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DLoC File 063 - I Wrestled A Bear
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| Six/DLoC |
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As you may remember if you've read DLOC-0060, "The Worst Fucking Job In The
World", I used to have a really shit job where we travelled all over fuck
and back to take pictures of ugly people and their ugly families.
It was on this job that I had a number of adventures, some of which were
covered in DLOC-0060, but this one seemed like it deserved its own file.
I can't remember the name of the town we were in, because it was much like
every other godawful town we worked in. The local hotel was crawling with
cockroaches, and the beds looked like someone had shit on them and rolled in
it. The entire place smelled like cabbage farts and pickled eggs. I think
there must have been a paper mill or a fish asshole cannery in the town.
On this occasion, the condition of the hotel was especially disappointing.
I had a giant sack of magic mushrooms I had been planning on eating when we
got to the hotel. I sure as hell wasn't going to eat them in that place with
all those roaches crawling around everywhere - that's just asking for a bad
trip. I also wasn't going to eat them camped out in the car with Shutter
Jockey. He was pretty uptight, probably would have tried to make me have a
bad trip just to teach me a lesson.
Bored, and having a hard time trying to sleep sitting up in the car, I
suggested we find a bar. I had "The World's Worst Fake Id" (tm) and was
eager for a chance to use it for something besides getting shitty jobs.
We drove around for a bit, but there wasn't much of a selection. I wouldn't
have believed that the town had much in the way of indoor plumbing - more so
a bar - but eventually we found one: "Poseys Longue". I'm pretty sure that's
never been an acceptable spelling of "lounge", but I'm also pretty sure that
Tennessee isn't known for the quality of its school system. If Tennessee IS
known for something, it's probably goat-raping rednecks, meth, and terrible
music. Even back in the 80s everyone knew Tennesse was fucked.
"Poseys Longue" was a shithole, even as shithole bars go. The building was
constructed from cinder blocks and corrugated metal - and by constructed I
mean they were generally in a big pile together. Years of rednecks pissing
against the front wall had stripped the paint from the cinderblocks and left
a film of piss crystals. I wondered momentarily if we could harvest them to
make gunpowder. The smell of the place though, it can only be described as
"leagues beyond overpowering." I'd been pissed on by tigers and come away
smelling better than "Poseys Longue". (See DLOC-0051, this actually happened)
The front walk was stained from end to end with tobacco spit. In the front
window, a crudely-scrawled sign advertised "rassle the bear winner's drink
free!". A dingy neon Black Label sign blinked on and off, assuring potential
customers that literally the worst fucking beer on Earth was available inside.
Loud country music blared from the open front door.
The front lot was just a field full of gravel. A number of dilapidated
vehicles were parked around the place, or broken down, it was hard to tell.
None of them looked particularly likely to be mobile. Several of the trucks
had clearly been painted with house paint. At least one of the cars had been
crudely painted in an effort to make it look like the car from "Dukes of
Hazard". (It was a Chevette) One asshole had a swastika - an actual god damn
swastika - painted on the hood of his truck. I made a point of cutting two
of that truck's tires on the way in.
As we approached, we were accosted by a geriatric prostitute. I'd always
wondered just what sort of person used the phrase "suck the chrome off a
trailer hitch", so I was able to scratch that mystery off my list. After
vigorously refusing the prostitute's solicitations, we continued inside,
followed by shrill cries of "Yalls queers anyway!" and "You know you want
this!" (I didn't, and I doubt there was enough whiskey in Tennesse to change
my mind.)
If you've ever seen "Roadhouse", you can probably imagine the asshole at the
front door. He had maybe three teeth, a shaved head with a mullet in the
back, a mustache with no beard (one of nature's little warning signs, that),
and was wearing a Molly Hatchet shirt with the sleeves crudely chopped off.
A vast constellation of scabs on his forearms marked him as a tweaker. The
meth in that town must have been of exceptionally poor quality.
With a wave of halitosis and Marlboro smoke, the bouncer slurred out a
thickly accented "Lemme see yer ID, you look about fuckin twelve" as I walked
up to the door.
