Chapter Four
Clifford Godson emerged from the women's bathroom with a dustpan filled with soggy tampons liberated from the shell casings. He marveled at their amazing ability to hold water, reminding him of women he had known with similar qualities that were about as appealing. Clifford glanced into the garbage can where he had dumped the soggy cargo and had to chuckle when he noticed that he had subconsciously tossed the tampons into what resembled a cubist nativity scene, complete with the little known twist that this nativity scene contained the oft-overlooked fourth wiseman who had arrived late for what he believed would be a bachelor party for Joseph, bearing the biblical equivalent of Trojan Condoms with the anti-begatting reservoir and the jaw-of-ass ribbing for those particularly holy occasions. This chapter was written out of history because it would change the entire foundation of the Roman Catholic Church as we know it and force the entire priesthood to get real jobs.
Clifford was jolted from this meditation when Luci Damian stomped through the bar screaming about having to piss like a banshee wench. This, of course, reminded Clifford to resurrect the rose bush Luci had killed the night before, which subsequently reminded him to carefully avoid stepping on Jerome-just-Jerome, who was hiding under a table and waiting, hoping that Moonvibes would soon enter and cast a look of disdainful recognition upon him.
A noisy group of 2nd year law students had invaded The Dirty Dwarf this evening in hopes of making it a trendy place. They were exchanging stories about misfeasance vs. nonfeasance in torts, anticipatory repudiation, and how to bill 19 1/2 hours in a nine hour day with an hour for lunch. Then one of them spotted the Devil, who was on stage sipping a Whoremonger Ice Longneck from a bottle held in place by her breasts, which were squeezed together suggestively. Andrew (class rank #5) who, not knowing Luci as the regulars did, interpreted this as a come-on and swaggered his suspiciously-padded sans-a-belt slacks over to the stage.
He started out with the obligatory, "Hey, babe."
Luci replied silently by removing her hands from her breasts (though the bottle mysteriously stayed in place) and massaging her crotch in a pentagram pattern, smiling ever so slightly.
"Can I have a sip?" Andrew drooled.
George Phoenix was the first person to notice this situation and take cover, joined propitiously by the other patrons in an anti-wave.
"I bet you're quite a lover," Luci said, grabbing what appeared to be his erect member with gusto.
"I'd make you see God," Andrew whispered. It was a most unfortunate choice of Direct Objects, as Professor Gerund would later point out.
Clifford barely had time to duck as Andrew burst into flames, setting off the automatic sprinkler system which zealously extinguished the fire, brimstone, and smoldering saddle shoes. Luci returned to her beer.
The surviving law students momentarily harbored thoughts of a lawsuit based on mental anguish, emotional distress, and eyebrow loss, which, if settled expeditiously enough, would not only pay off their law school loans, but relieve them from clerking the following summer. Then, as they simultaneously realized that through the simple act of attrition their collective class ranks had been raised by one, they paid their tab, picked up the smoldering carcass of Andrew from the muddy ashes, and roared off in Andrew's Maserati, never to return again.
When Clifford finished passing out the obligatory round of free drinks, he forlornly reached for the mop and began swabbing the bar. "Godless Philistines," he muttered under his breath as he swabbed past Luci.
"So?" Luci replied expectant.
"No soul. No point," Clifford calmly announced.
At that moment the doors opened, the waters on the floor parted, and Angela gorgeously strolled into the bar reminding the butterfly on her shoulder to remember where she had parked. Clifford despondently stared at his feet as ripples of water covered the previously-swabbed and subsequently formerly dry spot that had been.
"It's getting close to Judgment Day now, Clifford," Luci hummed. "Can't you feel it?"
"You're awfully confident," Clifford commented as he returned to his mopping, unable to feel the slightest bit of displeasure at Angela's inadvertent missteps.
"And you're supposed to be objective," Luci replied, reading his mind at a most unfortunate time. "The Messiah shouldn't pop a tent just because some butterfly wings into your bar. It's unseemly."
"Yes, I can feel it," Clifford responded to the previous comment, although the entendre amused Luci to no end.
