Attention Holiday Shoppers

The holiday season in New York City spells discounts galore all around. You walk into a shop and come out with two pounds of premium Ethiopian coffee beans. They came two for you. If you bought one pound they give you a second one and add another cup of regular Joe at no additional charge. You walk into a clothing store and you can pretty much buy the entire back room for the thirty cents you would have spent on the dollar during the months of July, October or March. The holiday season brings out the best from the Gods of consumerism. They were hard to resist. Unfortunately for them, I intellectually, philosophically, and Ontologically opposed every facet of the corporate world, their false Gods of corporate marketing and those loathsome clean cut spokespersons who sold America every little thing that it could not afford.

Unfortunately for them, the multinational corporations, I was not a consumer. Unfortunately for me, Emily was and she had my credit card in her pocket. I employed a variety of techniques in order to rescue it from her illogical hands but convincing Emily with logic was like shooting birds with bowling balls, it defied the laws of physics.

And so Emily was in there spending my last three hundred dollars that were supposed to pay for most of my New Years Eve drinking. I was left standing in the street watching those idiot shoppers who mistook their purchase of a five dollars shirt (made in Pakistan thirty cents) to be a great financial accomplishment. Such financial logic was likely responsible for the great financial collapse of 2007.

I was getting restless and ran out of cigarettes. I walked up to an old man who was talking on the public phone. He was wearing a blue Yankees hat and was dressed in business cloths. I was about to ask him for a smoke but then realized that he was not a businessman but was actually a fallacious homeless man who was likely talking to a ringtone on the other end of the phone, unaware that it was out of order.

I returned to the corner of the store. Scratched myself for a while and then walked over to the coffee shop that was less than a block away. Like a good dog, I waited for Emily’s text that was designated to call upon me to meet her in front of the store and carry the royal shopping bags for her royal highness.

The place was packed. All of the tourists sat around with their coffees and talked about which museum was next of the things that they would tell their friends back in Frankfurt or Blackpoll about. More than five years in the city and I have yet to step into a museum. I once made out with a busty Spanish girl on the steps of the Metropolitan museum. Do such actions qualify me for a seat on the Department of Cultural Affairs?


I sat on one of those collective tables. Was I supposed to say hello to my fellow costumers as I laid my jacket on the chair? There went my cultural appointment. I was unfamiliar with Starbucks social protocols.

I ordered a small coffee and poured four packets of brown sugar into my to go cup. I always loved sugar. I love sweet things. Did it have anything to do with the fact that my mother was a compulsive woman who banned all sweets from the house? I knew not. I was not a Freudian analyst or a behavioral neuropsychologist. I was a man who simply loved all things sweet.

I once covered a woman with sugary Halloween treats from head to toe. Hard candies on her belly. Chocolate caramel moist on her tiny breasts. Between her toes I carefully positioned those orange and black jellybeans and what went into the most private of places was designated for the archives of the Library of Congress. I was not one to tell.

I played around with my telephone, read the front pages of the New York Times that some guy left laying around and then I placed my elbows on the wooden platform and made an attempt at sleep.

Just as soon as I rolled into the world of slumber, I was rudely awaken by Emily’s interruptive voice. She was thrilled by the deals she found and was finally ready to meet. I told her that I would come just as soon as I could and placed my head back into the bowl of my fingers. Maybe it had something to do with the music but I remained awake.

Ten minutes later, I was carrying her bags. While she was talking, I was attempting to seem interested even though I could not. She went and on about her world. She was worried about how the first semester went. She did not think that the professor treated her fairly. She spoke about the classes that her friends were taking and the internship opportunities that she could have taken but in the end did not. Between every paragraph or so she inserted an idiotic, ‘and so’, ‘and like’, ‘whatever’, ‘you know what I mean’ and other transitional phrases that people resort to when they run out of important things to say.

