Beers and Fears

by Tim Meyer

  AC/DC plays on the jukebox. The opening strums to “You Shook Me All Night Long” fill the bar. When the drum hits and the song kicks in, she spins around and moves like a stripper in front of the jukebox.

  I’m sure there isn’t a single pair of eyes that aren’t plastered to her right now, but I don’t care to glance around to confirm that and miss a single iota of her performance.

  I wish for God to make a stripper pole appear out of thin air, but God isn’t listening. The beauty is undulating her hips, her legs swaying like two sex-crazed snakes wrapped in knit leg warmers. Her white Reebok high-tops are a fine stand-in for 6-inch stilettos, though the latter would make this moment perfection. The kicker is watching her nipples stiffen under her tight-fitting leotard. This is turning her on as much as it is me.

  I’m hypnotized until I realize she’s dancing for me. I snap out of my libidinous gaze and squirm on my stool. As much as I enjoy watching her dance, she did come in with the group of guys and I can only assume she is attached to one of them.

  I turn my head to the floor but let my eyes scan the barroom. None of the other guys are giving me the stink eye. In fact, the guys at the billiards table are too wrapped up in their game to even watch the girl dancing. The other two glance over at her but avert their attention back to the game when someone is about to take a shot.

  I don’t want to turn back around and face the bar. The dancer would be insulted, she's still dancing right at me. I see a sinister grin on her face. She knows I’m uncomfortable. She catches my eyes glancing up at her and pushes out her chest, making her nipples as prominent as the tips of the pool cues.

  The AC/DC anthem ends, and I become aware of the fact that my forehead is covered in cold sweat. I use the break in songs to turn back to the bar. The bartender is busy washing glasses and doesn’t see me wagging my finger for another round. I realize turning my back to the girl is worse. I can’t see what she’s doing, and it is making me that much more anxious.

  I feel a gentle hand on my shoulder and a voice say, “This round is on me, Big Boy.”

  I nearly jizz in my pants from the sensuality that drips from the attractive vibrations of her voice. If there is a Heaven and it is populated by angels, I am certain that every one of those ethereal beings would speak with the exact inflection of my dancing beauty.

  I want to say something witty. Something that will make her giggle or melt off her panties. Instead I say, “Oh, cool.”

  She giggles at me, “You’re cute.” Then to the bartender, “Two!” She makes a clicking noise at him like he’s a horse that she’s calling over.

  The bartender shakes his head in the negative at her but doesn’t look her way. I think he’s joking but she gnashes her teeth together and speaks an octave lower, “Two.”

  I’m watching the exchange like I’m front row at the U.S. Open. My head turns back to the bartender, his play.

  He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “As you wish,” he tells her.

  I get the impression they may be related. Siblings perhaps and he’s looking out for his little sis.

  “Little brother?” I ask.

  She snickers, raises a knowing eyebrow and says nothing else.

  “How about the others?” I ask, “Older brothers? Boyfriends?”

  Her sly smile never disappears, “Not boyfriends, not brothers. But they do look out for me.”

  “Guess that makes me the lucky guy.” I say, not really knowing what else to say but not wanting to lose any momentum I’ve gained. I worry I’m shooting myself in the foot. I’m good at doing that when it comes to the ladies.

  “Luck, maybe. Cute, definitely.”

  “I don’t need to tell you how good looking you are,” I say, another failed attempt at witty banter.

  “Good looking? And here I was going for slutty.”

  I want to tell her she is excelling at slutty. I don’t. I feel like that line will backfire on me worse. The only thing I’ve got before my lack of retort turns into awkward silence is a nervous chuckle and a half-hearted, “Yah.”

  Now I wish she would pour the drink she is buying me on my face and walk away before this gets anymore awkward.

  She doesn’t. Instead, she lifts her glass that the obedient bartender has just placed in front of us. “To sluts,” she toasts.

  “To sluts!” I say picking up my glass, as well. I may not be dead in the water yet.

