Line dancing.
Say those words with me.
Line. Dancing.
Would you like to join me for an evening of line dancing?
Once these Haitian street doctors finish with my bowel enlargement surgery, we are going to celebrate with some line dancing!
We are simple farmers of little education or standing, and we’ve traveled many miles to reach your city. We were wondering if you could direct us towards the nearest line dancing establishment so we might explode it with dynamite?
You have to check out the new performing elephant euthanasia clinic that opened next to the Wal-Mart on Sitzpinkler Ave, they have LINE DANCING, followed by forced public enemas, on Tuesday nights! There’s tons of chicks!
Any way it could possibly be said or spoken of, it nauseates the very soul. It stings coming up. Like drinking bleach, you know once you commit to the act, you’ll never be the same. You are guaranteed to be lesser on many levels, parts of you will be damaged beyond repair, burned clean away. Welcome to being less capable. Less able. Less human. There’s just no detour around these facts. There is no positive. Like a tootsie-pop, there is no good to be mined from it’s poison core. Throw towards enemy and run.
Fucking line dancing. Nightmare humans, out on the town, getting nutso. The word ‘scoot’ used, matter of factly, amongst adult men. A garden of shiny mechanical peacocks, dolled up and strutting their stuff. Movements strictly choreographed, faces grimly concentrating on each step.
Stick with the crowd, don’t stand out, don’t fall behind, just follow the pack. One and a two and a one and a two. Yes, I am doing it, I am doing it, kick and a clap and a kick, look at me go. Damn that Obama. Damn him to hell. Those people have no respect for the rules like us good ol’ white folk, they know nothing of the joy that comes with absolute and complete nonresistance. One and a two and one and a two. Clap and a twirl and kick and a blow my fucking head off, chop the kids to bits and flush them down the toilet. This is way better than being alive!
A truly sick display, a contest of docile obedience. A cold shiver cringe runs up my spine like a razor blade as I think of it right now. Fucking line dancing.
Only the Southern United States could birth such a malformed flipper baby and only the South would refuse to do the natural thing and destroy it immediately. They scatter around the birthing room, instead, scraping up the stinking mass of goo, cradling it to their mutant bosom ‘It’s muh BAY-BEE! It done been borned and it’s bay-yoo-toofle, I gon’ name ‘er LINE DANCIN’, she gon’ be reared up in a strip mall!’’
What sort of mangled, twisted human being would derive pleasure from such a hideous environment, this frilled reptilian rhinestone hellworld?
You’d be sure to find less disturbing personalities, community damn near anywhere you looked.
Satanic coven, world dogfighting championship, suburban AA meeting, elephant poaching camp, Alex Jones listener conference, Japanese whaling vessel, Tea party town hall meeting, a Holiday Inn room filled with those people who dress up as cartoon animals and rub their nuts on one another, the surgical staff at an underground Russian organ harvesting clinic, The New York Yankees locker room.
The culture and conduct revolving around any of these would be miles less unsettling than even the most upscale line dancing environment. The Dnepropetrovsk maniacs themselves would not last five minutes inside one without succumbing to the heebie-jeebies.
Comrade, let us take our hammerings elsewhere, these people are, how you say ‘fucked up’
It was a balmy Fall afternoon when Cliff approached my table. We were on the patio at Ceres, the bar on the ground floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, where I was working at the time. This particular place could safely be described as my ‘hangout’ during those terrible years. I was feeling pretty good, and as was the norm during that period, I had a raucous group of ice cold degenerates around me, hootin’ and hollerin’ up a drunken storm. My boss’s unlimited Amex card was in play that night and with that, the party people came slithering out of their holes, one and all.
This particular afternoon, I had a blonde lunatic glued to my lap who did more cocaine than anyone I have ever known on, before or since. The habit bad enough, in fact, to require reconstructive surgery on her nose a few months prior. She told me, rather matter of factly, that she blew her nose one day and out came long, bloody chunks of meat. She said it looked like blue and red spaghetti. Total reconstruction, angry lectures from doctors and painful, bandaged recovery, which slowed her down all of a tenth of mile and hour. She simply could not be deterred. Stevie Nicks at her peak would have cautioned this girl about her reckless intake.
