This was in Bend, Oregon. After twenty years of a loveless, sexless marriage—a slow death by a thousand paper cuts—I was finally off the leash. Officially Mr. Playboy, enjoying the goddamn high point of a life lived on my own terms. My church wasn’t a church; it was a dive bar called Corey’s.
The joint had a certain flavor. Not quite rockabilly, not exactly greasers, just the tired, honest grit in between. Guys in Converse and flat-bill hats, their jeans stained with oil and regret. They’d sit at the bar, knocking back Rainier tallboys—real working man’s beer—with a shot of gut-rot whiskey on the side. My kind of congregation. There was even this one character, a guy so goddamn handsome it was almost a crime, but you could tell he was camped out at the absolute bottom of life’s pit. Turned out he was a professional slacker, just drifting through town chasing twenty-year-olds. The place had a certain pathetic charm.
At the time, I was seeing this girl, Kelly, on and off. A Mormon, of all things. A bit of a butter-butt, but what she lacked in one department, she made up for in others. She was surprisingly advanced, teaching me a few new tricks I hadn’t even known existed.
But this night, she came with baggage. Her cousin was in town, tagging along. A vegan type, she said. Not a looker, and she had that stick-up-her-ass look of someone who spends their life judging the rest of us. You could feel it radiating off her like cheap perfume.
Still, the night was young, and Kelly and I were doing good. I had my Social Distortion jacket on, feeling like a goddamn king in my little kingdom of shit. So when Kelly, who usually had good instincts for this sort of thing, said we should hit another place she was recommending, I figured, what the hell.
Let’s go. Let’s see what fresh disaster awaits.
The place was the Silver Moon Brewery, and it was a goddamn madhouse—packed to the rafters with the usual collection of thirsty souls and hopeful sinners. I shouldered my way up to the bar to get a round, and the bartender, she looks up from pulling a tap. Her eyes lock on mine, and this slow, knowing smile splits her face.
“Well, well,” she says, wiping the bar. “Look what the cat dragged in. Hi, James.”
Turns out we had a little history. A quick, messy tumble out behind my restaurant a few months back, one of those things that burns hot for a night and then you both just sort of vanish on each other. A mutual ghosting. But whatever bullshit I’d fed her that night, whatever pretty lies I’d spun, apparently the warranty hadn’t expired yet. She was still flattered.
She grabs three glasses, pours three big, cold beers, and shoves them across the bar. Doesn’t even look at the register, doesn’t ask for a tab. A little dividend from a past investment.
I just gave her a nod. “Thanks, Luv.” Grabbed the beers and slid back through the crowd.
We’re standing up front, right against the stage, the music a goddamn wall of sound. And who do I see, drifting through the crowd like a handsome ghost? Mr. Slacker himself, flat-bill hat and all. I give Kelly a nudge. “Hey,” I say, loud enough for her uptight cousin to hear, “why don’t you introduce your friend to my friend?” I point him out. And damned if it doesn’t work like a charm. He strolls over, starts his routine, and the vegan cousin actually smiles. They wander off. Beautiful. Now I don’t have to carry the damn conversation for three people. A small, perfect victory.
With that out of the way, I could finally enjoy the show. The music was awesome, a heavy Johnny Cash vibe with that chugging, train-track beat like Social Distortion. I was into it, really into it. Dancing with Kelly, holding her hand, the beer buzzing just right… for a minute there, life felt pretty damn good. A rare thing, that.
Then the band takes a break. I’m about six beers deep, feeling generous, feeling like the king of the castle. I head back to the bar, and the pretty bartender who knows my name sees me coming. “Look,” I tell her, “I want to buy a round for the whole band.”
She just smiles. “It’s on me tonight, James.”
“Alright then,” I say, “give me a couple to take over.” I grab two cold, sweating bottles, walk right up to the stage, and hand them to the musicians. “You guys got more coming,” I tell ‘em.
“That’s cool, man, thanks,” one of them says, nodding at my jacket. “Awesome jacket. Social D.”
“Yeah, man.”
Then he squints at me. “Hey… you’re James, aren’t you?”
“That’s me.”
“Dude, I’ve been to your restaurant,” he says. “It’s all good, man. I like it.” And just like that, you get that little moment of bullshit male bonding over cheap beer and loud music. For a second there, the whole goddamn world felt alright.
So, Kelly and her vegan cousin and Mr. Handsome all head outside to suck in some cold air, taking their beers with them. The place was getting hot, thick with the sweat of all that dancing. I follow them out into the back alleyway, just another face in the crowd escaping the noise. And then I see her.
