Bob Barker's bucks

I’m sitting on a barstool in a nowhere cantina just outside of Galveston. My Shiner Bock is just about empty and I’m wondering what to do.

I drove 1,469 miles here to see her, and of course, she didn’t show up. But maybe she did and I was late, I can’t help but think to myself.

I look at the text she sent me three days ago… “Be there on Saturday, 4 p.m. Don’t B late.”

Now, there was Hitchcock, Texas. A small dump of a town outside of Galveston. I’d driven through one other time in my life, and that was with my buddy Josh back when I was 23 and full of life. Now, I’m 43 and just about done with it. The scars on my heart are deep. As are the lines on my forehead. I noticed the first one that didn’t go east-west, but instead north-south when I was 38. This was after too many years of drinking alone in one-bedroom apartments and sleezy dives that didn’t even have windows, but damn if they didn’t have black jack machines.

As I sat in Louis’ Bait Camp, I watched a blonde with good eyes and bad intentions work her way towards me. I was not excited, kind of loathing her coming up to me.

“Hey there!” she said with a thick Texas accent. I’d say it was from Denton, but I didn’t really want to find out.

I looked at her chest. She had nice round tits, the kind you dream about when you’re 14 before you’ve seen tits for real. Jessica Hawn tits I used to call them. But real.

“You like what you see?” she asked, this time a little impatiently.

“But of course, hun, what’s not to like,” I said taking my last swig of Shiner. I had about 60 dollars to my name right now and was almost 1,500 miles from home. My old lady, and by old I mean years had passed since she was my lady, didn’t show up despite telling me she would.

And to think, Bob Barker gave over 200 grand to house some chimps in Louisiana back in August of 2011. I think he called it “Chimp Heaven” or “Chimp Haven”.

“I could really use some of that money, Bob,” I said to myself, even as this young blonde was standing over my table.

“Huh?” she said confusedly. “Are you drunk?”

“Hun, not even close, and the way my day’s been going, probably not soon enough.”

“Well, shit in my pappa’s best pants!” she said. That one never made a lot of sense to me, even now, years later thinking about it.

“Hell yeah, soiled my momma’s lilly-white panties!” I yelled.

The bar went silent at that one.

The blonde stared at me, shrugged and handed me a shot of Patron. I fucking hated tequila, but I was broke and needed some booze to get to the next day. I tilted the glass to my lips and swallowed hard. I fought the urge to puke, which always came with tequila, and slammed the shot glass on the bar.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said to the blonde.

She smiled and touched my shoulders. I fought the urge to recoil. It was my instinct. Always has been.

“How about a beer for the fella,” she said to the barkeep. He looked at me, then at her, then back at me.

“You sure Alexis?” he asked her, looking straight at me. “This guy showed up here four hours ago asking about a redhead named Samantha.”

“Who is Samantha?” the blonde asked, pouting her lips just enough to make me want to do bad things to her.

“My ex,” I replied.

“Oh, you have kids together?”

“Not really.”

“What’s that mean.”

“Well, she got pregnant, that’s about it.”

Alexis didn’t know how to respond. She was 20 going on 40 but didn’t have a bit of common sense. I was happy for her. She was blissfully ignorant of the life of the mind.

I used to have conversations with my sister about how lucky those kinds of people were. So easy for them to face each day with such low expectations. Get up. Go to work. Go to church. Eat. Sleep. Fuck. And die.

Me, I wanted to find out the meaning of life, when fuck all, there was no meaning of life except to find someone who loved you and love them back.

I thought Samantha was that lady. But she wasn’t. We still loved each other. Too much most folk said. But we didn’t like each other enough to let it happen again. Or the first time, really.

I looked at Alexis and started dreaming of living in a trailer outside of Galveston with her. Maybe start my own little “Five Easy Pieces” life. But there I go again. That one didn’t end with the guy loving the girl and living happily ever after either.

Or did it?

I’m the guy who thinks Hemingway wrote the greatest love story of all time with “The Sun Also Rises.” But what the fuck do I know?

“I don’t know? What do you know mister?” Alexis asked me.

“Huh?” I said, stunned that I must have been muttering out loud again.

“You asked me what the fuck do I know? But I think you weren’t talking to me. But you.”

“You’re all right Alexis,” I said with a smile and a chug of beer.

“You too sir.”

“Why you calling me sir?”

“Because my daddy always said to treat a man with respect. Until you have a reason to not.”

“We’ll work on that one,” I said smiling.

“Huh?” she said. I hoped she was being coy. She wasn’t.

“Another round, bar man!” I sighed.

“We’re gonna be all right,” Alexis said to me and to no one.

“Always, hun,” I said.

“You got a quarter for the records?”

“They got 45s in that thing?”

“Hecks yeah, they do! Best jukebox in this part of Texas.”

I thought to myself that wouldn’t take much.

“What do you want to hear?” she asked.

“If they got the Kinks, play that.”

She frowned before skipping over to the jukebox. It was an old one. Had a Rod Stewart “Do You Think I’m Sexy?” 45 cover as a teaser.

The first bars of David Watts began playing. Alexis skipped back over.

“This is for you, sir,” she said.

“Well, hun, you chose wisely. Let’s dance.”