Stymie Tattoo chose this moment to enter the bar chirping something about wanting to tit-fuck a twelve-year-old when he saw Angela pouring herself a glass of Holy Water with rose petal at the bar and began acting positively silly. He chose the next moment to turn shyly away where he caught a glance of Luci Damien who winked at him in a most sinister fashion before taking the entire length of a regulation size pool cue down her throat and pumping it in and out rather suggestively. Recalling the consequences of being in the room with Luci when she was in one of these moods, Stymie spun quickly and beat feet to the street, ending his brief cameo appearance in this chapter. Angela walked past Clifford, who had opted to put up one of those yellow "Watch Your Step" things in lieu of trying to wait for Angela to sit down for awhile, and went over near Moonvibes Laurence Windowpane.
"Hi," she said sweetly.
Moonvibes would have replied had he not just been transformed into a quivering mass of tapioca pudding. Jerome-just-Jerome, patiently waiting despite his flaccid sogginess, sensed that this was his opportunity to approach Moonvibes, but was distracted by a flatulent burst of excrement that plopped on and about his head. Further adding to his indignity were the undigested kernels of corn which somehow ricocheted into inappropriate orifices.
Phlegm, not really caring about any of this, douched himself with a pint of Goliath Ale and hiked up his pants and over to Angela. He was about to say either a) "Blow me, bitch"; b) "Fuck me naked or die"; or optionally, c) "Do you like Bach?". But before the synapse that led to this decision could spark, Angela looked into his eyes. For once in his incredibly gross existence, for one time the festering ooze that was his soul exploded in a paroxysm of bliss and he was only able to mutter a simple apology for his ungentlemanly behavior and excuse himself to the bathroom where he half-expected to see Butch Stilletto, who had undoubtedly first encountered festering ooze in "The 'Nam".
But, as fate would have it, earlier that day Butch and Daphne had been married in a bizarre, yet ritualistically correct, shotgun wedding ceremony wherein the shotgun was held to the groom's head by the groom himself. The bride wore toad-belly white, with paisley abruptions of trillium and puce, accented with puffy sleeves and a poodle skirt. The groom wore basic camouflage.
The honeymoon was not for the squeamish. A blushing Daphne dressed in the bathroom and emerged wearing an erotic Virgin Mary flannel negligee augmented by chickens on her feet. Butch, totally nude and inexplicably unaroused, scanned the TV Guide for a sporting event. "Carp Fishing in the Love Canal" was just ending, so he switched channels until he happened upon "The Gulf War Remembered" re-run on CNN. Instantly, he achieved an erection.
Not to be outdone, Daphne turned to the Reverend Jeremiah Channel and began licking his war wounds, past and present. Within minutes they were participating in Fundamentalist foreplay, which consisted of Butch holding Daphne's head under the covers and farting. One thing led to another and soon, just as the Reverend Jeremiah Children's Chapel Cartoon Show came on, Butch was making adjustments to the light fixtures in preparation for Bungee Sex while Religious Rocky wailed as Biblical Bullwinkle spun round and round in ever-confused circles, unaware that the soon-to-be-gloriously-martyred Rocky had been sinfully crucified by the Godless Communists, Bad Boris and Naughty Natasha, to the back of Bullwinkle's antlers.
Meanwhile, the patrons of The Dirty Dwarf were unknowingly blessed by their ignorance of these happenings. Moonvibes, recovering finally from his tapioca-esque experience, looked around only to see Jerome-just-Jerome lying prostrate on the floor, complete with the aforementioned ritualistic tongue swipes. "Jesus, you stink," Moonvibes commented.
Clifford, reacting to the rhetorical use of his name, chose not to be offended, despite the vanity of its use.
"I did it for you," Jerome-just-Jerome intoned.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"'To utter or recite in a singing tone or in prolonged monotones; to chant', at least according to Webster," chimed in Professor Klaus before immediately launching into a heated debate with Professor Jerend as to the effect of Sanskrit antecedent derivations and their respective effects on proletarian mindsets in a global recession which evolved in a post-industrial society.
Ignoring this bizarre digression, Jerome-just-Jerome rephrased the response. "What more can I do to prove myself?"
"Go find a flounder and shove it up your ass," Moonvibes said slowly and dangerously.