  I sip my drink. She takes several gulps of hers.

  The sip I take burns. I fight the urge to react to the unexpected amount of alcohol in the drink at the same time I fight the urge to widen my eyes in awe at her ability to drink it down like water. This girl is no lightweight and I may have gotten in over my head. And that kinda turns me on.

  “How do you like?” She asks.

  “Good.” I answer as I feel my equilibrium begin to falter.

  After all the free drinks I’ve had since sitting down in this bar, it’s finally starting to work on my head. As strong as the alcohol in this drink is, it still shouldn’t be working on me that quickly. I make a calculated decision to place the drink back on the bar and pretend it doesn’t exist.

  Not because I don’t want to get drunk, which I do. I just don’t want to get drunk while it seems I’ve got a legitimate shot with the foxy lady.

  “Let’s go pick out some more songs to play,” I offer. I figure that will buy me some time away from the strong drink and a moment to walk it off a bit, while at the same time getting a new angle on my game with this girl.

  She smiles and accepts but insists we take our drinks with us. I grab the glass but have zero intention of taking another sip until we browse the jukebox catalog and pick out some songs that might afford me a chance to get her moving her intoxicating hips once more. Maybe even with my hips moving along with hers.

  She leads the way back over to the jukebox. I see two of her friends, the ones not playing pool, watch me out of the corner of my eye. My buzz is still strong, so I don’t care when I stare at her ass as she walks. I know they don’t like it and I know there isn’t anything they can do about it. It’s obvious she calls the shots with the other guys.

  She already leaning over the jukebox, peering in its window, choosing her next song. Her ass wiggles like a serpent: slow, sexy and seductive. I hear the sound of a snake charmers flute play in my mind in time with the metronomic swaying of her posterior.

  Before I can look over her shoulder and try to add my own choice to the mix, she turns and faces me. A new song has started to play. It starts soft and symphonic. I stand where I am. There is a look in her eye like she is either going to pounce on me and eat me or rip off her clothes and start dancing naked. I’m fine with either option.

  The song creeps toward the melody and I recognize it once it kicks in.

  Foreigner’s “I’ve Been Waiting For A Girl Like You”. More ridiculous music, but, in the moment, I’ll forgive it for existing on the fringe of acceptable rock music and the fact that she’s about to gyrate to it.

  It’s not something I even know how to dance to, but I find my shoulders begin to sway in time with her hips. She inches closer to me.

  Her movement is doing little to belay my intoxication. My head is swirling into the dark shadows of the moment. My vision tunnels and in my mind only she and I exist. I step to her, place my hands on her hips. My heart burns; my fingertips tingle with jolts of electricity shooting through them, energized from the heat leaping off her body.

  She pulls me to her. My arms embrace her, she embraces me. I swoon, the lyrics seem so perfect in the moment. I may mistake passion for love, but I don’t care. She’s making me drunker. I’ll do anything for the woman just to spend every moment from here forward with her.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she whispers in my ear.

  My knees almost buckle from the implication of her suggestion. I don’t want to break the embrace. I don’t want to lose the moment. I don’t want to leave with her just yet and I don’t know how to
tell her that without blowing my chance at glory.

  “Okay,” I whisper back into her ear.

  I need to buy a little time. Just a little. If I break our dancing embrace, I'm sure I’ll fall like an inebriated hobo straight to the floor. “I’d like to finish this dance though, you move so divinely.”

  I don’t know if I sound like Casanova or an idiot. For a fleeting moment, it feels like she clenches my shoulders but relaxes again just as fast. Did my suggestion irritate her? Is she so horny that she really just wants to go now? Forget the wining and dining? Well, I guess we already covered the wining.

  I cannot deny her aggressive behavior is as intimidating as being locked in a cage with a pacing tiger. There is a demon battling an angel on my shoulders and the angel is winning. I am in a predicament most men dream about and I am balking.

  What is wrong with me!

