Schlitz, Schrapnel and Romance in Room 19

by C. Raymond

SO I had one foot in the toilet and her tongue in my mouth. It wasn't a typical
Tuesday afternoon. I met up with this gorgeous little stripper I know named Sylvie
at the local dive to drink it up and roar till the money ran out. Sylvie was
something, she got hot for artist and writers and other disgusting types. She was a
seasoned dancer at the tender age of 22, emotionally put out by the typical man with
their wad of singles and couldn't dance to Purple Rain without crying on the pole. I
wasn't figuring she was trying to get in my pants for anything other than drinking
money but one thing led to another and after the sixth round of pints and a shared
shot of something mixed she dragged into the men's room to make out because she was
digging my inner beauty.
The water in the toilet was cold. I could feel it heavy in my sock but the tongue
being forced down my throat was heavier. She was making me boil like only the right
magnificent creature could. When she slipped her long fingers past my belt loop, my
leg gave out and I collapsed. She grabbed my head and buried it between her legs. It
was agony and ecstasy at it's finest. I had my nose rubbing hard up and down on her
silver-striped Wonder Woman thong but my leg was twisted up in a cold toilet.
Then the pounding came. No, not that pounding.
"No screwing in the bathroom!" Montezuma the Bartender yelled.
"Because I ain't cleaning that up!"
Slyvie and I froze with embarrassment. I was muffled in her thighs and slowly trying
to dislodge my knee from the toilet.
"Mmm- we have to take this somewhere else, Luther-Baby" she whispered, pulling me up
by my hair.
I asked if she had any suggestions and she said she had a room rented around the
corner.
"My roommate is this old guy who lets me dance on his coffee table for the rent, but
like last week he told me loved me and was the girl who would keep his name going,
so I like, rented a room till I can find somewhere else to go." she told me.
She straightened her skirt as I adjusted my shirt to cover the bulge in my pants. I
could fornicate in a dirty bathroom, but I wasn't going to walk around with an
invisible erection. I had a reputation to uphold.
"Around the corner at the Palomino Inn, room 19- give me about 20 minutes, baby, and
come over…want me to wear those boots you like?"
I shook my head like a small child. She leaned in to kiss me and bit my lip softly.
She smelled of Lilacs and peroxide- with the slightest hint of that repugnant smell
of digesting whiskey on her breath.
She walked out the bathroom with her shoulders hunched. I stood and looked in the
mirror at my trademark shit-eating grin. I felt I should give myself a pep talk of
some sort but I thought it might jinx the whole deal. No, I elected to lay cool till
my raging hard-on stopped raging and make my way to the Palomino Inn.
I walked out of the bathroom with my hands in my pockets, whistling and skipping
every other step. My hard on was inching away from my fingers promising to return as
it left. I passed an old guy sitting on one of the ragged chairs by the pool tables.
He shot me a toothy grin that told me he'd been there and I returned the smile.
"How yeh doing, Old Timer?" I asked him.
"Drinking and dying but can't complain." He said with his fingers to his lips.
With the exception of the Old Timer the bar was deserted. It was a quiet time before
the storm of drinkers. When I got to the bar Montezuma grimaced and threw a towel at
me.
"Watch the bar. I gotta take a shit."
"But.."
"I said watch the bar! C'mon Luther. How many free tallboys have I given you?"
I sighed and told him okay.
"But hurry up- I got what the brothers so sweetly refer to as a "booty call."
Montezuma flipped me the bird, the kind I've seen a whole flock of, and made his way
to the john.
"Anybody comes in, tell'm I'll be right back."
I proceeded behind the bar and found an unmarked bottle of Kesslers. I unscrewed the
spout and turned it up. I got to thinking about Sylvie again, laid out on the bed
wearing nothing but those star studded platform boots and my name on her lips. My
stomach hatched butterflies that got doused with whiskey first thing. Not a bad way
to come into the world I suppose.
I put the bottle down on the bar and cracked open a tallboy. I made my way back
around the bar and climbed on a stool. Then, as I was about to take my first sip, I
looked over to see Strange Jim.
Strange Jim was one of the neighborhood regulars. He'd been haunting this dive since
the late fifties. He was wearing his checkered hunting cap, a trench coat and a I'm
with Stupid t-shirt- with the arrow pointing up. He climbed on the stool beside me
and looked me in the eye.
"Luther."
"Jim."
"Gonna set us up?"
"Well, Montezuma is here, he's just.."
"Set us up some shots, Luther."
He stared me down with a streak of animal in his eye.
"Okay, yeah… Kesslers?"
"Don't give a damn. And put on some music." He told me.