Jerome-just-Jerome, eyes alight, bowed three times and sprinted into the wall. Upon relatively maturer reflection, he opted to give a door a try and was ultimately successful.
Moonvibes turned to Clifford and asked, "Have you ever had a total idiot worship you for the most obscure reasons?"
"Have you ever heard of the Christian Scientists?"
Moonvibes merely raised his glass in a toast. "Never mind," he said, and went to a table.
Luci Damian looked down on V.D., who was randomly but sensuously sucking on Luci's toes. "I've got to go ..... now," Luci said. Veronica shrugged, smiled sweetly, and walked away.
Luci jumped on stage, dried her toes, made sure her G-string was slightly sharp and screamed into the microphone, "The only thing you have to fear is me, myself! This one's for all the yuppie poseur fucks ruining a perfectly good bar! It's called 'Polyester Anarchy'!"
Leisure suits make me vomit maggots
Yuppies are gerbils, gerbils, gerbils
John Travolta is a fucking Scientologist
So let's all sing a song!
Polyester Anarchy
Polyester Anarchy
Polyester Anarchy
Fuck you!
Burn, baby, burn, in your triple-knit suits
Disco is dead, and so are you
Boogying in the graveyard isn't much fun
So let's all sing a song!
Polyester Anarchy
Polyester Anarchy
Polyester Anarchy
Fuck you!
The audience had no response to this, with the possible exception of the yuppie poseur fucks to whom Luci was referring who decided to express their displeasure with being singled out from the decidedly inferior populace of The Dirty Dwarf by stiffing Clifford on the tip. Luci, who was still standing defiantly awaiting some sort of response, punctuated her song by glancing over at the table of yuppie poseur fucks who immediately felt an unpleasant burning sensation in their genitals, thus instantly and collectively fearing gonhorrea.
Amidst this lull, not realizing that sets consisted of more than one song, V.D. put a quarter in the jukebox. The sticky-sweet strains of yet another techno-suck, gay-but-proud, show-your-navel, hold-your-crotch, twisty-bread-with-bounce song by Noveau K-mode gamboled cheerfully about the bar. Phlegm, seizing the inevitable initiative, hurled Morton King, who coincidentally had just entered the bar, through the jukebox, which didn't stop Luci from blowing it up anyway. Clifford was not pleased.
Perhaps it was the moon, or maybe it was something closer to shell-schock, but Phlegm Smear chose this moment to articulate his inner-most thoughts and beliefs. He climbed onto the nearest available table, ignoring Morton's muffled cries for help, and began to speak.
"I hate you all," he stated plainly. "I hate every fucking thing about you. Fuck you and the assholes you eat out of."
He stopped for a moment to collect a thought and smirk with disdain. "So bite my 'nads, says I. Bite my big, fat, hairy 'nads. If not you, who? If not now, when?... BITE MY NADS!"
"Literally?" queried Professor Jerend, who was promptly hit in the head by a beer mug thrown by Luci Damian.
And for the next ten minutes Professor Jerend was not a minor character in The Dirty Dwarf, used only to deliver obtuse references. He was a star. A pornographic mime, humping and bumping his way through the East Village. Women swooned at his prodigious member and the way he could make it pump backwards in the wind. He was an innovator. A dreamer. Then, as the Rockettes knelt side-by-side, mouths open, eagerly waiting to receive his throbbing... Alas, this vision was shattered, or rather, compressed, by the Heimlich Maneuver which, though inappropriate, effectively pulled Professor Jerend from his happy state of unconsciousness.
Phlegm, in the meantime, still self-proclaimed King of The Dirty Dwarf, was standing defiantly, loins exposed, waiting for volunteers. V.D., who watched him with great interest, was in love. So she shrugged, smiled sweetly, and walked towards him.
Unbeknownst to anyone, Angela's butterfly, who up until this moment had been minding its own business, wafted its way up towards the stage, pausing facetiously for a moment at the end of the Devil's guitar. Luci, deeply pissed, swung her guitar in a wide arc, connecting with George Phoenix was propelled by the supernatural velocity of the guitar through the never-before-mentioned but always present plate glass window into the front seat of a convertible BMW whose wheels were not turned into the curb. At any other moment in history this event would not have been nearly so significant, but because George Phoenix happened to land on the stick shift knob at the precise angle to put the car into motion, a semi, hijacked by Iranian taxicab drivers, smashed into the rear of the BMW, sending it flying through what remained of the plate glass window of The Dirty Dwarf.