He had a point, but I was confident in my social engineering skills and the
magic of "The World's Worst Fake Id" (tm). I handed over my fakie and waited
while he struggled to do the math on my alleged birthdate. Eventually, he
seemed to give up, handed back my fakie, and demanded $3. I paid and went
inside.
If the outside of "Poseys Longue" could be taken as a promise of things to
come, the inside truly delivered. There was a bar, a stage surrounded by
chicken wire, a mechanical bull (out of order), an old Star Castle arcade
machine (sadly, also out of order), a few dilapidated pool tables, and this
giant boxing ring thing with what looked like a stuffed bear in it. The air
inside reeked of piss, vomit, sweat, cheap perfume, and spilled beer.
Approaching the bar, I could see that the entire lower half of it was caked
in vomit and tobacco spit. The bartender was frog-like, squat and wide.
If he'd been purple, he could have passed for Grimace - if Grimace had fallen
on hard times and taken up drinking whiskey and eating bennies. He also
sported the odd combination of bald head and back-mullet - it must have been
the style in that town at the time.
Standing far enough away from the bar to avoid touching it, I motioned the
bartender over and asked about the beer selection. He looked at me like this
was the dumbest question he'd ever heard and pointed to another crudely drawn,
filthy sign by the bar. The best beer they had was Budweiser, not the worst
beer I've ever had, but still far from my favorite. But they were only $1,
and even back in the 80s that was a good deal.
Don't get the impression that I'm some sort of uppity prick who only drinks
expensive beer and is afraid to get his hands dirty - this place was just
unclean. Every flat surface looked like you'd get some exotic strain of
hepatitis just from touching it - and I don't care what your taste in beer
may be, Budweiser sucks. It's like the sad handjob of beers. Yeah, it'll
get you there (eventually), but you won't enjoy it.
All there really was to do there was drink. The music was bad. They were
running through a selection of David Allen Coe's most racist hits. For a
supposedly straight guy, David Allen Coe was awful concerned about the size
of black guys' dicks. From time to time David Allen Coe's annoying nasal
litany of bigotry would be interrupted with some Dolly Parton or Patsy Cline,
no doubt put on to placate someone's girlfriend.
Any thoughts I had of talking to any of the women there evaporated as soon as
I got a good look at them. Generally they looked like something you'd have
pulled out of a shower drain, all globular with a big hair clog on top. If
those Skeksis things from The Dark Crystal had been made out of loosely
coagulated mucus, they'd have fit right in.
Shutter Jockey and I settled in to a booth and drank. And drank. And drank.
About fifteen beers in (and realizing I'd just blown $30 on Budweiser and
tips), I thought to ask about the sign out front. The bartender explained
that the bear in the boxing ring wasn't actually dead. (I remained skeptical)
You could pay $10 to "rassle" the bear, and if you won, your bar tab was on
the house for the night.
Being young and stupid, this seemed like a good idea to me. The bear looked
old and feeble. While I did look young for my age, I was strong enough and
had grown up on a farm so I had some experience wrangling large animals. (like
your mom) I figured it would be an easy win - clearly this was the beers
thinking for me.
Paying my $10, I was led over to the cage, while the bouncer from the front
door explained the rules to me. Everyone in the bar shuffled over to watch.
The bear, for its part, continued to look and act exactly as you would
expect a stuffed bear to. The closer I got, the more mangy and pathetic the
thing looked.
As soon as I entered the cage, the previously sedate bear leapt up with a
speed that I hadn't expected. I wasn't worried about getting injured - the
thing had a muzzle on and the bouncer had assured me that it had
been declawed. Mostly, I was just surprised that it could move. It looked
like it was dead, it smelled like it was dead - somehow it wasn't dead.
I tried to flank it, but 15 beers were taking their toll, and the bear knocked
me down with a swipe of its paw. That's when things took a turn for the
worse.
What I hadn't known up front was that the bear wrestling bit was just bait to
get out of towners in the ring. The bear had been trained to knock people
down and molest them - which it proceeded to do for what seemed like several
hours, but Shutter Jockey assures me was only about 10 minutes.
So for 10 minutes I was pinned to a filthy cigarette-burned and piss-stained
boxing ring mat and dry humped by a bear. All the while, the patrons of
"Poseys Longue" hooted, yelled things like "cornhole him good" and threw
garbage into the ring. Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man" blared from the
speakers around the bar, seemingly on repeat.
