I-24 to Hell

“Come on, man, let’s go,” Robert said from the side of his mouth.

“Why? What’s goin’ on?” I asked as I wiped the spit off with the arm of my shirt.

“I broke the fuckin’ toilet,” he said switching to the other side so he wouldn’t spit on me as much.

“YOU WHAT?”

Six months after our Atlanta adventure I started to settle down a lil’ bit. I got “together” with a lovely young woman that would become the future ex-Mrs. Flowers 7 years later and I got comfortable with being domesticated. Life was pretty good and I was in love and I had a decent job. I thought I found the peace I’d been lookin’ for since they cancelled “The Dukes of Hazard.” (Even though the show put the South 20 years behind the rest of the country, I had this thing for Catherine Bach.)

My friend Jeff came to the house and with lustful glee he informed me that our friend Robert was gettin’ married. Well that was cool, most of us have to settled down and I was really happy for my friend and I wished him the best.

“No,  Scott you don’t understand. Before he gets married he wants a bachelor party … at a strip club!” He giggled. “I don’t know, Jeff, we spent over $1500 the last time we went, I don’t think I can afford it.” Jeff comforted me and said not to worry it’s all worked out.

After having a long talk (And I do mean looooong talk) with my lovely wife insuring her that there was no touching and I would quietly drink my beer, talk to my friends, and avoid the dancers she gave me permission to go.

So, with $10 in my pocket and a smile on my face I went to the meeting place at the K-Mart parking lot where I met my friends Robert, Donnie, Jeff, (Mr. X couldn’t make it), Robert’s boss Gary, and a guy who looked liked the guidance consoler from the Snickers commercials (y’know the one where he asked a student if he ever considered joining a cult). Right behind them there was a small blue bus that looked like it belonged to a church which was goin’ to be our carriage for the night’s festivities with the guidance consoler as our designated coachman.

While on our journey up I-75 Robert informs me that the establishment that we were venturing to was called Rollo’s .With the memories of six months earlier still fresh in our overactive brains we were totally unaware of what horrors that were about to transpire.

“Well… this is it!” Robert exclaimed with pride.
“Where?” I asked.
“Right there.” He pointed.
“Behind that run down shack?”

“No… Dumbass, that’s the bar.” As he was telling me this I started getting a slight burning sensation coating my abdominal area and I knew the night was going to be one for the record books.(Damn… was that a condemned notice I saw nailed to the door?).

As we walked thru the doors I notice the lighting in Rollo’s was unusually dark even for a strip club (we were about to find out why). Stumbling to the nearest booth we each took a seat and called over a waitress so we could begin the festivities (at least I thought it was a waitress… it could have been a dwarf on pony for all I knew.)

“Barmaid?” I beckoned, “What kind of beer does this fine establishment have in stock?”
“Mmnhbbmmrr,” she answered.
“I’m sorry dear lady… What was that selection again?”
“I said MMNHBBMMRR!” she bellowed.

Great … I just pissed off this poor girl who obviously has some sort of soft pallet defect.

Leanin’ in to my friend Donnie, “Did you get that?”

“All except the MMNHBBMMRR part,” he said.

Not to further agitate the matter. “O.K. give us a round of that,” I said thinking “God bless her. That poor girl is probably doin’ this in order to pay for an operation that will give her the ability to speak the Queen’s English beautifully.

Really, I did…
No, seriously …
Ah, fuck you…

At this point of my story I’m reminded of the old George Carlin quip that went “I never fucked a ten, but one night I fucked five twos.” Apparently they all got jobs dancin’ here.

Thank God they weren’t naked.

Tennessee has some strange laws. Case in point: exotic dancers must wear bikinis while dancing. Strange law #2… (Hang on you ain’t gonna believe this.)

As the barmaid brought us our brews, we all did our finest synchronized drinking motion and collectively brought the beers to our mouths… And just as quick we slammed our beers on the table and with the look on our faces, you would have sworn that we where drinkin’ shit creek lemonade (yes… even worse than Milwaukee’s Best).