I went around the bar and grabbed a couple of the large shot glasses. Strange Jim
glanced around the bar nervously.
I poured two shots and sit one in front of him. He smiled at me and pulled something
heavy out of his pocket and placed it on the bar beside the shot, his hand still
wrapped tightly on it.
I got a good look at what he was holding.
It was a hand grenade.
My heart jumped up in my throat and set up a pup tent
"What…are you gonna do with that, Jim?" I asked him quietly.
"I said put on some music, Luther. Play some Three Dog Night."
I stared at him for a moment.
"That thing real, Jim? Or did you get at Bennett's Army Surplus?"
"Bennett's?"
"Yeah, they sell empty ones."
"D'fuck would you buy an empty grenade for?" he hollered.
"I don't know. Makes a nice paperweight for lunatics?"
Then, the worse happened. He wrapped his fingers around the pin and pulled it.
He took the pin and dropped it in his shot of whiskey while still holding the
grenade tight.
"Well," he said as he picked up the shot. "This one ain't empty- I brought it back
with me from Korea."
Then he downed the shot, pin and all. My eyes went white.
He clinched his teeth and I watched as his hand slowly went limp around the grenade.
Then he clutched it tight again.
"Goddam, been coming here for…thirty-odd years. Know that?"
I nodded my head and kept my eyes glued on the grenade. Thoughts were flashing
through my mind. I thought about Vietnam movies. The Doors played in my head as a
Huwie flew over.
"I remember I drank here, four years solid, every damn night. Every damn night I
came in here and drank- some nights I'd go in the bathroom and make myself throw up,
just so I could keep drinking-"
I thought about Hawkeye Pierce hunched over and running for a chopper full of
shrapnel wounded soldiers.
"-See all these new barstools, them new televisions- the new shiny grill. That's my
money right there."
Then, I thought about how I should be knee-deep in Sylvia right now instead of
dealing with this old bastard and his hand grenade. I had to diffuse this situation.
Montezuma was nowhere to be found. Apparently he was making a career out of that
shit he was taking.
"Look, Jim-"
"Then, they up and went a barred me, Luther. For life! And all on account of me
breaking the toilet in the ladies room! You ever been barred from here, Luther?"
I nodded my head. Yeah, my name has seen a few barred lists.
"Place is like my home...Luther." he said with a faint whine.
He slowly started to let go of the grenade as he leaned over with his eyes closed..
I started to reach for it, hoping I could get to it before the lever went flying-
but even if could have gotten my hands on it, what was I suppose to do then? He
swallowed the goddam pin.
As I slowly inched toward it he shot back to attention and waved the grenade in my
face.
"Know what we gonna do, Luther? We're gonna drink till we can't see straight! Then
I'm gonna watch this place burn! And don't you go running out on me! I know that's
what you're thinking about, you sumbitch!"
Actually I was thinking I should has studied harder in school, went to college, went
to church- lived a better life.
"You thinking you can run up out of here- but you try it and I'm gonna just let this
go a-flying and kill whoever it kills, you want that?" he asked, waving the grenade
about.
"Now do yer shot and set us up again, get me a Schlitz."
I hesitated, then picked up the shot and downed it with grinding molars.
"There you go, see- that wasn't too bad. Let's drink, boy. Come around here and sit
down."
I made my way around the bar again, looking back toward the bathrooms wishing to God
Montezuma would come out. I sit down beside Jim and went to sipping my tallboy.
"Someday were gonna make a trip to the Island, boy." He told me.
"The Island?" I ask him.
"The Island- the one where all the celebrities are hiding out on. The ones that
faked their deaths- Elvis, Sinatra, Waylon Jennings, Bob Dylan."
"Bob Dylan ain't dead, Jim."
"Exactly! He's down there on that island."
"No, I mean he's-"
There was no way I was going argue with a disgruntled grown man named Strange Jim
who was holding a can of Schlitz in one hand and a live hand grenade in the other.
I mean, you don't trifle with a guy who has the balls to drink Schlitz.
So we continued to do shots. With each round, while I listened to him go on and on
about his glory days, I wondered why this old man wasn't locked up, I wondered if
this was my future, I wondered if Sylvie was grinding her platforms into someone
else's thighs.
I wondered if Montezuma died in the men's room- or if he was hanging with Elvis on
the Island, listening to him butcher a blues song he stole from a black man.
I decided to take action, because there was no doubt in my mind at that point, one
more shot and the lever would fly.
"Look, Jim- as much as I would love to sit here and discuss theoretic on expelling
personal demons till the paramedics are digging metal out of our skulls- I just
can't help thinking there's something better we could be doing. Or someone better."