After we went back home, she agreed to give me head but insisted that I do my business outside of her mouth. “That stuff is so disgusting, honest to God” is what she said. I was not one for religion but was quit sure that such use of the Lord’s name would be considered to be in vain in the hallways of some catholic archdiocese or small town USA.

Emily knew her work and such traits were mostly responsible for the fact that I tolerated everything else related to this empty-headed girl. Despite my young age, I preferred women in their late forties or early fifties. Sure their tits may have sagged but they were wonderful lovers and great to talk to after the battle went on.
After flossing her teeth for twenty minutes with the occasional three rounds of mouthwash, she made me sit through a fashion show staring at her and everything that she purchased with my last three hundred dollars.

‘Don't you just love it’, is what she said before and after every single outfit.
I nodded my head in agreement and went through the motions until she displayed the entirety of the holiday purchases that she made.

‘The deals were too good to pass on’ is what she said and like most other men, I realized that such was the price that we all had to pay.

‘Attention holiday female shoppers, we simply don't give a crap’ should have been the sign on the Macy’s department store walls. Better days would surely come.

I went out alone on New Year’s Eve with thirty three dollars and two ribbed condoms designated for a new more ambitious year. New York city was a beautiful place to be during the winter month of January despite the fact that the streets were empty of snow.

Ana's Eyes

Despite the early morning and the silent streets of the city, I could not find my peace.
Sometimes you woke up in the morning and found that nothing out there made any sense.

I walked around the streets of the East Village and found long Christmas trees on the various corners of the local deli and the grocery stores. Christmas was on sale but there was not a millimeter of snow on the ground. Winter seemed to have forgotten all about us this year. Warning- Christmas trees in the summer may lead to a cognitive dissonance kind of a headache.

The month of December, if I was to come clear was not an easy one for me. I was really fine. There was nothing particularly wrong or worthy of complaint. I was healthy. I had money in my pocket. There was plenty of beer in the fridge. I never needed all that much to be happy in this life. But there was the issue of Ana and this was where it all got complicated.

Ana was beautiful as she was young. Not even 25 and she already had the weight of the world upon her shoulders. Ana was a Colombian girl whose long brown hair filled my imagination with blissful touches of livelihood. Ana’s eyes were brown and soft. When they lit up like the summer, my home was a happy playground of wonder. When her eyes filled with sadness, my house soon turned grey with desolation.

Every morning I woke up in anticipation of a new day. I never felt alone in the world despite the great distance that separated me from loved ones. The city was a lonely place but I always found solace in the shared condition.

The hours went by despite my lack of productivity. Unlike most people in this city, I did not contribute much to the great social contract. My occupation was pointless. The world and this city could easily do without my presence. I was just another man who spent his time by spending time.

But Ana, she needed me. One could even say that she needed me a bit too much. Codependence or simple obsession, both were both recipes for long-term suffering. Our relationship was a winter stew of codependence. It was no wonder that it left us both with constant indigestion.

Walking down the wide street towards Lexington Avenue, I am engaged in a reverse commute. Hundreds of people were purposefully making way towards their centers of vocation. Work was just another familiar space that offered little excitement and much routine. They all seem rushed on their way towards the local hospital or the university. The women were dressed in winter clothes. Blue jeans and tight boots gave the illusion that Paris was just around the corner. The women were things of beauty. Their faces seemed distraught. They could likely use a few more hours of comfortable sleep. Does anyone ever really get enough sleep?

Ana never could no matter how long she spent under my covers. Eight hours, nine hours or even ten, no amount of time would ever satisfy her appetite for respite. I was the kind who woke up early in the morning. This was just example of our definite mismatch. While she concealed herself from the world, I explored the great coffee shops of the city.

There was a good chance that I was just unappreciative of the fact that I was luckier than most. People typically needed an hour or two just so they would have a chance to open up their eyes and adjust to reality. Like a childish Labrador retriever, I was ready to go as soon as I opened up my eyes.

