Author's Note: The following story is true. Names have been changed to protect the dim-witted. Because if they were fucking stupid enough to lose their clothes then they almost certainly couldn't handle a day in court.
A few summers ago I lived near a little dive bar out in BFE southern Indiana. Those of you who have actually been here can easily picture what kind of place I'm talking about. At any rate it was the only halfway entertaining place for
miles and had good drink specials, so sweet. I spent a lot of time over
there during the first few months and quickly made friends with the
regulars and the employees. I use the term "friends" loosely; most of
these guys believed that an awkward boob grab was a suitable greeting. I
suspect that paint huffing during pregnancy was endemic in this area, but I digress.
One of the characters I met was the cook at the bar, a guy I'll call Jethro. Not his real name, but it fit. He was tall and skinny and had a long, flowing mullet. Despite the fact that mullets are pretty much universally considered the epitome of unsexy, he was even kind of cute. Still there was something...off about him. Regardless, he was friendly and always bought me my first drink of the evening. We ended up being pretty good friends and hung out quite a bit outside of the bar, usually just sitting around at his friend's cabin drinking beer and listening to music and shooting the shit for hours. And he didn't hit on me! Holy shit! It's a fucking Christmas miracle. But of course, as life so often goes, I was eventually caught with my pants down. Or rather...well, I'll just tell the story.
It was sometime in late August. I was spending quite a bit of time at the bar on my days off and on weekends. Usually I showed up around closing time, since that seemed to be the most opportune time to score free drinks from Jethro. He and I and a couple of the bartenders would often hang out for a while after the bar closed to the public; I was considered a V.I.P. since I lived nearby, I suppose.
It was a rare occasion that this did not happen at least twice a week, but on one such occasion Jethro called me, right around the time I would usually be walking in the door, incidentally. He was completely freaked. Apparently there was a woman in the bar who had been stalking and harassing him for some time, threatening him because she'd seen him with some other woman, begging him to come see her, etc. Standard trailer park drama. Not even classy Canadian trailer park drama. Weak.
None of this surprised me much, really; the guy was quite open with his status as a "player" or whatever passes as such in "the sticks". He told me he was afraid to go straight home after leaving work for fear that she might follow him and find out where he lived, and wanted to know if he could come over and hang out with me for about an hour or so. I really didn't feel like having company, nor was I keen on the idea of someone who had run afoul of a woman who could apparently make Alex Forrest look like the girl next door toddling his tipsy ass over to my apartment, but he sweetened the pot with an offer of free beer, so I acquiesced. Woe be to she who hath a weakness for free booze.
So about 20 minutes passed and he hadn't shown up yet. I was starting to think he'd changed his mind or something had come up or maybe, just maybe I wasn't being turned over karma's knee and spanked heartily after all. So of course the phone rang then. He was on his way, but he had to stop and pick up a friend who had expressed an interest in meeting me. Goody.
The two showed up about five minutes later. At least the friend was a woman. She was, to put it gently, bordering on obese. Not like having her own gravitational pull kind of obese but enough that, were she a celestial body, a satellite would surely wobble in its trajectory as it cruised past her equatorial region. But she had a pretty face and a nice smile and hugged me when introduced, something I find inexplicably charming despite my aversion to unnecessary physical contact. She had also brought me a giant bag full of ears of corn, freshly picked, still in the husk. Welcome to Indiana.
The three of us retired to the kitchen and broke into the case of beer. All was well for a pretty long time. The friend was funny and talkative and even kind of intelligent, and Jethro was being on his best behavior. That being said, it was on this occasion that I learned Jethro is one of those drinkers with a clearly defined threshold; that is, a set drink limit that spells the difference between normal drunkenness and anything from boozy proclamations of undying adoration to nudity. Let's just say I would have gladly accepted the standard drunken "I love you man" and Natty Light-scented slobber on my shirt sleeve as an alternative to what happened that evening.
So with about his third beer Jethro crossed his threshold with a vengeance. He stood up and announced, "Hey girls, wanna see my new thong?" (although it came out more like "hay girth, wan' see mah froo throng?") No one said yes, but he didn't let that stop him. He dropped his pants and proudly displayed his pink and purple (!) man-thong (!!) and a feeble whiskey dick that he was desperately trying to jiggle to life.
Fucking-A. I cook food in this kitchen dude. I started to feel nauseous so I excused myself to the bathroom. I stood in there for a while, despairing, wondering what the fuck I should do. Common sense dictated that I toss the chicken-fried Chippendale out on his ass, but I was too drunk and shell-shocked to consider this. I glanced up at the window. As bathroom windows tend to be, it was small, maybe 2' by 2', with vertical sliding glass. The opening created by sliding the glass aside was about half that area. But maybe, if I popped the glass out entirely and dislocated my shoulders thus...