The world around me slowed to a crawl, and I had some time to drunkenly
contemplate the mistakes I'd made in life that had led me to this point. Was
this going to be it, I wondered. Was my epitaph going to read "Humped to
death by a mangy bear in a shithole bar in a shithole town in Tennessee"? How
many diseases was I going to catch from having my face pressed against the
disgusting wrestling mat? I just knew that scabby bouncer had probably
raw-dogged a bunch of the bar slags on it. Could you get AIDS from a bear
through your clothes?
Eventually the bouncer opened the gate and the bear backed off. Leading me
out of the ring, he asked "You aint such big shit now, is you?"
I hadn't started out "big shit", I'd assumed the damn bear was dead - but
there was no point in trying to explain that to a guy who looked like he would
jerk off over that scene in Deliverance where Ned Beatty squeals like a pig.
Completely humiliated and reeking of bear lust, I went back to the booth and
Shutter Jockey (grinning ear to ear) bought a bucket of consolation beers.
This may actually have been the happiest I've ever seen him. He enjoyed the
entire spectacle just a bit too much.
After another 6 beers or so, and figuring my night couldn't get any worse, I
decided to eat my mushrooms. I reached into my pocket, but came up empty-
handed. Thinking I'd dropped them on the floor, I bent down and rummaged
through the cigarette wrappers, peanut shells, and other bits of filth under
my chair. No luck. Unable to locate my missing shrooms, I leaned over to
ask Shutter Jockey if he had them.
That was when we heard the yelling. Looking up, I saw the bouncer knocked over
as the bear burst from the cage and started mauling everyone in sight. People
were knocked head over heels, chairs were broken. It seemed like everything
and everyone in the place was moving at once. People were screaming. There
was broken glass everywhere. I saw the bear back-hand a guy into the Star
Castle machine. He went down and the unfortunate arcade machine tipped over
on top of him and started smoking.
Shutter Jockey and I turned the table over and hid behind it. It felt like we
were in a movie, as a melee of destruction overtook the entire bar. From time
to time I'd peek over the edge of the table, but quickly duck back down. More
than once, we felt someone slam into the other side of it. In the chaos, the
bartender at least had the presence of mind to call 911.
The front door burst open, and what had to be every cop in town boiled in.
The bear rushed them - probably because they were between it and the door.
Even though it had a muzzle on, the floor was littered with broken bottles and
garbage, so several of them were immediately bloodied and probably contracted
Beruli or Tuleremia or something awful like that. I don't know why none of
them thought to shoot the bear, but I'm glad they didn't. It really wasn't
his fault.
Eventually, the sherrif and his deputies managed to subdue the bear and get
him back in his cage, but the damage had been done. "Poseys Longue" wasn't
a palace to begin with, it looked like a tornado had hit it now. Every single
table, every single chair was broken. There were several people unconscious
on the floor, and shoes and clothes everywhere.
Realizing what had happened, Shutter Jockey and I had begun to slowly move
towards the door when we heard the bouncer yell "HEY! THOSE TWO ASSHOLES!
THEY DID SOMETHING TO BARNEY!" I guess this was the bear's name. Somehow
being violated by a bear with such a ridiculous name is even worse - I don't
know why, it just is.
We were roughly seized by two of the deputies who questioned us for a while.
To his credit, Shutter Jockey didn't tell them about the mushrooms. I wasn't
admitting to anything, and repeatedly asked if I could press sexual assault
charges against the bear.
They couldn't prove anything in the end, so they had to let us go. On our way
out, the Sheriff told us after our job was over to not ever come back to his
town or he'd find some reason to arrest us. Shutter Jockey wasn't even
pissed at me though - I guess it's hard to be too mad at a guy who's been
dry-humped and had his mushrooms stolen by a bear.
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/\ \
\_| That's all, folks! Be sure to pick up the latest DLoC text files, |
| available on our website and our BBS HQ. Coming soon, the story of |
| why I can't eat oranges anymore. |
| -Six/DLoC signing off... |
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| _____________________________________________________________________|_
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