She was 26, I think, something around there, looked far older, though. Haggard and beat up, but still very attractive. I always liked her, a true wild woman, straight out of an old Motley Crue video or something, a good element to have around after work. Though I ended up in bed with her dozens of times, and ravenously made out with her many more times than that, once awoke to find her sitting bare ass directly on my face, somehow I never actually had full on penis in vagina sex with her. It boggles my mind, absolutely no clue how that could possibly be the case, but memory tells me it is so.
This was the wayward daughter of politician you’d regularly read about in the Sun Times, by the way, high level Daley confidant. Met him once, seemed like a real prick, tried to get me to box someone at some rich dude event, even though I’ve never boxed in my life and was in absolutely no shape that would make someone think I had or could. I cannot even imagine what he did to her growing up to have her turn out as insane as she did.
She’d gravitate toward me from time to time, when everyone else had enough of her for the night or it was clear I’d been given a credit card to party with. That, and she just plain liked me, wanted me for a regular type boyfriend, as she told me many, many times in chemically fueled moments of unregulated honesty. That was not going to happen in a million and half years, but still, it’s nice to be thought of nicely. If I had to pinpoint why we never actually had sex, that would be it, as scum fuck as I was back then, I did have some sort of conscience and decency in regards to the feelings of females, would not have wanted to string her along or deal with the aftermath of having done so. This is the type of girl who stabs you, exactly this type. Best to stay on good terms yet keep a wall up with these. Her standard greeting was to grab you by the back of your head and jam her tongue down your throat as far as it’d go, while grabbing a big handful of your cock through your pants and squeezing hard enough to make you shriek in pain.
That’s one way to make an impression. Always did the trick on me, anyway.
I’ve known plenty of slutty girls in my life, and this girl, she ranks up there in the top two or three, no doubt. Literally every single time you’d hang out with this girl, there was some outrageous sexual act performed on you, a friend, a stranger, a group of strangers, a Chicago Bear, whoever happened along. Dudes, chicks, she was up for it all. Good chick to have around early in an evening of partying, last person you want to find yourself with at the end. If you woke up and she was at your house, in your bed, which happened to all of us at some point or another, you were involved in something very unsettling the night before, most likely criminal in nature on several levels, you could be absolutely sure of it. This was looking to be one of those night, for sure.
Cliff walked up, sat down and from the look on his face and the way he was smoking his cigarette, I could see he had something going on. He was the easiest guy in the world to read, because he never had a thing to hide.
‘You’ve got the prick’s black Amex card, right?’
‘I have the EMERALD card’
‘Wanna drive to Norfolk, Virginia?’
‘Right now?’
‘Yeah, right now, rent a car with that card and we’ll drive down and meet my brother, his aircraft carrier is coming in tomorrow morning. We’ll stay the weekend, party and be back for work Monday’
Took me all of four seconds to wrap my head around it
‘Cool, where is the rental place?’’
That’s how most good things happen, quickly. Most horrible things, as well, sure, but a lot of good things too. I had no reason whatsoever to say no.
I grabbed the blonde’s purse and dumped it on the table to her loud squeals. I started rooting around through the makeup and hair ties and assorted junk.
‘What do you have in here that’ll keep us awake? I know you have something, we need speed’
She waved toward the pile, nonchalantly, as her attention was elsewhere already
‘I have Adderall, in the little bag, the orange ones, take a bunch of those’
They were pink, not orange. I wondered for a moment if she were colorblind, maybe that’s what was wrong with her. I shook out a handful, probably 15 or 20 of them and put them in the front pocket of my shirt.
