of girls have made the first move, probably ALL of the ones I'VE ever got together with, and so I'm just spoiled and feel angered, so the emotionally convenient 'gender specific dichotomy' argument waging war in my head is just a distraction from my own cowardice. Look, my roommate is crazy crazy (a very long story punctuated by a recent psychotic freak-out leading to my moving out soon) and my phone is dead (my bill is too huge.) So, this poor, homeless, slob (did I mention what a wreck my apartment is?) doesn't really have anything to offer, but still, I have to do something. I can't just leave her sitting there, without closure, without anything.
"We're going to the Marquee now, see ya."
Oh man. did I blow that. We leave. I feel like an idiot.
On the way up the long smelly stairs to the cool night air I am comforted, in this small town, if you see them once you'll see them a dozen times.
I try to put it out of my mind. As James and I speed through the night to the Marquee for further debaucherous adventures, I say to myself the same thing I usually say to myself when I'm on my way to the Marquee, 'Maybe she'll be there.'
Anyway, cheap beer is a liar looking for trouble.
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Today's Song of the Day is "Hey" by The Pixies off their 1989 Album "Doolittle."
Crazy Fact: Look you and I both now that I'm totally OUT of crazy facts for Radiohead and the Pixies, I've sent 17 songs from these two bands, so I think I'm going to skip the crazy fact, and that's a fact. No, I know! the crazy fact is that this is the 10th Pixies tune I've sent out. CrAzY!
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