Meeting Lyle

“God damn it!” Shelby the bartender yelled at no one, but definitely at me. “Those fucktards have been playing Puddle of Mudd and Slipknot for over an hour now.”

“So why don’t you tell them to stop? Or better yet, take those God awful bands off of your jukebox?” I retorted.

She glared at me. I think she was expecting sympathy. But I’m the guy who comes in and selects and entire twenty bucks worth of sad Lucero songs, back-to-back-to-motherfucking-back as she some of the patrons have taken to noticing out loud.

At that very moment an elderly chap walked in to the bar. He winced at the sound of Wes Scantlin’s voice. He walked over to the bar and looked at Shelby disapprovingly. I smiled and attempted to give the same look, but failed.

“You like this … this …”

“Music?” I interrupted.

“This is not music!” the old guy exclaimed. “I’m going to put a stop to this!”

He looked at the two guys, each wearing black wife beaters with some kind of skull logos emblazoned on them. The also had visors on. If they had been wearing Birkenstocks they would have needed to beat each other up, repeatedly. On principle alone.

“Oh, hell,” he said. “I need a drink first.”

The old timer sat down next to me. There were 27 other empty stools at the bar, but he plopped down in the once closest to me. This, of course, made me interested in what this old guy was selling.

“Hey, there old-timer,” I said, hoping that he wasn’t one of those old guys who hated to be told he was old. “What’s shaking?”

“I’ll tell ya what’s shaking, kid,” the old guy said. “My balls around my ankles when I don’t have my underwear on.”

We laughed and clinks whiskey glasses.

“And damn, you’d run away from my penis!” he snorted after downing his glass. “Right, Kylie?”

Kyle was the local whore. I didn’t know that yet, as I’d only been coming to the bar for about two weeks now. After getting my advance for a magazine piece, I drove 1,107 miles exactly – the amount of the check – and decided to write the story wherever that was. And that was here, at Sam’s Pub. In Kermit, Texas – just outside of Odessa, if you’re keeping track.

“You’re drinking some RedBreast there I see,” the old man said looking at my glass. “Damn good stuff. Can’t afford it much anymore. Except when Samantha’s working. She’s got a soft spot for me.”

We looked at Sam, the owner and most of the time barkeep. He was reading the local newspaper and sipping on a cup of coffee. Sam, I’d find out later, hadn’t had a drink since the night before he opened the joint. Made a promise to his now-ex-wife that he’d never hit the sauce if he actually opened the bar.

He lived up to his promise. Only problem being his wife didn’t like the Sam who didn’t drink. She ended up fucking one of the dishwashers one night by the old Donkey Kong machine. Sam walked in on them and nearly killed the two of them. Luckily, Odell, a local janitor from the nearby factory was on his lunch break and stopped Sam cold in his tracks with just these words “Sam, you won’t like getting fucked in the ass by a guy like me.”

Sam laughed at Odell’s comment, then put his shotgun back under the bar. Instead, he walked in to his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s little trist with his soon-to-be-ex-dishwasher And right before the guy came, he punched him right in the taint.

They have a still from the surveillance video of that exact moment poster sized above the bar. The video made YouTube, last time it was checked it had over 11 million views. Eventually, it made Tosh.0 once. But Sam wouldn’t allow for the dishwasher’s redemption.

As for his wife – Janet – she ended up going back home to Llano and living with her mom and her aunt.

“The bitch always deserved to live with her mom,” Sam said the day he heard that news.

Meanwhile, Slipknot’s third time singing “Butcher’s Hook” finally got me riled up enough to spend some of my ever dwindling advance.

I walked over to the jukebox, the two hogs were busy air-guitaring and singing the awesomeness that is “Go Ahead and Disagree … I’m giving up again!” I slipped in two twenty dollar bills and selected two albums. First up was Neil Young’s “Arc”. Thirty-plus minutes of noise and distortion. Followed of course by Mr. Young’s “Weld”, just another in the long line of fine live albums by the Canadian-turned-American.

As Slipknot ended, there was a brief period of silence. I asked Sam to put a pause before my songs started. This way the surprise would be better. The two lads, as they became known, went to pick some new songs by the same two bands. Putting their money to good use. But, suddenly Neil Young’s guitar started blasting.

Lad No. 1 stared at No. 2.

“What the fuck, Bart! You picked this shit?”

“Hell no, man,” No. 2 yelled back. “I picked ‘People equal Shit’, man.”

The old guy watched them arguing. He looked and me and patted me on the back.

“Those guys gotta learn to let it go, kid. They really do.”

This was the day I met Lyle.