‘This should do us, let’s hit it’
We got up and walked away, nobody said goodbye or even noticed. I had tallied up somewhere around six hundred dollars’ worth of drinks already that day, best I can figure. The entire table was on my tab, and would continue to be long after I left. My tab which I absolutely would not ever be paying. The rule at Ceres was, if you could walk away without anyone stopping you, you were free and clear. The more blatant, the better. There was always someone else’s tab to stick it on at Ceres, and that’s just what they did there. Some of decrepit fucks drinking there are worth more money than entire countries and an extra grand or two on their tab would be similar to you or I getting charged twice for a cup of coffee, just wouldn’t even register. They made it all work out at the end of the night, no matter how much we stuck them for. I was a nobody and that guy over there owns a television network, so why am I paying for a drink? That’s the way I saw it, and it always worked out for me, never got any static and they served me every time I went in. I was only banned from that bar for a short period, and it was over an incident with a knife, not a bill.
A short walk down to the Mercantile Exchange to buy weed from Cliff’s dude and a cab ride to the rental place and we are on our way. All they had was a regular bullshit rental car, a tan Honda Flaccid or whatever the fuck it was called, so my demands for a convertible Humvee with working machine gun sadly fell on deaf ears. As I pull out from the garage under Hertz, we look over and see Jose, Alec and Will walking down the street towards the train station. Coworkers of ours in good standing, all, genuine party people. We called them over to the car, they got in without a word and we were off. We were somewhere in Indiana before any of them actually asked where we were going.
‘I just assumed we were going to skybox’
The drive was fairly uneventful, apart from a close call during a speeding stop God knows where, Ohio, I think. I was taken out of the car and patted down and somehow the cop missed both the large bag of joints and many loose pills in my front shirt pocket, even though his hand went directly over it. We were given some astronomical ticket that I’m sure was never paid and we were on our way. We broke into the Adderall as the night unfolded in front of us and Jesus Christ, she was not kidding. Sailed on through the night like a rocket, teeth gnashed, blasting my fucked up music that everyone hated, windows rolled way down, trailing flames for miles. I never even gave up my driver’s seat, as we had planned, just lasered straight through. ZAP!
Hell of a drug, that Adderall, I can see why those college kids eat that shit like Pez.
We hit terrible fog as the sun came up, going through what I remember as mountains. I winced and powered on into it, not being able to see a thing, on pure instinct, later hearing of a massive 60 car pile-up on the radio, in the same soup just behind. Sounded like we missed it by a hair, or more likely, caused it, somehow. Eventually we arrived at the dock, parked and greeted Ray with hugs and handshakes. We had missed the ceremony, looked like, but he did not care, he was just happy someone showed at all. Ray was a good guy, never had a problem, he and I.
Ray was happy to see us, he excitedly had us follow him onto the ship to show us around. It was impressive, huge beast of a ship the size of a small city. He showed us the area where he worked, down in the bowels of the thing. Looked and sounded like a regular 9 to 5 job, basically. He pulled some levers and took readings on some gauges connected to some pipes and that was about it for 8 hours a day. Hung out and played basketball when he wasn’t doing that. They showed movies, had shitty concerts and comedians, picnics on deck and shit like that. They’d stop in various ports around the world from time to time where they could go out drinking and partying. They were forever trying to bang local girls, as would be imagined, and succeeding only sporadically from the sound of it. He did fuck a Greek girl who had a very hairy asshole, though, he specifically mentioned that, several times. Seemed like a halfway decent life. I would have done fine if I went with Ray to join that day, as I was tempted to. We met some of his navy bros, they seemed cool enough and we all decided to head out and have us a good time in Norfolk that night.
We left the ship and headed to a motel nearby and got a room. One small room for what was now a party of eight dudes. Ray immediately decides he should be treated to a hooker, once word of my unmonitored Amex card comes out. He sits on the bed and opens thephone book (that is how you did things before the internet) and finds an escort service. His Navy bros decided they wanted girls, too, and Jose gave in to temptation, as well. The final order was to be for four hookers. Ray spent damn near 45 minutes on the phone with whoever answers the phone at those types of places, describing his dream woman, in detail.
Brunette, tattoos, shaved bush, but not totally shaved, like a little strip, tall, high heels, short skirt and on and on.
