Ingrate Expectations: Part II
Someone called me the John Wick of fake IDs last weekend.
I think I should put that on a business card. If I could start a business out of this, that is. And it’s not for lack of trying. You name the venue company, and I guarantee you I’ve submitted an online resume and plan of attack on combatting fakes.
A couple bites.
And then lots of silence.
The bad part is, I can’t certify myself. I don’t have enough clout beyond these stories of me working at a nameless bar and venue (despite most of you know which one is which). TIPS also said they didn’t want to add my hour-long presentation to their already 4-hour program. And they didn’t have an interest in doing anything separately.
That might be why I’ve taken so many weekends off. These concerts aren’t going to see themselves. And it’s not like we don’t have good people to take my place. We have Peanut, and Sunshine, and Specs.
And Chili Dog.
He’s new.
He declined to give a nickname on the spot, so we let fate decide. And boy, did fate intervene in the most magical of drunken ways.
Crazy Upper Middle-Class Asians
Few pleasures are working the door more exciting than meeting new people who I can later anonymously exploit on the internet.
Cersei is one of them.
Cersei’s first interaction was more than enough for one night. She strikes up a conversation with Wild Bunch, WB for short, about her boobs. Or, preferably, her attempt at saying that her white tube top with decorative cherries kept falling down because her Asian descent has made her not as top heavy as she’d like to be. WB interjects, saying “they’re definitely bigger than Asian descent.”
Cersei takes this as a compliment and flashes us for a few seconds.
Well, us and the other 11 people on the patio.
And the five around the hot dog cart.
Same shit, different night.
But Cersei isn’t done. She wants something awfully bad.
Chili Sauce.
She pleads with a few men to buy her a hot dog but gets distracted when WB and I start talking about a topic that wasn’t her and her Cherry Blossoms.
“Do you know where my brother is?” Cersei asked.
“I think he left,” I said. “Or we kicked him out. One of the two.”
“Yeah, he was pretty drunk. He asked me to have sex with him tonight.”
“What the fuck?” WB said. “That’s messed up. … What did you say?”
“Well, I had sex with him, of course.”
WB turns to me and says, “welp, I’m out. This shit got too weird for me.”
Me, being immune from most things, asked if she was a big Game of Thrones fan.
A few minutes later, the new guy and I are milling about, and I bring up this blog. I ask if he has a nickname he’d be willing to share, but he’s non-committal on one, so I let it go because nothing has really happened between us or anyone in the bar for me to write about. He was inside during the flashing brother-fucker portion of the evening.
And then fate intervenes.
A drunk man is standing in front of the hot dog cart, yelling at other drunk people walking toward the hot dog cart. Yes. Here we go.
One of these men has two chili dogs in hand and won’t stop getting in the face of the other drunkard when the drunk prime gives a decent shove. Not enough to knock someone down, but hard enough to spin the dog handler away from the cart and into the path of, you guessed it, the new guy, who receives a chili dog volley right to the pants.
This dog was coming out of the handler’s mitts faster than a frisbee throw but less than a tee-shirt cannon. Let’s just say Gallagher would be pleased with the splash radius.
And a nickname was born!
And if you thought we were done with Cersei, well, she was still looking for some sweet, sweet chili sauce.
There’s just one problem, she doesn’t have any shoes at the moment, making her a 4-foot-11 fighting machine with above-average Asian breasts and a lifetime reservation for two at any Alabamian Bed & Breakfast.
No shoes and with a messy puddle of chili sauce, ketchup, mustard, cheese and relish marinating the cement immediately outside the bar entrance.
Cersei takes two steps toward the gate.
But wait!
She doesn’t have any money. She realizes this and our hopes of seeing a barefoot woman run through chili sauce at 1 a.m. are dashed.
Or so we thought.
Halfway down the block, there’s a woman and a man fighting on the sidewalk. The woman isn’t wearing any shoes but is wearing socks. One grey and one black.
And she’s running.
Five yards before the chili pond she slows down.
Damn, she sees it.
Two yards. Three steps. Two steps.
She’s not slowing her gait.
One step.
Will she make any effort to walk over it?
NO!
And so much YES all at the same time.
Seeing another trailblazing woman before her, Cersei took the barefoot leap out of the bar, through the chili debris, and to the hot dog cart. But now there is a line. Cersei wanders around the cart. Once. Twice.
On her third pass, she turns back toward the bar and loudly proclaims, “I just want a wiener in my mouth!”