Yes, it could have all been a function of luck. “Luck was more important in life than brains,” my father used to tell me years before he passed away.

Looking back, I could not argue with his advice regarding life. My father was a simple man who never wanted much from life. He smoked his cigars and drank his rum. He always argued that happiness is found under the roof of your own home.

But most people were not as successful in placing their delight. According to a recent public opinion poll of adult Americans, 67% of people described their everyday existence as mundane, unsatisfactory or generally unhappy.

I would describe my general state of mind as bordering on jubilation.

But that was not entirely fair. My responses were skewed a confounding variable. My unwarranted joy may have been a function of my heavy marijuana habit. Being a professional pothead had a few advantages. For starters, I would never lose my appetite; suffer from debilitating anxiety or worry too much about how others evaluated my performance.

Ana strongly disapproved of my drug habit. Like most people who judged, she could have benefited from an occasional smoke. Ana’s constant anxiety not only ruined every aspect of her life but began to devastate my own peace.

When we first started dating, I spend our listening to her, talking about the different potential causes of her subconscious self destruction, her narcissistic mother, her neglectful father and her lonely childhood.

Nowadays, I no longer bothered. I simply realized that anxious people were much like short people or ugly people. Despite their longing or determination, they could never really change.

I had two choices when it came to Ana and her sad eyes. I could stay with her and deal with her occasional darkness or walk away and leave her devastated.

The right thing to do was to leave. It was not my job to cheer up all the sad women in the United States. Were the daily therapy sessions and constant need to comfort a part of a healthy job description for a man?

But having broken a loved one’s heart before, I could not go through it all over again. That Goddamn thing called guilty conscious could really debilitate a man. And so I stayed.

Ana woke up as I walked through my studio apartment. She was wearing my torn T-shirt that I wore the night before. She thanked me for the coffee that I brought her and kissed me on the cheek as to make sure that I would not smell her morning breath.

Ana looked as beautiful when she woke up in the morning as she did before going to bed. Her smile was kind. Her heart was pure.

But that sadness, it remained. Why would such a beautiful young thing feel so sad?

I would never understand.

Standing with Cara Brown

Cara Brown woke up early in the morning. She pressed the green button on her Mr. Coffee and brushed her teeth thoroughly while thinking about what cloths to wear. There was not much time left. She had to catch the early train. Almost thirty-five years of age and still single despite her best thought out plans. She took a quick shower and quickly shaved her armpits.

Dennis never liked shaving. Despite his best efforts, he always ended up with a scrap of leftover hairs at the bottom left side of his neck or the right corner of his face right under his ear. His mother once bought him one of those fogless shower mirrors to help remedy his grooming shortcomings. He was disappointed to find out that things never really worked as advertised on television. Yet, he thanked his mother for her wonderful gift.

Dennis had to hurry up if he was going to make it to class. Almost twenty years of age and brand new to the city. One of the first lessons he learned was that the train schedule could at times be most unpredictable. He did not want to take his chances with Professor Evans who was known for his strict attendance policies and famous intolerance for tardiness. He threw on the same pair of jeans that he wore for four consecutive days and headed out the door.

Cara just stood there frozen in silence. She could not make a decision. Would the green rain boots go with her red winter dress? She did not want to look like a walking Christmas ornament. The guys at work always gave her a hard time over the smallest little things. The girls in the office were more than happy to join in and never spared judgment. Several minutes went by and she finally decided to play it safe with the traditional black. She quickly applied her makeup and ran down towards the 14th street station.

Dennis swiped his card in a hurry. The doors of the train were just about to close. He leg was soon jammed into the turnstile. His card showed insufficient funds. He swiped it a few more times just to make sure that it was not a mistake and gave up just as soon as he noticed the inpatient people who stood behind him. The card machine only took credit cards or ATM. He could not remember what he new zip code was. Was it 10001 or 10003? After a few attempts he got it right. Six minutes later, he was on the uptown train.