You have to give the dude a little leeway on his animalism in this instance, as he’d been on a ship out to sea for something like two years straight, surrounded by almost exclusively dudes and gorilla shaped chicks that could easily pass as dudes. Hookers were never my scene but I can’t blame the dude for wanting something quick and painless.
After way, way longer than they said it would be, two, not four girls show up knocking on the door. Neither girl looked anything even approaching like what he had described when placing his order. He ordered fresh basil and they sent him rotten anchovies. Almost the exact polar opposite of what he was looking for. One sort of looked like a frog, to be perfectly honest, like an invasive Cane Toad hopping into our room, intent on fouling the delicate ecosystem. Kind of a scrunched up face, with weird protruding eyes. Picture a female Popeye and you’d be close to what we were looking at. A less sexy female Popeye. The second girl was your average loud, dumb, chubby and unattractive blonde girl. If I were held at knife-point and ordered to describe the qualities I, or any man I knew, found LEAST attractive in a female, they exhibited each and every one to the highest level. One even SMELLED bad, like moldy laundry, left sitting in the machine too long. As soon as Ray opened the door, you just felt the air leave the room. These men had worked themselves into a frenzy in the time since the call was made and now, well, the gourmet pizza showed up and it was Little Caesars. There was dead silence as they walked into the room. I heard someone say, out loud, ‘awww, man’
I was watching television, rolling a joint, trying to be as wholly removed from what was taking place as I possibly could be. They have their talk and the girls explain that they were not ‘hookers’, but ‘escorts’ and they would not be having sex with anyone. Unless they got taken on a ‘date’ first, that is. If they happen to hit it off with anyone, further physical escalation could possibly be negotiated as the night progressed. I laughed out loud at this point, could not help it. The situation was ridiculous. Ray had enough, and the navy bros did not seem to be too interested either, so he asked them just to leave. They flat out refused. They were called, they were staying and they were getting paid. They also, I suspect, spotted the pile of weed and pills on the table and were not about to leave until ingesting their fair share. That settled it, we were all going out on the town that evening, with these wretched prostitutes, like Christ would be doing if finding himself stuck in Norfolk for an evening. Someone makes a run to get booze, joints are rolled and the room eases into a strange, but pleasant enough social atmosphere. It’s decided we’d all be going out to a bar, the girls know a place they want to go. Jesus Christ they were unappealing.
Cliff wanted less to do with any of this than I did, but he finally acquiesced once mention was made of a vast array of pool tables, with many cash games being in play at any given time. Cliff was a sucker for a cash billiards game, could not resist under any circumstance, even one non-ideal as this. We pile in the Honda Flaccid, and of course, I end up with Popeye the sailor Toad in my lap. She turns, places her arms around my neck in a hug, gets her face close to mine and nasally honks something to the effect of ‘I bet you are going to get a boner’ or ‘I’ll try not to give you a boner’ and then remarks that I am ‘lucky’ because she did not wear any panties that evening. Her attempt at being seductive, I suppose.
She laughs, then grinds her blocky ass into my lap and stares at me, smacking her gum.
Somehow, that boner eluded me.
.Eventually we get to the place and it’s massive bar built into a strip mall. Looks like a Ponderosa steakhouse. I cannot recall the name, but it had a giant neon cowboy on the sign whose boot would move back and forth as it lit up. Cowboy Kicker’s Emporium of Agonizing Horseshit, I think it may have been called.
At this point, I am wearing my typical Chicago uniform, jeans and a black hoodie. In this instance, it was a tastefully patriotic Navy hoodie featuring an eagle launching off the deck of the carrier, shooting rockets out of it’s eyes that Ray had stolen for me on the ship. To this day I wear it proudly to all sorts of gatherings and establishments without hassle. This night, in Norfolk, I am stopped at the door by a big black dude in black blazer with earpiece.
