15 Feb 2010
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This weekend was fairly sedate. Snowy and filled with reading (The Monkey Wrench Gang), PBR (a 24 can brief-like-case courtesy of the perennial Ingles), drums (learning what could be considered as v elementary) and G.G. Allin and the Murder Junkies (maybe you should watch “Hated,” maybe you shouldn’t). I don’t have many raucous weekends nowadays, especially in comparison to G.G., & as such, I now believe ‘sedate’ to be an almost accurate word for boring, which I am OK with because:
I remember striving for complacency as a suburban youth. I wanted to be good and dull, I really did! I remember in eighth grade being extra thin and really wanting to gain weight. I ate everything. Loaves of bread, friends’ cafeteria tray leftovers. Like I said, everything. What a fool I once was, as I now slave away at the stinky YMCA.
I digress.
In apparent fear of my ultimate undoing as a future adult, my parents had me by the right collar in most ways. A balance was never struck any other way other than the hard one; so ho hum, much of my teen years were spent ‘grounded,’ which probably cultivated a whole slew of issues I won’t get into now.
Make no mistake, I, the Younger, had an inordinate capacity for revelry; parties, shows, the whole lot. My mother, consterned, would wring her hands, my father’s patience, weakened by timecards and traffic, would bellow, household pets would cower in trepidation as the Friday became Friday night.
I wasn’t that bad, though. I did good in school despite my boredom there, but oh yes, I had a vigor for underbellied wheelings and dealings. I suppose I still do. In fact, my first foray into Asheville’s seedy extracurriculars convened at the Burger Bar; have you ever been?
Enter a low ceilinged, squat room adorned with various shades of NASCAR wall art. A sharply-inhaled hush rises to a murmur as the screen door slaps shut behind you. Four people are stationed at an ash-leaden folding table to your right, judging your walk, rendering it haughty, curious. A remote belch quivers in the wake of your trajectory – you blanch yet carry on until you finally reach the bar only to be greeted warily by a man bracing his arms at his back, twisted at an extreme angle perhaps propping his solar plexus or other random abdomen part.
“We don’t have any food,” said the bartender behind the counter, a weathered, shrunken man.
“Oh,” I replied, with a mingled sense of relief and confusion. “That’s okay… I just wanted a beer,” I mumbled back, catching my reflection on a rack of potato chips jailed in metallic bags. The folding table of natives were re-engrossed in their previous conversation.
“Uhn,” the man seems to respond, an unbelievably vague false-positive, but he does bend to rummage around a cooler, procuring a Budweiser you in turn gratefully accept.
You then notice the voice of Merle Haggard humming though several decades worth of cigarette exhaust hanging like the dirt cloud it is across the stretch of the main occupancy. You regret showering that day, or maybe ever. ‘This isn’t so bad,’ I think, assuaging any prior concerns somewhat prematurely.
You drink that bottle and try to decide whether or not to stay. Options include: Leave too soon and you’ve failed the test of mixing with locals; stay too long and run the risk of never leaving, not with your dignity intact. Erring on caution, or not, I obliged the waiting barkeep and indulged in another.
Well without much more detailing, it was a fun evening. I eventually was made to sit at the ‘hen table’ where I was invited to a birthday party complete with Slim Jim’s as the birthday boy’s present of choice (not.kidding.) Also, a man wearing pure denim, head to foot, did a strip tease. For walking in feeling like a total Yankee jackass, by the end of the night I was hitching a ride home with two characters that I’m sure don’t remember me as much as I remember them.
“How’d you get here?” slurred one woman, 10 or 12 Capris deep into her new pack.
“I walked,” I said in response, feeling sensible, smart even! No sooner had the words left my mouth did the hen table erupt in protest.
“Wawwked? Wawwccked?” said one of the hens, incredulously. “What gurrrl?”
Stammering, I bristled in defense: “Well I live only five minutes away, it’s no big deal…right?” I wasn’t so sure anymore from their perplexed expressions. A dark cloud had descended on the hen table.
Apparently we were smack in the forefront of Asheville’s prostitution circuit.
“I don’t let them drink in here,” the woman said. “No ma’am.”
So it was decreed I would get a ride home, which I tentatively resisted. I had moved from Philadelphia, where surely I would have faced more dangers than some hookers, right? Ok and their pimps. Oh, what’s that? There’s a prostitute serial killer on the prowl. Want some gas money?
Do I have a point? I make terrible choices usually, but I value a good story. If I was taught a lesson each time I did something dumb, I probably wouldn’t do it again and then I’d never have any good stories, you see