Cara hated to put on her makeup on the subway. The train was always crowded with perverted old men and smelly homeless people who incoherently begged for money. She always felt unsafe when those people came around. They were abrasively precarious
and often walked up a bit too close towards where she was sitting. Where the hell was the New York City police? What drove Cara completely out of her mind where the bleeding heart liberal types who pulled out dollar bills at the first sight of any homeless person with a sob tale. Did they not realize that they only encouraged those scary people to come back the next day? Why would anyone reward such bad behavior?

More than five years have passed since she moved to Manhattan. She did not have much to show for it. Maybe her mother was right after all. Maybe she should have stayed back in Oklahoma. Maybe she should have married Gerald the son of the owner of Anderson Hardware down on Jennings Boulevard. Cara always hoped for a bigger life than the one led by the majority of her high school girlfriends. By this stage, they were all married or divorced. Most of them were stay at home mothers who spent their days driving between day care and Mommy and Me. Cara was an assistant manager at a major New York City bank and yet she was considered a failure by the majority of folks back home.

Dennis loved to ride the subway no matter what hour of the day. He thought it was all really that exciting. He always saw people ride the subway on television. He took it all in with a smile. As far as he was concerned, the suited businessmen, the uptight Upper East siders, the homeless types and the people who came down from the Bronx were all members of the same New York City cast. They all served as extras in an episode of a police crime drama or one of those late night episodes of late night cable shows. He was in the center of it all.

Cara and a hundred others spilled out of the subway car and towards the Columbus Circle stairs that led to the exit. The sun was gone despite the early hour. Winter revealed its definite intentions. It was a cold early December but you would never be able to tell if you looked at the high school students who were scarcely dressed in fashionable attire. Their youthful lack of clarity preferred low temperature pain to social rebuke.

Dennis walked into the coffee shop and ordered the kind of a coffee that he imagined most New Yorkers would. The woman in the red dress stood behind him impatiently. He thought that he recognized her from the train. She seemed so sad and so beautiful. He did not imagine that she would ever be interested in a guy like him. He was much younger and likely was not sophisticated enough to pass for a New Yorker.

Carla Brown ordered her coffee in the same consistent manner that she always did, skinny with an extra shot of espresso. It was snowing outside and once again she would be alone during the Christmas holiday.

A Thirst for Knowledge

“If you believe in Darwinian evaluation, then get up and get me another cup of coffee.” I held my breath for another minute and then provided her with a reassuring look. The age difference between the two of us was more than meaningful.

She was a mere 21 and I over forty years of age. At first she seemed confused by my response but did her best to keep her composure. Did she know who Darwin was or was she just letting on. This younger generation, those born in the later part of the past century don’t care much for knowledge or books. Many of them embraced anti-intellectualism as their new religion with high priests of silicon breasts and diminished IQs to look up to through the distasteful lens of reality television.

“Don’t try to over intellectualize this whole thing. I don’t want to hear about chemical processes or robust molecule formations, at the end of the day, this universe will not produce much more than what you see around you.”

By now I was getting tired of hearing my very own voice. At a certain point of life, existential questions seem like a complete waste of time. Twenty year old kids can deal with fortune cookie questions. I would rather drink a beer, read some Bukowski or even better get laid. But Erika was out of my league. She was too young and too beautiful. I was absent of hair and my stomach was too round for any old T-shirt to contain.

We spoke for a while and I pretend to give a damn. Finally she excused herself as she had another meeting to attend. While she walked out of my university office, I took a careful look at her behind and wondered what it would be like to touch that skin of hers that was devout of meaningful experience and would likely shiver at the touch of my fingers.