‘Whoa, Buddy, we have a dress code’
I look past this guy to see just what this dress code entailed. Inside, it’s wall to wall full of fucking assholes dressed like an autistic five year old’s idea of a homosexual cowboy. Tassels and sparkles and every stupid fucking accouterment you can imagine one of these dickheads adorning himself with. I was absolutely fine with leaving but the Tawny Frogmouth had apparently blown Mr. Earpiece at some point and we were let in. I was given specific instruction NOT to join the dancing, though. Darn, came all this way from Chicago and everything.
We walk in and there’s a shitty pop country bar band playing on stage and a sea of people dancing, spinning and clapping in perfect unison. Way in the back, there’s maybe a dozen pool tables. Cliff and I make a beeline for the back as quickly as we can and being early in the evening, claimed a table as our own. Not ideal but this will have to do. I watched the people ‘dancing’ for awhile, waiting for Cliff to find some suckers for us to shoot against. Such a truly bizarre spectacle unfolding in front of me, I was dumbstruck. The band is playing ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ and bullshit like that and the crowd loves it, eating it up like diarrhea pudding, straight from the tap. GLUG GLUG GLUG.
What sort of ‘dancing’ entails absolutely no physical contact with one’s partner? I look around and can see that a fair number of these goofy line dancing women are undeniably sexy, tits and ass galore, as is the norm in the Rebellious States, yet the most the men would do is dance around them in a fruity little circle, clicking their heels and clapping.This is their ritual? This is the dancing these monster people prefer? Fuck is this madness? Do they all have some sort of brain virus? Eat some tainted ergot bread or something? What fucked up religion is this? This goes against every good and decent thing that has ever arisen in regards to human civilization, spits directly in the face of it all and it’s VERY POPULAR in Richmond.
I was not enjoying being there, to say the least. I legitimately suck at billiards, so I was purely working in the position of foil to facilitate Cliff’s sharking of these rubes. A position I would normally enjoy just fine, but this night I had little interest in anything but leaving this grotesque den of human suffering as soon as humanly possible. I can withstand a lot but I was at my peak pretty quickly, in a matter of minutes. Being in the red, II did the only thing that made any sense, I started drinking, heavily. I had hit my limit and just wanted it all to go black. This happened from time to time. Whiskey shots and beer, lots. Wild Turkey 101 is the strongest liquor you have? Yes, all around, keep them coming, give me a pint glass full, price is no object!
As I drank, I got more and more surly and loud. Soon, I was not being discreet in the least about my deep dislike of my current situation. All things line dancing, country music, cowboys, Republicans, Christ and Southern got a few moments in the spotlight.
So, the fight.
I am cold cocked from behind. The dude at the table behind us just had enough of my shit and threw a sloppy haymaker my way. It landed, but did absolutely no damage. His heart was clearly not in it, it was simply a statement he was attempting to make. Quiet down, city boy, you are out of your element.
I turn towards him and instead of heeding this warning, apologizing or making an attempt at diffusing the situation, I do the first thing that comes to mind. I threw the bottle of beer I had in my hand directly at the center of his face. He failed to duck, move or take any evasive action whatsoever and got the full brunt of it. WHAM! Dead square in the nose. He goes down immediately, holding his face, wailing. The place goes nuts. I remember one moron yelling something to me about having to pay his dental bills or some nonsense, that he should ‘sue’ me. Yes, this aggressive man, who hit me from behind, not seconds before, unprovoked, should ‘sue’ me. Chicks are screaming, the band has stopped, the dancers thrown wildly off their mechanized Nazi groove. Mr. Earpiece grabs me and starts walking me toward the front door. He’s calling me an asshole and telling me how he knew he should never have let me in, Chicago is full of violence and he knew I was looking to start ‘shit’
‘You should be a detective with intuition like that, I was clearly here to get punched in the back of the head’
Suddenly I am tackled out of his grip from behind. I am on the floor on my back being punched in the face. My arms are locked at my sides by the dude’s legs, he’s straddled on top of me. Dude I hit with the bottle, he’s back up and he’s PISSED. He’s raining punches down on me, but they are not very hard punches, and I am drunk. It simply does not hurt. I start laughing as he’s punching me and tell him he punches like a girl. They pull him off after a few moments, I get up to a knee and wipe blood from my mouth. There’s a massive crowd around, but it’s a weird silence. Might be my adrenaline, but to me, you can hear a pin drop. I guess they were all waiting for a retort, so I stood up slowly and said ‘If that’s as hard a punch as you hillbillies can throw, you are in some deep shit, man. I’m gonna beat your fucking ass the second they throw us outside’
To this day, I am pretty satisfied with it. Sometimes when you look back, you say ‘I wish I would have said this’ or ‘man, it would have been great if I thought of that’ and are usually not pleased with what you actually DID say. Not this time. I am assured by my friends that it, indeed, was a pretty bad ass thing to say and it satisfied the room immensely. Immediately dispelled around 70% of the anger in the room towards me and my group. I took my lumps for my mouth and people seemed ok with it. The bouncer grabs me and off I went, the room went back to what it was doing. The band was already starting back up as we hit the front doors.