What. The fuck. This is my apartment and I'm contemplating escaping out the window. All because of a phallus in the kitchen. I've seen penises before. I'm always a little worse for wear afterward, but I'm made of tougher stuff than that. I flushed the toilet to complete the illusion that I'd actually used the bathroom and marched back out into the kitchen.
I really wish I could have somehow bet money on what happened next. In the time it took me to make my faux-run to the can, Jethro had somehow misplaced his pants AND his banana hammock and was now flopping his vile junk around. Incidentally, said junk bore a striking resemblance to corned beef that had been accidentally dropped in the beer cooler at the block party and forgotten. I must say I was amazed at my brain's ability to conjure such a vivid simile in the wake of such devastation. My brain cells were already well done manning the life boats by that time, after all.
One of the characters I met was the cook at the bar, a guy I'll call Jethro. Not his real name, but it fit. He was tall and skinny and had a long, flowing mullet. Despite the fact that mullets are pretty much universally considered the epitome of unsexy, he was even kind of cute. Still there was something...off about him. Regardless, he was friendly and always bought me my first drink of the evening. We ended up being pretty good friends and hung out quite a bit outside of the bar, usually just sitting around at his friend's cabin drinking beer and listening to music and shooting the shit for hours. And he didn't hit on me! Holy shit! It's a fucking Christmas miracle. But of course, as life so often goes, I was eventually caught with my pants down. Or rather...well, I'll just tell the story.
It was sometime in late August. I was spending quite a bit of time at the bar on my days off and on weekends. Usually I showed up around closing time, since that seemed to be the most opportune time to score free drinks from Jethro. He and I and a couple of the bartenders would often hang out for a while after the bar closed to the public; I was considered a V.I.P. since I lived nearby, I suppose.
It was a rare occasion that this did not happen at least twice a week, but on one such occasion Jethro called me, right around the time I would usually be walking in the door, incidentally. He was completely freaked. Apparently there was a woman in the bar who had been stalking and harassing him for some time, threatening him because she'd seen him with some other woman, begging him to come see her, etc. Standard trailer park drama. Not even classy Canadian trailer park drama. Weak.
None of this surprised me much, really; the guy was quite open with his status as a "player" or whatever passes as such in "the sticks". He told me he was afraid to go straight home after leaving work for fear that she might follow him and find out where he lived, and wanted to know if he could come over and hang out with me for about an hour or so. I really didn't feel like having company, nor was I keen on the idea of someone who had run afoul of a woman who could apparently make Alex Forrest look like the girl next door toddling his tipsy ass over to my apartment, but he sweetened the pot with an offer of free beer, so I acquiesced. Woe be to she who hath a weakness for free booze.
 |
| Fortunately I didn't have a pet bunny, but that just meant I'd probably get knifed that much quicker. |
So about 20 minutes passed and he hadn't shown up yet. I was starting to think he'd changed his mind or something had come up or maybe, just maybe I wasn't being turned over karma's knee and spanked heartily after all. So of course the phone rang then. He was on his way, but he had to stop and pick up a friend who had expressed an interest in meeting me. Goody.
The two showed up about five minutes later. At least the friend was a woman. She was, to put it gently, bordering on obese. Not like having her own gravitational pull kind of obese but enough that, were she a celestial body, a satellite would surely wobble in its trajectory as it cruised past her equatorial region. But she had a pretty face and a nice smile and hugged me when introduced, something I find inexplicably charming despite my aversion to unnecessary physical contact. She had also brought me a giant bag full of ears of corn, freshly picked, still in the husk. Welcome to Indiana.
The three of us retired to the kitchen and broke into the case of beer. All was well for a pretty long time. The friend was funny and talkative and even kind of intelligent, and Jethro was being on his best behavior. That being said, it was on this occasion that I learned Jethro is one of those drinkers with a clearly defined threshold; that is, a set drink limit that spells the difference between normal drunkenness and anything from boozy proclamations of undying adoration to nudity. Let's just say I would have gladly accepted the standard drunken "I love you man" and Natty Light-scented slobber on my shirt sleeve as an alternative to what happened that evening.
So with about his third beer Jethro crossed his threshold with a vengeance. He stood up and announced, "Hey girls, wanna see my new thong?" (although it came out more like "hay girth, wan' see mah froo throng?") No one said yes, but he didn't let that stop him. He dropped his pants and proudly displayed his pink and purple (!) man-thong (!!) and a feeble whiskey dick that he was desperately trying to jiggle to life.