“My God… what the hell is this shit?” I said as I took a napkin and tried to rub the taste off my tongue. Trying to focus my already strained eyes so I could read the label of the beer, I took out my lighter and held it up to the bottle. “What’s the name of this swill?” Donnie asked. “O’douls?” I told him in a less than confident manner. “Never heard of it…. But if we drink enough of this stuff maybe the dancers will start lookin’ better?”

Well, as most of you probably already know what our dumbasses didn’t. O’douls is a non-alcoholic beer … I repeat for those who live in my home town. O’DOUL’S IS A NON ALCOHOLIC BEER!

Tennessee Strange law #2: Alcoholic beverages cannot be sold in a bar that features exotic dancers.

Some marketing genius from Anheuser-Busch actually thought that people like drinkin’ their watered down piss, but didn’t like the side effect of getting drunk. As my hero, Brenda, always says, “Well fuck me runnin’.”

Whoever that Einstein of marketing was does not deserve to get fired … he deserved to have his head hangin’ on a fuckin’ pike.

Anyway, before we could try to get drunk off this fake beer one of the dancers (I believe her name was Tiffany.) informed us of the alcohol content of our beer and of the aforementioned law as she tried to stick her tit in my mouth, and as I doing my best duckin’ and weavin’ to avoid the breast, I looked over to Donnie and said, “This won’t do.”

I got up and went over to Robert’s table to inform him of the beer and I notice that he already had the look of early inebriation in his eyes.

“Rob-bob, the beer is bogus.” I informed him.

“What do you mean bogus?” he slurred ever so slightly.

“I mean that it’s fake, they can’t serve real beer in a strip club in Tennessee. It’s against the law.”

“Jay-ses, why didn’t you tell me this before I bought the round?” he exclaimed as the look of intoxication started to leave his face.

“The stripper with the heat seeking nipple just told me.”

And with the galvanized look of a man to proud to drink fake beer he said, “This won’t do”.

So, we grab the guidance counselor and order him to take us to the nearest liquor store post haste. And with the pooled resources of the six of us we were able to get two cases of Budweiser, and a bottle of vodka and Gary gotta slap across the face from the female cashier. I don’t know what he said but I was pretty sure it wasn’t “Can I have change for a one?” As we rode back to the club we started power drinkin’ because we wouldn’t be able to bring the beer in with us. When we entered the bar again I didn’t notice that Robert and Gary smuggled the Vodka bottle in with them (this was one of them big ass bottles, mind you). They decided that they were goin’ to sneak into the bathroom and take a swig when the mood was right.

I, myself, poured into the nearest booth and started to get comfy when one of the better looking dancers came up to me.

“Hello… I’m Desire,” she said huskily.

“Hello…I’m married,” I said nervously.

This didn’t dissuade her and until I couldn’t take her bumping and grinding any more I yelled “I only got 3 dollars left!!” and her gyrations ceased and went over to my friend Donnie.

“Hello… I’m Desire,” she said huskily.

“Uh…Hey.” As you can tell, gentle readers, Donnie is the poet of our lil’ ol’ rouges gallery.

All of a sudden Jeff sashays over to my table. “Scott … one of the dancers said she’ll go on the bus with us for three hundred dollars,” he said with a school girl squeal.

“No, Jeff…No…No…No…Hell no!” I scorned him.

“Do the math Jeff…one dancer … six drunken guys.”

As my other hero Cindy would say, “That shit ain’t gonna happen.”

Then I noticed something… The man of the hour wasn’t anywhere to be found.

“Jeff… Where the fuck is Robert?” I asked my friend.

“I think his getting a couch dance.”

“Couch dance … what’s that?”

“That’s when a dancer takes you to a back room and lays you down on a couch and starts rubbin’ all over ya with her body,” Jeff said almost orgasmic.

“Well I hope it comes with a shot of penicillin afterwards,” I quipped.

After the couch dance, while this was all goin’ on, Robert and his boss Gary decided to sneak off to the men’s room for a shot of vodka. (At least I thought it was the men’s room …it had a crudely drawn picture of a penis on the door.) When they finish the bottle off they did what any southern gentlemen would have done in their situation.