Next Jack made his way to the chair across from mine. He was a good dude, I tell you. If he was ten years older we would likely go drinking together. He seemed like the kind of a guy who would not be afraid to approach a strange woman in a bar. He seemed like he always knew how to use that big smile of his to light up the room. God, what I would not give to be him for just a month. I would give anything to be a university undergrad, living in the university dorms, sitting around and smoking weed with my college buddies making moves at the naïve underclass girls that you likely met in the cafeteria or the introduction to psychology class where everyone came for the social element under the disguise of intellectual curiosity.
“So Professor Stein, can you elaborate on Immanuel Kant’s concept of morality?”
I could and I should have, after all that was what they were paying me for. But I did not feel like philosophy. I felt like a beer.

How about a round down at the Salty Dog? I asked.

At first he seemed confused but was more than happy to oblige.
I bought the first pitcher and then I bought a second one. The bars on University Avenue typically did not have happy hour specials until the evening time but the Salty Dog was a different kind of a place.

I walked over to the jukebox and selected five different songs by some of my favorite artists. As each one of the songs played loudly across the empty bar, Jack proudly displayed his wealth of knowledge regarding my old time music selection.
“Yea, Guns and Roses are pretty cool,” he said “I heard that they used to be kind of big back in the day.”

I put my hands around his shoulder as I pondered whether I should hug him or beat him senseless over his head for being born into a lame ass generation that reduced the entire beauty of the world to 140 characters. Shallow motherfuckers.

“What is the purpose of the universe you ask? There is no purpose if you really want to know what I think. A chair is just a chair and a dog is just a dog. At the end of the day, we are just a bunch of walking molecules that somehow ended up living in suburban gated communities with overpriced television sets and antique wives. Did you know Jack that the average life span of an ant is 180 days? Did you know that human beings as we know them will likely disappear within three generations? Soon we will all become cyborgs. Ever hear of Singularity? Do you know what is really coming up? Ever hear about string theory? I went on and on and then went back to the bathroom for a piss.

The wall of the men’s restroom was full of handwritten graffiti.

Here I sit
In the halls
of Vapor.
Some damn fool
Done stole
my Paper

By the time I got back to the bar, Jack was engaged in some in-depth conversation with some busty blond girl that he apparently met in his bio-chemistry class.
This universe is arranged in such a manner that wisdom is wasted on the old and opportunity on the young.

A Dozen Women

The first thing I did that morning was to cheer Jennie up. I did not really have any time to brush my teeth, take a proper piss or comb my hair and she was already crying upon my shoulder. I did not blame her for her mental state. She was sleep deprived. She was overworked. Any man who dated a nurse, a doctor or any other professional in the medical field has to understand that the job is not just draining, it is also emotional. Jennie was an emotional girl regardless of her occupation. The nightshift in the emergency room made her emotional vulnerabilities appear much greater than they actually were or perhaps that was her true nature. One could never tell.

I did my best to encourage her. I promised her that everything will seem much better after some much overdue sleep. I reminded her of the kind of things that she went through in her training, about the kind of things that ordinary people like you and I could never handle and yet, she in her tiny size two frame could easily overcome through perseverance.

Jennie did not buy any of it. She did not trust herself and disregarded her own accomplishments as mere fortune, something anyone else could do. But I was determined to get a smile on her face and finally after an hour or so, I managed to make her laugh. She jumped into the shower and later fell asleep.

The ironic thing about the whole episode was the fact that somewhere out there, there are dozens of women who would like nothing better in this world than to have me to take care of. There are so many women in this world who would want nothing more than to blow me for breakfast, cook an egg and make me coffee. There are dozens of women out there, gorgeous women, busty women, younger women who would love nothing more in this world than to pamper my silly whether through a topless oil massage with a nice blow job for dessert or rub my feet as I drank my Miller Light and watch the Green Bay Packers as I kill another Sunday afternoon in front of the television.

Jennie does not like football. She thinks that television is a waste of time. Her fingers are too weak to focus on my lower back or those deep knots that jam my left shoulder and prevent me from getting top score on Guitar Hero or fully emulate that Elvis dance that made me so famous back at Terrible’s Casino on that Halloween night.
I drove down to the store and later to another one. Jennie was a healthy eater who preferred organic spinach from the local farmer’s market to the kind that is mass produced by the corporate farming conglomerates.

