Gatorade and Ecto-Cooler
I sometimes contemplate why my friends like me, but eventually I remember that I’m entirely too arrogant, conceited, and self-absorbed to care—at least, that’s the image I choose to often project. It is that very reason why my friends like me. Because when the slimy gooey self-confidence that oozes out of my pores like blue Gatorade and a lifetime’s body supply of Ghostbusters-inspired Ecto-cooler, people line up just to be in my proximity in hopes that my paranormal sweat, brimming with positive psychic energy, will rub off on them. Like a rockstar, if I throw the crowd a used sweaty towel, I’m likely to get panties in return. Whether or not the panties are used and sweaty, is always to be determined. But as usual, I’m already going off on a tangent in my first paragraph, and as usual, I spend a solid 126 seconds to think of another phrase besides “but I digress” because it’s become one of the most over-utilized phrases for scatterbrained individuals such as myself. I always have to be different, but I’d also like to continue with my story, so I digress.
Tri and Steve, two friends who have grown accustomed to my Gatorade and Ecto-cooler soaked-towel throwing antics, decide that allowing four hours to pre-game is entirely too long, and begin to grow restless for entertainment. After we call up the usual suspects, it’s suggested that we go to Hole-in-the-Wall-Club-Number-651A by random tall guy whose presence is mostly due to Tri but is welcomed for the sake of an extra in the background of the life that I’ve painted for myself. Randoms always make for good additions to a drunken inspired backdrop.
I am excited, because upon arriving to the club, I can feel the second wave of 100 proof diluted blood pump through my veins, thus insuring that even if I don’t have a good time, I wouldn’t remember the next day, but if I do have a good time, it will be easy to reconstruct the story, the next day, by simply observing the panties and Ecto-cooler stained clothes in the corner of my bedroom. We are greeted by Marv at the entrance. I don’t know if that is really his name, but the veins that protrude from his juiced-up biceps roadmapping themselves to his already birth defected face screams the name Marv. Marv was a crack baby. It’s good to see he didn’t let that stop him from achieving his lifetime achievement of being an unwanted extra in my life. As Marv and his ragtag crew of asshole bouncers check us for Crocodile Dundee Knives, kitanas, AK-47s, flamethrowers, and bazookas outside of the door, I can almost taste the used fried chicken oil smell of sweat emanating through the cracks of the doorway—I want to throw up.
After everything short of a full cavity search, we finally enter the club and out of the fresh fire and into the deep fryer. It’s as if the safety inspector has a different set of rules for hole-in-the-wall clubs. I imagine an excerpt from page 36 on safety would read something like, “All floors must be thoroughly greased down with beef tallow and shellacked with camel’s spit and donkey’s earwax before opening.” And no, I have no knowledge on the consistency of a donkey’s earwax, but I imagine it’s gross. I specialize in Gatorade and Ecto-cooler—remember? The smell is almost overwhelming, so I light a cigarette, for fresh air, in a manner that says, “I can smoke all I want for another 12 years because it’s medically documented that my lungs will heal themselves if I quit before I am 35 (as opposed to lighting a cigarette in a manner that says “moron”).”
Steve goes to the bathroom and returns instantly, but my watch says it has been twenty minutes. “Herc, I have a bad feeling about this place…” Steve warns me.
“Why? Don’t worry, the beef tallow is for your safety.”
“No man…” Steve begins to respond but the static from the poor quality bass driven speakers bleed into his sentence, and I don’t hear the rest of his story until later in the night. It turns out Steve’s excursion to the bathroom was an eventful one. When he slips and slides his way to the bathroom Marv’s twin brother, Sid, greets him. Except, Sid didn’t follow the righteous path of his brother; Sid let his crack defects get the best of him. Permanently scarred on his face, no doubt caused by Marv’s umbilical cord, Sid has worn gold fronts in his mouth since the tender age of six, in hopes of warding off would be teasers. Eventually, Sid learned the art of cannibalism and his fronts just became a tool for tearing through flesh. Steve happens to encounter a Sid who just so happens to have missed dinner.
“What do you want? Do you have to pee?” Sid says in a 6’7” 350lbs grunt, while blocking the door of the bathroom.
“Uhh… yeah.” Steve replies in a 5’10” 160lbs squeak, while slowly reconsidering the urgency of the relief of his blatter.
“Go in.” Mumbles Sid, with a nudge to the back of Steve. Upon skidding inside, Steve’s slippery beef tallow slide is halted by the sticky residue of dried urine, gummy bears, and according to him, blood. Okay, he didn’t say blood—but it gives a nice effect to the story. His vision slowly goes from conventional format to widescreen. With a paranoid panoramic view, Steve witnesses cocaine deals, blunt rolling, hooker head giving, and wall signing by way of urination. And, I’m sure with all of that activity, Steve’s fear was surely overridden by his jealousy of the guy receiving fellacio in the corner. I like that word: fellacio. It almost makes it romantic—somewhat Shakespearean… maybe it is, I’ll have to check on that. I am after all a Cunning-Linguist (bow to my puns).
So, as to not disturb the man in the first stall’s concentration while tying the rubber band around his bicep (because, it’s so hard to get that good vein… or something like that), Steve opts to go to the second stall. It is then that he wishes his non-smoking ass were inhaling my Marlboro Menthol fumes instead of the stench of vomit, feces, and semen. It was like a scene from Resident Evil, or an overambitious horror flick. As Steve pisses into the apple juice and milk chocolate pigmented toilet, carefully avoiding splash-age, visions of a shoot out enter his mind. He can almost taste the gunpowder on his tongue as the stray bullet leaves behind a trail of smoke upon entering the back of his head and exiting from his mouth. Does my friend run? No sir. Steve is brave and doesn’t allow the image of his blood spraying like a mist of rusty water shot through a near empty Super Soaker scare him and disturb his piss. Steve is a G. He ain’t nevah sceeerd. My man drinks Gatorade and shits Ecto-Cooler juice boxes.
“YO! YOU FINISHED!?” Sid yells at Steve, and with the dropping of an Ecto-Cooler juice box in his boxers, he trudges out of the stickiness of the bathroom, and slides back onto the dance floor.
“Herc, I have a bad feeling about this place…” Steve tells me on deaf ears and repeats the entire story later, and it is written in a blog initially intended to concentrate on Gatorade and Ecto-Cooler as a metaphor for confidence. But I digress…
![http://www.geocities.com/ohherchercules/river_city_ransom.gif"><img](http://www.geocities.com/ohherchercules/river_city_ransom.gif"><img){kind=link}