  Instead of asking again, she breaks our swaying embrace and grabs me by the hand. Her grip is rough, firm, like she’s my mother and about to pull me away for a beating. A moment ago, I was intimidated, now I am scared.

  She drags me to the door.

  “Open it! Let’s go!”

  I don’t know how I’ve gone from a tender moment to feeling ashamed for who knows what at her blowing her top.

  I reach for the door handle but stop when I realize, once again, another patron of the bar is insisting I open the front door for them. The webs of alcohol cluttering my mind clear like a strong wind blowing through my brain.

  “I don’t want to leave. Not yet,” I tell her.

  The most fucked up thing happens at that moment. First, her eyes glow red like they’re laser blasters from Star Wars about to reign hellfire upon me. Then her voice drops several octaves lower than when she had spoken before. All in all, I’d say she looked absolutely demonic in that moment.

  “Open. The Fucking. Door,” she says. Only, she sounds like an 80-year-old man with a five-pack-a-day habit since he was three years old.

  Needless to say, at that point, I don’t feel the urge to oblige her charms as much as I had moments ago. Instead, I back away from the door, holding my hands up at my sides, making it clear I am not going to take part in any door opening for the rest of the night, if not the remainder of my existence.

  The idea slams me in the back of the head like a frying pan: Not going to open that door for the remainder of my existence. What was it that guy Snake or maybe the bartender had said to me earlier? Something about never leaving? Was I trapped here now, for eternity?

  The bartender!

  I look over to him. He’s giving me the hard side-eye.

  The girl of my dreams, on the other hand, is grunting like a bull. Her eyes continue to flame red. She snorts sulfuric smoke from her nostrils. Getting lucky with her tonight no longer seems to be an option.

  I’m sure she is going to attack me. I prepare myself to see my own innards pooling in blood on the floor in front of me. I never wanted to see my intestines spool out of my stomach but I’m sure that is where this night is going.

  Instead she bends over on all fours and walks canine-like over to the group she had come in with, still milling about the billiards table. Their game had stopped, a scattering of pool balls still on the table. They hadn’t enough time to finish out their first game.

  They weren’t going to finish either. My girl, with the radiant red eyes, mounts the table on all fours. She's facing me and growling, teeth bared like an angry dog, eyes flashing at me. One of the guys mounts the table behind her. He tugs at her leotard.

  They begin humping like... well, like two horny dogs. There is rhythmic humming, it’s coming from everywhere and nowhere. The hum nearly drowns out the jukebox. There is something ritualistic about the whole scene.

  I want to run. I know I can’t. It’s obvious I cannot open the front door and leave.

  That’s exactly what they want. It’s what they’ve wanted all along.

  I don’t know why.

  As my girl humps on the billiards table, her flesh starts to take on a red hue like an infection growing under her skin. The guy mounted behind her also reddens. I want to believe they are blushing from the strenuous activity they are engaged in but when steam blossoms off their bodies, I think otherwise.

  I swear I can see horns budding out of her forehead as she grinds against the dude behind her. The sex looks painful. I definitely don’t want to get lucky with her tonight. Or any night heretofore.

  The steam around their bodies intensifies. I can barely see them behind the fog. I worry they might explode.

  And then they do.

  A fantastic blue ball of flames radiates outward in an instant. I am blown to the floor; the wind gets knocked out of me. My mind tells me I’m dead before my body can process the fact that, somehow, I’m not.

  I lay there, looking up at the ceiling, breathing hard, trying to retake my breath. The bar is quiet, normal. I can’t process it all.

  I look around. The bar is fine, like nothing happened. The jukebox is playing Olivia Newton-John’s Magic. There is nobody in the bar save for me and the bartender. He doesn’t even seem to notice me lying on the beer-soaked floor on my back.

  I get up and dust off. I sit back on the stool at the corner of the bar. There is a drink there waiting for me.

  What the fuck?

