Club Virtue
The last time I heard Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-A-Lot,
I was cleaning shit off a bathroom wall with my employee Brad, down at the
Virtue Club. We had had the pleasure
only because the regular guy no-called-no-showed. By regular guy I mean the little bastard whose
sole purpose was to clean up the nightly shit, piss, and vomit. It was not the sole job of me, or Brad for
that matter. I wasn’t used to the lofty
stench of the splatter present, but after a while, I got used to it. Brad was hanging his shirt over the tip of
his nose like one of those SARS masks.
That song was playing like it always did. I could picture the twenty-something
teenagers laughing and grinding to the joke they had gotten the first
time. Mostly overly confident boys grinding
up against the flat backsides of pencil width chicks. I thought about their bullshit as my hand
pressed the flusher to evacuate the last sheet of a toilet paper roll that just
five minutes ago had been full.
“Are we done?”
Brad said. He was standing over
me holding the handle of a broken mop with a certain daintiness. I didn’t answer him in one-point-five seconds,
so he asked again, “Are we done yet?”
I stand up and gesture for him to back up. Brad is the sort of guy you want on your
side in a fight. He’s a big
bruiser. Yet, the way he stood there
with his white wife beater collar protecting his nostrils, you wouldn’t think
so. His bald head poking out the top
hole like a cowardly little turtle; or a lumpy shit. “Yes, Brad, we are done. You can go and watch the door again.”
As we headed toward the exit I noticed one of the
customers - some suave jackass in cheap suit coat and frayed jeans - unleashing
his urine all over the cement floor.
Instead of directing his flow, he was bracing one hand against the wall,
while the other tipped up his bottle to chug the last of clearly-not-there bud
light. “Clean that up will you
Brad.” I exited. Three minutes later Brad walks out with the
back of suit coat in fist, directing mister-suave to the front door. I can’t help but notice the path of urine
trailing up Brad’s pant leg before he goes outside.
Baby Got Back stops. Shots by LMFAO starts. I can see the song work its magic as the
colony of maggots realize they want more drinks. First one and then another, except the ones
who are screaming and bouncing in stupors already. The ones that do get hooked into the hook
though, they are making their way to the bar.
Never has a song made a bartender’s job as predictable. I approach Sammie - our regular – who is
preparing the one ounce glasses.
“Brad got pissed on.” I tell Sammie immediately.
“What?”
She can’t hear me over the throbbing bass and Lil Jon shouting “shots.” She pours a well-bottle of rum along the
counter. About three fourths of it makes
it into the glasses. A synchronized
orchestra of clinking glasses calls out amongst the beat. The boys and girls swallow them down with
varying ease and difficulty, and then I laugh at their bitter-pussy-faces as
they pucker up over my watered-down liquors.
“Brad got pissed on, again.” I tell her.
She smiles like she needs you, wants you. I grab a glass to wash. With a dry rag inside my already cleaned
glass I say, “Got any plans after?”
I know she’s going to say sleep. “Sleep,” she says. It’s almost last call by then. Closing time, and clean up to follow. Won’t be till three before she gets
home. I put my arm on the small of
Sammie’s back, it makes an unwitting shudder visibly reverberate up the of arch
of her back and escape through a pulse in her shoulders. She’s smiling.
“Need company?”
I notice Brad is marching up toward the other
side of the bar. The peed-on pleat of
his khakis ruffling as he walks toward me, makes me smile for a moment. I drop my hand and return to cleaning my
glass when he gets close enough and I say, “Don’t you have a door to watch?”
“I am.” He
says down to me.
Sammie is quiet.
“Did he just touch you?” Brad says to her. She collects a tip and smiles her smile. She’s a good girl. A tease.
I don’t understand why she’s with a schmuck like Brad. I’m operating a thriving business while he
watches a door. “Did he just touch you,
again?” I’m watching her. She continues flirting with the patrons, and
coaxing the money from them. Her tits
stiff against her Nirvana t-shirt. I
take a moment to consume her. Her ass is
pronounced in skin tight jeans.
The bitch must have given him an affirmative look
because I’m being pulled over the counter and a dozen little shot glasses
shatter on the floor. My Egyptian-cotton
collar is pulled up over my chin, leaving my nostrils open to the delivery of a
Brad-fist. I feel the ejection of blood
like the burn of a tract infection, shot out like the explosion that propels a
shotgun blast. He hits me until I’m
seeing four of everything and I don’t even feel my collapse to the floor, I
only notice the kaleidoscope blood stain running down the ruffled pleat of Brad’s
Goodwill-khakis. My silk boxer briefs
are ruined the second the first kick hits my guts.