Jim looked over at me with drunken eyes, he holds the hand grenade out at me. His
fingers go limp and he was about to drop it.
I quickly reached up and wrapped my hand around his.
"Jim, you are about to drop the hand grenade!"
He stumbled and slouched as I held him up.
"Well put the goddam pin back in it." he slurred.
"You swallowed the pin, asshole!"
Jim slipped off the stool and slowly fell toward the floor. I held his arm up with
my hand wrapped tightly around his and the grenade.
"Goddamit, you rat-bastard! Do not pass out on me! I haven't seen Paris!"
"You never..been to Texas?" He said.
Then God smiled, because Jim started throwing up on the floor.
I got down on my knees never so thankful for vomit. I ran my free hand through it
looking for the pin.
Chunks of rice, no pin- noodles, no pin- undigested rangoon, but no pin. General
Tso's goddam personal stash of chicken but no fucking pin!
Then Jim vomited one last time.
Clink. The pin hit the floor in a puddle of whiskey.
I snatched it up quickly and inserted it back in the grenade.
"Let go of the grenade, Jim!"
"Not..till I see the whites of their beady eyes, Sarge." he whispered, then passes out.
I take the hand grenade and slap it on the bar next to the whiskey bottle and there
stood Montezuma.
"What the fuck?"
"What the fuck? Did you have to kill that shit before you could take it?! Where the
hell have you been?!" I yelled.
Montezuma rubbed his stomach.
"Monday night is Mexican night, sue me- hey, did you kill Strange Jim?"
He looked over the bar at the mess on the floor.
"Aw, man- I am not cleaning that up, Luther."
"I didn't make it," I yelled as I pointed. "He did, and he ain't even suppose to be
in here!"
Montezuma looks at Jim.
"Who, Strange Jim? He tell you that?"
"Yeah, he said he was barred for life."
"He got barred ten years ago for breaking the ladies toilet- and the guy who owned
this place at the time, well, he died." Montezuma tells me.
I stare down at Jim, a bit infuriated.
"So the bar got lifted when Maggie bought the joint. Yeah, she loves her some Jim
Bennett."
When I heard his last name I nearly lost it.
"Jim…Bennett, as in Bennett's Army Supply?" I whispered.
"Yeah, his family has owned the joint forever," Montezuma said, picking up the hand
grenade. "How do you think he got this paperweight?"
I darted out the door for the Palomino Inn at top speed, hoping Sylvie was still
waiting on me with her boots. I nearly got hit by three cars before I got there. I
hit the steps and made my way up to room 19. At this point I was hoping she was
laying spread eagle and I could just dive in and stay forever. I got to the door and
started pounding on it.
"Sylvie, baby- it's me!" I yelled.
-No answer.
I pounded again.
"C'mon, baby! You have NO idea of the fucked up night I've had.
-I pounded harder.
"Slyvie!" I yelled.
Suddenly the door cracked open.
Sylvie peeked out through ragged eyes.
"Luther?" she whispered.
I tried to push the door open but she wouldn't let me.
"Yeah, come on baby, It's go time!"
She yawned.
"Mmm- not tonight, Eric. I got a migraine."
She closed the door.
Who in the living fuck was Eric?!
I pounded on the door.
"No, no, no, don't do this, baby! Let daddy in! C'mon!"
I pounded harder with two fists making a ruckus.
"Goddammit!" I yelled.
I slid down the door till my face nearly touched the concrete. I stayed there
silent. Then I heard Sylvie on the other side of the door.
"Twenty minutes, I said twenty minutes." She said.
"I know, baby. But you would not believe what happened."
-We sit quiet again.
"Doesn't matter…I'm going to marry Joseph."
-I lifted my eyebrow.
"Joseph..the old guy with the.. coffee table?"
Again, silence.
"His family owns a Army Surplus store. They have money. I have to think about my
future."
I started to chuckle through clenched teeth at the irony.
"What about us?" I asked her.
"Luther..you write for a magazine that doesn't pay you, and you live in the office."
I couldn't argue with her. I couldn't say a damn thing at that point and I didn't
want to.
"Yeah, well…we could still drink, right? Have some laughs?"
-Another long silence.
"Sure," she said with a chuckle. "I'd like that…good night, Luther."
I stood up and straightened my shirt, started walking home.
I got back to the office and stripped down to my boxers, fired up my laptop and
started drinking whatever was in the mini-fridge.
I scrounged through the ashtray for a butt with tobacco on it. I stared at the blank
screen and contemplated my future. I tried to write but the words wouldn't come.
Maybe I needed a degree, a piece of paper with the name of a prominent University on
it before I could truly write.
Then I got a call from someone who wanted to get drunk and that's what I went and did.