  ***

  “Bullshit!” I say to the bartender, slapping the drink like it’s a bitch and deserves it. The alcohol spills all over the bar top. “What is this place? What the fuck is going on here? This ain’t no bar!”

  The bartender sighs. He looks like he’s still trying to come up with an excuse for everything that has happened. He shakes his head, defeated.

  “They want out. You want in.” He tells me.

  Now instead of being vague, he’s being cryptic.

  “What the fuck does that mean? Just level with me. What is going on here?” I beg.

  “I can’t say.”

  “What do you mean you can’t say? I know damned well you know what’s going on around here. You haven’t flinched even once with all these lunatics coming in the back door.”

  A light clicks on in my head. The back door, everyone but me has come into the bar through the back door. I had assumed there was more parking around back that was the preferred entrance for regulars. Every one of them wanted me to open the front door though, the way I had come in. The only way outside I knew.

  “Where does that door lead?” I asked the bartender throwing a thumb over my shoulder to the back door behind me.

  “It leads in.”

  More of the cryptic shit again. I want to scream and wring his neck. I take a deep breath, hoping logic and reason can win the day over violence.

  “It leads in to where?”

  “I can’t say.”

  I grumbled like an upset grizzly bear, on the inside. On the outside, I changed my line of questioning.

  “Why can’t you say? You don’t know or you’re not allowed to say?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh God,” I say, raising my voice but reeling it back into a calm demeanor, “Yes which? Yes, you don’t know, or yes, you’re not at liberty to say?”

  He changes the line of questioning on me, “Why can’t you talk about gymnastics?”

  He deflates me in an instant, “I can’t say.”

  Son of a bitch.

  “You’d better learn how to say. I can say that.”

  “Why, what does it matter. How does that stop the insanity that comes through the back door? That doesn’t make an iota of sense.”

  “The truth will set you free or you will set the truth free.”

  I take another deep breath. The weight was too great. This is starting to feel more like therapy than drinking away my troubles. It would be great to peel off that bandage and let the wound ooze out the infected pus trapped in my mind. But the bartender at some hole in the wall dump is not equipped to handle the truth.

  How does he even know about the gymnastic
s stuff? Nothing had gotten out about it. Yet I got the impression that he knew more about that stuff that he was letting on. Maybe talking it out with him could set me free.

  I need a drink.

  The bartender put a fresh mug in front of me. He knew. He knows everything.

  I grab the ice-cold mug and raise it in salute to the bartender. I take a swig and begin to tell him my story.

  ***

  “Gymnastics is pure hell.” I begin.

  He held up his hand, pausing me. Behind me, I hear the door open.

  Fuck this shit. I’m nipping this asshole in the bud before he can even get started.

  I stand up and turn to tell whoever walked in to get the fuck out and save everyone the trouble.

  I didn’t expect to come face to face with a demon.

  “I’m pure hell,” the demon said. He spits to the side; it singes the floorboard where it lands.

  I know this demon.

  “I know you,” I told the demon.

  “Of course, you do, Dusty.”

  “You are the worst scum that has ever set foot in a gymnasium anywhere and any when on this Earth, Mary Lou Retton.”

  The demon snickers.

  “Oh Dusty. Let’s cut the shit. Open that door for me and let’s get this over with.”

  “Fuck. You.”

  I can’t believe Mary Lou Retton is here. What are the odds? She has as much chance at winning a gold medal at the upcoming Olympic games as she does of me opening that front door for her.

  “I’m walking out that door tonight. Then I’m going to walk down that street outside, straight to the highway and head due west to the 1984 Olympic Games.”

  “I told you before Mary Lou, you aren’t good enough.”

  “We’ll see about that!” She spits at my feet, the ground sizzles again and I can feel heat lick at my toes through my shoes.

  Mary Lou Retton isn’t good enough for the Olympics. She knows it. I know it. I’m her coach or... I was her coach. She didn’t have the stuff. She refused to accept that fact. Instead of grasping reality and refocusing herself, she had signed a deal with the devil.