When she woke up, I served her lunch and later promised her that tonight will be much better at work that the previous nights before. She told me that she loved me and then locked herself in the shower where she tried to wash the funk right off of her long Asian hair.

Jennie was gone by 8pm and once again, I found myself alone in my house. Sitting on the couch, I drank a bottle of light beer and thought about the irony of it all.
Somewhere out there, there are dozens of women who would like nothing more than to take good care of me and attend to my every need.

When I woke up early on that next morning, Jennie came home once again with a tear in her eye. She was beautiful.
www.hardboiledmen.com

Being a Married Man is Not Easy

Kira and I first laid eyes on one another in the bar. Later she laid some other things on me.

For some women, a wedding ring is a sign to keep out. Other women prefer it. Married men come with no strings attached. There are times when a woman just wants to keep it simple. She needs to get her junk waxed off just like most men do. That of course is correct with one exception. There is one footnote that women forget to present men when the whole screwing process begins.

Sleep with a woman once or twice, no big deal, no strings attached, they will forget your name the next day as if they were a guy. However, the game changes if you visit more than let’s say six or seven times. Then they get attached. Make a woman come and she will remember your zip code long after you forgot her name.
With Kira, it was all of the above.

We first start talking about the Baltimore Ravens. She was after all a Baltimore fan. The only reason why she found herself in this God forsaken college town somewhere in the middle of Michigan was their excellent MBA program. Kira wanted to climb up the ranks of corporate America. I wanted to climb up her beautiful female curves.

And so it went until it went too far. Three months later and my life is in complete disarray. The whole matter of why married men cheat is some smarter men to deal with. Simply put, it is a meaningless act. It has to do with the need for variety, the need to feel alive. It has nothing to do with anything that women may consider relevant. We sometimes just feel like having a bacon cheeseburger even if our doctor swore to us that it will lead to complete heart rapture. The worst part of it all is that it is never your heart that gets messed up. That is the worst part of it all. That is the reason why we try to limit our behavior to a complete minimum. But still, a man has to eat regardless of a long term perspective.

Kira’s bedroom reflected her ridiculous attempt to be something much more becoming than she actually was. At the foot of her bed she had an imitation Victorian stand decorated in purple suede with ribbons to match. What was more disturbing was the matching purple cuddle couch that she bought for her short her cat that she named after her hero Donald Trump.

I was never a big fan of Mr. Trump. Every time I would go down on Kira he would come up behind me and start licking the bottom of my feet. I could only imagine what Kira would do with Mr. Trump when I was away. That cat seemed to always lick one thing if not the other. Knowing Kira and the way she was in bed, anything would not be beyond the realm of suggestion. Kira has a fat ass but her performance in bed made up for her physical shortcomings. Kira was the type of a screamer who made a man feel as if he was Genghis Khan himself. She treated your dick as if he was the ruler of the world’s largest empire.

After a month or two, Kira decided that she was in love with me. The 180 turnaround in her intentions was not completely unexpected. She was after all a woman despite the fact that she never missed a Ravens football game and could drink more Miller Light than any guy who sat beside her on the couch.

In this age of extended life spans and prenuptial agreements, monogamy is more complicated than it ever was in the days of our fathers and their fathers before them.

I turned towards my wife and kissed her softly on beautiful gentle forehead. Our regular television show was over and it was time to go to sleep. She kissed me with her lip absent of tongue and reminded me that tomorrow was Wednesday and that the garbage trucks will arrive early.

I promised her to take out the trash on time and turn around.

www.hardboiledmen.com

The Beef Capital of Texas

On the way down to San Antonio, we stopped for more than an occasional beer. From Joplin to Tulsa, from Lawton down to Fort Worth, from Waco to Austin and finally out in New Braunfels, we took the drive slow and kept our spirits up as we headed down towards our destination.