Undaunted, Luci jumped on the hood of the former luxury vehicle, taking wild swipes at the gaily dancing butterfly. Klaus and Jerend, in their senility, believed that they had walked into the Big Rig Tractor Pull by mistake and left to find The Dirty Dwarf. All of this merely provided ambiance to Phlegm Smear and V.D., who were in the throes of fornication in and around the rafters, resembling remarkably that one scene from Beneath the Planet of the Apes (that would have made Roddy McDowell a superstar had it not ended up on the cutting room floor) wherein Cornelias and Zira, the heroic chimpanzees, were having interspecial carnal knowledge of creatures lacking opposing thumbs. By this point, V.D. had already had her fifth orgasm and Phlegm was ready to try the missionary position for a kinky change of pace so long as they stayed in the rafters and V.D. agreed to bark a lot.
George Phoenix wandered aimlessly through the bar naked, his flower broken, asking for a barium enema and bitching about how No. 4 pencils hadn't been the same since the Dodgers left Brooklyn.
Meanwhile, Clifford, Angela and Moonvibes sat in the back room playing Go Fish and trading witty anecdotes about the best bar fights they'd ever seen.
Up in the rafters, Phlegm and V.D. were experiencing the decline of their relationship as neither could form a lasting commitment based on axiomatic principles when neither had any job skills, per-se. Not being one to avoid a good bar fight when he could no longer maintain an erection, Phlegm slapped V.D.'s butt good-bye, pounced from the rafters, and began head-butting everything in sight, including the hopelessly lost Iranian taxicab drivers who had returned simply to ask directions and found themselves in the midst of a Holy War not of their causing. Uncomfortable in such surroundings, they resorted to tried and true tactics. They rushed outside, denounced the government, called the President nasty Iranian names, and blew themselves up in a Drug Free School Zone.
As to why the BMW picked this moment to mysteriously shift into reverse and back into its original parking place, no one knows. But as Angela entered the bar from the back room, order arose from the chaos. The butterfly, pleased with all the attention it was getting, taunted Luci with one last fly-by with a barrel roll before perching itself smugly on Angela's shoulder.
"Bug!" Luci spat as she went outside to retrieve her guitar.
Phlegm became aware of his loins once more, and was ashamed in Angela's presence. Apologizing, he covered himself with Morton King's unconscious body and excused himself to the bathroom. Unbeknownst to Phlegm, Morton regained consciousness en route, awakening to a rather disorienting view of Phlegm's bare buttocks and developed an incredible case of the heebie-jeebies.
Slowly things returned to normal at the Dirty Dwarf. V.D stayed in the rafters smoking a cigarette. Clifford and Moonvibes emerged from the back room and began sweeping up with the help of Angela.
"Master!" a voice shrieked. Clifford, Luci, and Moonvibes turned simultaneously to see Jerome-just-Jerome walking like a hemorrhoid-stricken Bobcat Goldthwait after a Clydesdale Steeplechase. "I have done what you asked," he exclaimed.
Clifford and Moonvibes looked at each other in confusion until a flounder arced across the bar with a loud pop, through the broken plate glass window and onto the driver's seat of the BMW, thus lending a sense of synchronicity to the whole evening.
Marilyn Janice Snow looked up from her drink in time to see the flying flounder. Rejecting this image as metaphorical and thus pointless, Marilyn looked back in her drink and saw N.B.C. sports commentators Hannah Storm and Willow Bay water skiing in thong bikini's with nautical pasties behind a boat pulled by the band Megadeth, who were amusing themselves by deliberately running them into large ice cubes, after which they would have to whiskey-bong a fifth of Jack Daniels, until, battered and broken, the two television personalities fell into the drink. Megadeth tossed them life preservers, but wouldn't pull them into the boat until they had listened to their heavy metal version of the entire "Jock Rock" album.
And she ran screaming from the bar.