Way down at the other end of the alley, coming out of the dim light like some kind of dream. A short little thing in a miniskirt, and she had this walk, this toe-to-toe stride in a pair of stilettos that could kill a man. It was a walk that started a drool factor deep in your gut, a goddamn swagger that shut down every other thought in my head.
Without breaking eye contact with that approaching silhouette, without a goddamn second thought, I turn to my date. “Hey,” I say, “wait a minute. Gotta go talk to somebody real quick. I’ll meet you guys back inside.”
I can feel the cousin’s eyes burning holes in my back, probably thinking, “Where the fuck is this asshole going?” But Kelly, bless her naïve Mormon heart, she probably just smiled and said, “Oh, he knows a lot of people.”
I erased the fifty yards between me and that silhouette in about ten seconds. When I got close, all I could say was, “My God, you look good.”
It was little Lucy, a girl I’d seen around a couple of times, always on the edge of some trouble.
“Come walk with me,” I say, and I don’t wait for an answer. I grab her hand, pull her off to the side, into the shadows next to a beat-up sedan. Just talking at first. “How you doing, haven’t seen you in a while, what you up to?” Goofing around, the usual bullshit dance.
Next thing I know, we’re embracing, exchanging fluids right there against the car door. Things got wild, fast. And pretty soon, my pants are down around my ankles, and for a few frantic, glorious moments, I’m just enjoying my goddamn life.
This wasn’t some tantric, spiritual union, mind you. This was a quick and dirty in-and-out. About fifteen minutes of pure, unapologetic chaos. We pulled ourselves together, adjusted our clothes like a couple of soldiers after a skirmish, and walked back towards the bar our separate ways. She went one way once she hit the door; I went right back to find Kelly.
You could probably still smell the other woman all over me.
Kelly’s cousin was disgusted, you could see it on her face. A mask of pure, sour judgment. She knew exactly what had happened. Hell, I think I had a goddamn wet spot on the front of my pants before I even had a chance to open my mouth and start lying. It was that obvious.
Just as I walk back into the noise, the guy from the band stops their song halfway through, leans into the mic, and points the whole damn thing right at me.
“And there he is,” he bellows, a big, shitty grin on his face. “Back from his adventures.”
The whole bar has a good laugh. Yeah, it was obvious I was just outside, getting my wick dipped. No hiding it.
Then, as if on cue, the bass player—this big dude wrestling what looked like a goddamn coffin with strings—steps forward. He starts slapping out that unmistakable intro, that Johnny Cash death march: Dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb. “Ring of Fire.” But he plays it in a way I’ve never seen. He grabs this huge instrument, lays it down on the stage floor, and while he’s still slapping the strings, keeping that low, gut-punch beat going, he starts dry-humping the damn thing right there on the spot. Primal. Insane. The music gets louder, faster, the whole damn place was rocking, just pure chaos. It was a spectacular show.
The whole time, I’m standing there, soaking it in, thinking, “This is all for me.” A goddamn coronation, all because I bought the bastard a beer. It was their final song, and it felt like something special, a perfect, filthy end to a perfect, filthy night.
When I finally went to clear up my tab, the young lady behind the bar just looked at me and shook her head. “You don’t owe a thing tonight, James,” she said with a wink. “But I’d like to see you at your restaurant on Tuesday.”
And just like that, I walked out of there with a night of free drinks for me and my friends, and a date for Tuesday.
Mr. Handsome and the vegan cousin? That went up in smoke, of course. I think the cousin figured he was part of my whole grimy operation, that I was cheating on Kelly right in front of her, and she wanted nothing to do with any of it. So yeah, I ruined that for him. A small price to pay for my own entertainment.
On the walk back to the car, the cousin finally lets loose, just unloads on me. Starts making all these claims—that I had sex with a “midget in stilettos” (she wasn’t a midget), that the bartender and I were flirting way too much, that I probably set up a date with her too. All false accusations, of course. Well, mostly. But before I could even defend myself, lucky Kelly steps in, tells her cousin she’s just a visitor and she’s being rude, overblowing the whole damn thing.
And that was that. Kelly, she still took me home. I think I ended up staying there the whole weekend. The cousin slept on the couch. I’m not sure if she could hear every scream and moan coming from the bedroom for the next two days, but I made damn sure to make them loud enough, just in case. Sometimes, you gotta turn up the volume, just to irritate the self-righteous bitches of the world.
And that whole night? That entire goddamn circus? That was just one day out of a thousand in my bachelor days in Bend, Oregon.
Just one goddamn day.