Three days later, I needed Bob Barker’s help more than ever.

goblocker

Larry sits on his old footlocker. It’s been with him longer than the memories of her have. That, he takes solace in. It’s covered with stickers. He’s made a point of always grabbing a sticker when possible, adding it to the wallpaper of his life, as he calls it.

He once had another footlocker. But his Celica was too small that day he loaded as much of his stuff into it when he left her behind. It was the first thing he threw into the car, completely loaded down with stuff. But it just took up too much precious space. He knew he’d not make it back to get anything he left behind. It would be much too painful. He sighed when he had to leave it behind. It wasn’t the only thing he sighed about that day.

He was freezing cold sitting on the second footlocker of life. He wondered how many, if any of the old stickers still were visible on the old one. If the Moosehead Beer cutout was still on it. That was his favorite thing on it. That and the Luckenbach, Texas, sticker. He replaced the Texas one when he visited that town again. The Moosehead one? Not so much.

As he sat there, remembering things, Bono screamed out “We’re stealing it back!” from the shitty speakers he had jerry-rigged to his amplifier. He’d had those speakers since he was about 10 or 11 years old. They’d seen a lot, for sure. From his days of pretending to be Morris Day and dancing the “Oak Tree” in his old room in Virginia, to his fits of crying when the love of his life deemed him not important.

He knew that he’d done that to one person for sure, and probably two. So, he still had much to atone for. The shitty deeds always stuck with him. Way more than the average soul. Or at least it seemed that way.

The space heater was all that was keeping the frigid air at bay. He’d holed himself up in one room in his three bedroom “cottage” at the beach. His last paycheck paid his rent, with $30 to spare for the next two weeks.

He gobbed on it.

Spit…Tsssssssss.

Spit…Tsssssssss.

His reflection in the old cracked mirror above his dresser showed just how old he was getting. He looked a little like Paul Simonon now. Hair receding in a cool way, shaved way down. Crow’s feet slowly inching out from his eyes, more so from the left than the right. The gap between his front teeth solidified the look. If only he could afford a leather jacket and a cool fedora. Then, he’d be his own version of the coolest bass player in the world.

Spit…Tssssssssss.

Spit…Tssssssssss.

It amused him. It was gross, he admitted as much. But the sound of it was soothing for some reason.

It was noted by his lady friend of the moment that people tended to spit a lot more in New Orleans than they did in Biloxi. Or even Slidell.

“I had not noticed that,” Larry said when she mentioned that. It started him on a spitting kick. He used to spit a lot growing up in the Southern part of Virginia. A small down called Hopewell. Mostly redneck kids back then. Kids of factory workers for the most part. When his parents decided to move there, it had yet to achieve it’s moniker of “The Chemical Capital of the South.” But it wasn’t too many years after when it did.

Kepone was the talk of the town one summer. Dan Rather made an appearance, proclaiming to the huddle masses in front of the television that “People are dying in the streets of Hopewell!”

It wasn’t really true. Although, the people dying now due to those chemicals sure would make a nice story. But, those days are mostly gone for journalism. “It might make for a good book,” Larry thought, debating in his head if he could spend a couple of years in his old hometown again to work on this book. One that would probably be made into a movie one day, but not ever make him any money until some Hollywood player noticed it. Too bad his classmate who had a walk by part in “Evan Almighty” hadn’t made it bigger, he’d probably have a connection to get it made. He certainly was no Dick Ritchie. He decided that if his latest scheme to run off back to New Orleans and try to make a go of it in the town he never should have left in the first place didn’t pan out, he would do that. Hell, he knows the mayor now, she could get him a job.

Spit…Tssssssssss.

Spit…Tssssssssss.

He looked at his mini-fridge. He’d gotten so bad that he had that thing sitting outside, cooling his beer. It’s amazing that no one has either stolen it, or even worse, taken his beer. It’s right outside his window, on a stool beside his window. He opens the window. The 25-degree night air flows inside. He shivers. Grabs a couple of beers and closes the window.

“It’s been a long day, now I need to relax,” he says out loud like he has a habit of doing now.

Opening the beer with a nail in the wall, he smiles at his accomplishment of not spilling any of it.

“My brother-in-law would be proud,” he says, thinking of his sister’s husband. An almost famous keyboardist who could have been a lot bigger, but decided to be a family man instead. Larry used to think that his brother-in-law was bitter about it. The decision to give up the music to be a dad in Hopewell. Instead, now he knew better. As Ronnie Lane wrote, “I wish that, I knew what I know now. When I was younger.” Because my life would have gone in a lot of different directions if I’d just taken the time to look around and see that things in some places, really weren’t all that bad. Or, if I’d stepped out of a funk and met me, 20 years later, like Richard Hell described to me when I was 21 years old. If I’d met the me that was to be, I may have slapped myself. I certainly would not have had my way with myself, as Dickie Hell did, but I couldn’t be completely sure.

Fittingly, the gospel singers of “Rattle and Hum” belt out “but I still, haven’t found, what I’m looking for.”

Life is full of those moments. At least if you constantly look for them. Analyze them. And fuck your brain up with them.

Spit…Tssssssssss.

Spit…Tssssssssss.