Drunk science quiz: What happens when you take object A, vodka bottle, and introduce it with force to object B, strip club toilet? If you answered break the bottle like Robert and Gary did then sit in the corner with the dunce cap on your fuckin’ head and please keep quite the other students are still workin’.

As you know, Robert informed me of what happened and we all nonchalantly got up and started moseyin’ towards the nearest exit. With banjo chase music playin’ in my head, we ran to the bus with the collective grace of a group a gazelles. (As long as they were drunk off the ass and missing a back leg.) We got on the bus and done a rubber burning five miles an hour out of the parking lot. I turned around expecting to at least see the manager standing there, throwin’ his hat on the ground, stompin’ on it like Roscoe used to do on The Dukes of Hazard, but to my slight disappointment the parking lot was empty.

If we were smart the story would have ended there but guess what …. Yep, it ain’t over yet. As we were ridin’ the highways and byways of Chattanooga in our lil’ blue bus from Hell; Donnie notice we were runnin’ out of beer.

“That’s awright,” Robert said while stumbling over everybody on the damn bus. “We still have that vodka from earlier.” We decided to remind Robert that if there was any vodka left it was mixed in with porcelain and glass shards on the strip club bathroom floor.

“Well let’s go back and get it!” Robert ordered. (Robert; ladies and gentlemen, is the most dedicated drunk of our bunch. One time we ran out of beer at Lee’s house. All that was left was what we had poured in the doggy bowl. Well guess what? Yep, you guessed it. Meticulously he’d picked the few kibble and bits out of it and drunk it right down.)

Somehow we ended up at the Rock and Country Club. (Most of the cliental called it “The Rock” because they had trouble with multi-syllabic words. Hell…Wednesday night is broken beer bottle night. Want to know what the most used phrase is at The Rock?

“Hey girls… Don’t fight on my Camero, I just had it primmered.”) While Gary and Jeff decided to go into the club, Donnie and I were babysitting the already passed out Robert on the bus. Every so often, Donnie would tip Robert forward so he wouldn’t choke to death on his vomit, then tipping him back when he was done.

Then Jeff came out and said “Hey, guess who we ran into?” We found out; it was Robert’s future wife who looked like a mixture of shitfaced and annoyed.

“What the hell are ya’ll doin’ here?” She almost yelled.

“Hell if I know,” I answered back, “But your future hubby doesn’t look too good.”

“Ya’ll need to take him home,” she said.

“Great… where do you live?” I answered.

“Not my home… Take him to your home,” she told us sternly.

“Fuck that!!” I said knowing that when Robert is this drunk you don’t let him crash at your house or you might wake up with him standing on your bed with him tryin’ to take a leak on you.  (But that’s another story altogether.)

“He can crash at my house.” Donnie said.

“You sure about that?” I asked (Donnie among us all knows what Robert is capable of).

“Sure… he’ll be fine.”

And then we proceeded to go south back to good ol’ Georgia.

Well we dropped Jeff off first; followed by driving to Gary’s (who was sportin’ a very nice red whelp on the side of his face.). Then there was the tricky part: Getting Robert into Donnie’s house. It wasn’t too hard to do. I mean, it could’ve been tougher. Think of it like tryin’ to push a boulder uphill while it screams out “MuthaFucker!” ten times before you get to the doorway (keep in mind that Donnie was still livin’ with his parents at the time.) We got him in and we flopped him on the couch and Donnie went downstairs to lock himself in the basement. Later on that night Donnie’s mom woke up to a strange smell. She went to the living room where Robert was swayin’ back and forth pissin’ on her kerosene heater.

Well I made my way back home and tried to crawl in bed with my wife and as soon as my body hit the bed:

“How was your night? Did you have fun?” she said.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I said as I was tryin’ to choke back the tears.

“Just hold me,” I asked her and tried as I might to forget about the whole damned experience.

Guess what … I didn’t.

–The Drunken Bastard