At first, I was pushing to head down to Amarillo Texas, the beef capital of Texas. A few years ago, I used to nail this woman from some small town around those parts named Pampa Texas. So I wanted to head down to Pampa and pump her full of led, but Frank would have none of it.

“There are no black chicks in western Texas,” he complained and with such a statement, I could not argue. I was never really into black chicks. I preferred the Asians. But hey, to each his own, that is what they say. I was not one for sexual or cultural stereotypes. I knew what I wanted and was solely focused on my mission.
We never made it out to those western parts of the Longhorn State. Hell, the way we were going, we barely even made it to our default destination.

San Antonio was just another town. There was nothing wrong with that town but nothing to write home about. Sure they had the River Walk, the Buckhorn Museum and that overrated Alamo. Frank’s motivation for driving down to San Antonio had nothing to do with its tourist attractions. He wanted to get together with Susan, the half black, half Indian stripper that he met online. As for me, I just needed to get away from Stephanie and her exaggerated hormones.

Jason sat in the back of our Chevy during the entire ride. He kept mostly silent.
He had his earphones on and with the exception of the occasional bathroom request, he mostly kept to himself. Jason was a married man. Frank and I were not. We all grew up together, but now that he had that ring on, he was no longer to be trusted. He crossed over to the other side.

Sure, all generalizations were faulty at their core but the proof was in the pudding. Jason, that motherfucker had lost his personality the day that Gwen came into his life. Sure, I would understand such a metamorphosis if she had a nice pair of tits on her or a half descent personality. But this woman had nothing to offer. From bottom to top, she was a fast food commercial gone wrong. Eat six cheeseburgers a day and see how life will turn out for you. Her personality would not make the dollar menu.

Jason was pussy-whipped, or rather, he was canyon whipped. How that skinny fucker ever got that woman on top of him without a forklift was beyond my wildest imagination.

But enough blasphemy, I tell you. It is too easy to judge others. It is too convenient to see all the faults in your friends and to ignore your own shortcomings. I was not one to talk about anything. I was 24 years of age without an education, a job or anything any real prospects.

Sure, I could talk the good talk and walk the hard walk but at the end of the day, I was just as scared as the rest of the people who surrounded me. Alcohol somehow made all of us more adequate. That was with the exception of Frank.

As we walked into Calvin’s Chicken House around 7pm, we found ourselves a booth adjacent to the main stage.

To the tunes of Lady Gaga, a dancer named Ebony moved around like the beautiful layer of chocolate that she was. We each deposited several dozen dollar bills in her panties and later spent another fifty or so on lap dances until we were fully released.

At a local Holiday Inn hotel bar, we each drank half a dozen Pabst Blue Ribbons with some jerkoff insurance salesman named Carl Laundry the Third. None of us could really make out what he was saying underneath that thick Texas accent that was smothered so hard like fat butter on wet toast. All I could make out from the guy was that he loved Jesus and that he found his lord and savior or something of that sort.
Jason did his best to seem interested, Frank and I drifted off into our own conversation.
Finally, we got rid of the guy and walked over to the two drunk skanks who were smiling in our direction from across the other side of the bar. Sure, they were a bit meatier that I liked them. The one I chose was around 5.1 and 145 pounds with beautiful double D’s to compliment the rest of the meat sandwich.

Frank and I took the girls back to the room. Jason remained a vegetarian.
Pornography was always a matter of geography. Or at least that is what they said around my part of the state.

In the morning, I woke up next to a strange woman who smelled like Miller Light and a pack of menthol cigarettes.

We never made it out to Amarillo Texas. We barely made it back home. Regardless of what you may think, just remember – it is better to ride the bull than to watch the rodeo from the comfort of your own television.
A year later, Frank was engaged to a woman that none of us ever met. She lived in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, the strawberry capital of the world.