There’s some yelling and carrying on outside, the bouncers keeping us apart and a call is made to the police. They show quickly, but don’t care one bit. One of twenty hillbilly bar fights that HOUR in that town, I imagine.
‘Do you have a gun?’
‘No’
‘Do you have drugs?’
‘I have been sober 20 years, officer, fell off the wagon tonight, I blame that man, he poured whiskey in my pepsi, that’s what the fight was about, he’s tearing my family apart’
‘I don’t care. Just stop fighting, don’t make us come back’
‘Ok. I’ll go back in but only if he apologizes and I get a gift certificate for onion rings or something’
‘You aren’t going back in, just shut up, don’t make us come back’
‘I can’t help but feel I’m getting the short end of the stick here, but I’ll agree to those terms, for the greater good’
Once it’s settled, our respective groups head back inside. I have to wait outside till they are done. I see a 7-11 type store with a dumb Southern name, ‘Boinkie’s’ or whatever, is part of the strip mall. I walk down, buy a 12 pack and a little bottle of Whiskey. I sit on the hood of the Honda Flaccid and proceed to power drink. Made up with the dude I fought, as he was stuck outside as well. He was alright, from Indiana, it turns out, out to see his buddy who’s on one of the smaller ship’s in Ray’s group. His buddy was actually on that ship the Arabs blew a hole in during the Clinton years, heard all about it.
One good thing about hillbillies, they don’t know how to hold a grudge when you offer them a beer, just cannot do it. He and I drink the beer, the whiskey, buy another, larger bottle of Whiskey and it all goes black eventually.
The rest of the night a hideous, spinning blur. Bits and pieces. In and out in the backseat. A stop at taco bell, a difficult, angry drive thru order with threats and throwing of food followed by the squealing of tires, the blonde peeing in the street while everyone laughed, falling down the stairs at the hotel. I remember the Popeye one on top of me, attempting to convince me to have sex with her, which I had sense enough to refuse, and I remember Ray getting a Hummer from both of them in the doorway as the night fades to final black. I remember thinking ‘Good for Roy’ as I faded away.
We said our farewells the next day, after ruining several steaks at some bizarre restaurant where you cook your own steak on a giant grill in the middle of the room. Ray boarded his ship with his navy bros and we headed home. We never spoke of Norfolk, hookers or line dancing again. Boss never even asked about the plethora of charges from Norfolk on his card, even the five hundred and eighty dollar one from the escort service. I honestly thought for a minute I might have to explain that one, was even a little worried, which is foolish looking back because who the fuck cares.
Ray ended up marrying a dwarf woman he met after he got out of the Navy, working in the sewers in Richmond, by the way. She was cheating on her dwarf husband with him for a spell, before she got divorced. He showed up with a bow and arrow, of all things, one night, shot one through his window, almost hot Ray in the ass. I have yet to meet her, but I’m sure she’s alright because like I said, Ray, he was alright.
© Jonah Stabone, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jonah Winnick and Jonah Stabone with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
jonahstabone 