Fucking-A. I cook food in this kitchen dude. I started to feel nauseous so I excused myself to the bathroom. I stood in there for a while, despairing, wondering what the fuck I should do. Common sense dictated that I toss the chicken-fried Chippendale out on his ass, but I was too drunk and shell-shocked to consider this. I glanced up at the window. As bathroom windows tend to be, it was small, maybe 2' by 2', with vertical sliding glass. The opening created by sliding the glass aside was about half that area. But maybe, if I popped the glass out entirely and dislocated my shoulders thus...
What. The fuck. This is my apartment and I'm contemplating escaping out the window. All because of a phallus in the kitchen. I've seen penises before. I'm always a little worse for wear afterward, but I'm made of tougher stuff than that. I flushed the toilet to complete the illusion that I'd actually used the bathroom and marched back out into the kitchen.
I really wish I could have somehow bet money on what happened next. In the time it took me to make my faux-run to the can, Jethro had somehow misplaced his pants AND his banana hammock and was now flopping his vile junk around. Incidentally, said junk bore a striking resemblance to corned beef that had been accidentally dropped in the beer cooler at the block party and forgotten. I must say I was amazed at my brain's ability to conjure such a vivid simile in the wake of such devastation. My brain cells were already well done manning the life boats by that time, after all.
 |
| Above: Not what I saw in my kitchen. In my infinite mercy I decided against slicing it. |
At
this point anything would be a lateral move, so I just took my seat and opened
another beer. Jethro sat down as well, at which I made a mental note to burn that seat,
and all returned to normal, or as normal as a situation involving a
half-naked mullet-headed redneck can be.
I had seen more than enough of him, so I turned my attention to his friend, who had been curiously silent during the debacle. She smiled at me as if no irreversible emotional trauma had just been wrought, and took the opportunity to comment on the brand-new psychology and philosophy textbooks I had bought that very day that were sitting on the table. Psychology and philosophy. Fitting combination, that. I'm sure a healthy dose of both could explain how what was happening now was a direct result of the time I slapped a girl in the face in kindergarten for tickling me with a Christmas tree ornament, but at that point in time I feared no amount of book-learnin' could clean the dirt off of my poor beleaguered psyche.
"Oh you are simply going to love studying philosophy," she gushed as she cracked open the fresh binding on my book. She licked her thumb before turning the pages, something I fucking HAAAATE when people do that, but even that was far from the most pressing issue at hand, so to speak. As I watched her paw my $125 book, I was fixated on the horrifying possibility that she had "sampled the goods" while I was in the loo, and as a result I would now be second...third...what-the-fuck-ever-hand exposed to Jethro's sad meat platter every time I flipped through those pages. I resigned myself then to the fact that I was now likely the proud owner of the World's Most Expensive piece of kindling.
I was about as broken as a being can get at this point, and of course that was when Jethro managed to horrify beyond belief yet again. Well, I blamed him at least; I'm not sure who initiated it since I now refused to look at either of them. All I know was there was a colossal boob now exposed and being fondled. And this chick was still fucking talking about Kant and Epistemology with a vaguely aroused look on her face.
Meanwhile, I was having something of an existential crisis. Fitting, I suppose, though I mourn now that I could not reference my textbook for answers in my life's darkest hour, as it had since been bathed in impermissible taint. That being said, I couldn't help believing I had brought this on myself through a series of very bad choices. I always said the world would end horrifically, probably because of something I did, and this event suggested that time was indeed nigh. I'm cool with the idea of lighting the fuse on the Apocalypse, but I would much prefer to do so with incendiary grenades, or at the very least a woefully misfired nitrous-fueled potato cannon. Suffice to say, neither of those things typically involve a mullet-headed male stripper, so clearly something had to be done.
I wish could say at this point that I dispatched the jackanapes with slick sexy jujitsu razzmatazz and a snappy one-liner that would force David Caruso into early retirement, but alas. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. Also I'm kind of a chicken shit. This was a golden opportunity to diffuse a sticky sitation like a BAUS, since for once I was not in the wrong. Instead I stood up with half-assed authority and mumbled something about being tired and having some pressing task to accomplish before bed, etc. I suck.
Apparently, though, this was sufficient to get the point across that I was no longer amused, as they both instantly turned fifteen shades of purple and apologized profusely. Jethro looked ready to cry as he retrieved his wayward garments from the living room floor and insisted that I keep the rest of the beer for myself. The friend apologized even more, saying she felt so bad we got off on a bad foot and hoped we could hang out again sometime. I half-ass accepted their pleas for forgiveness and walked them to the door. I then went back into the kitchen and cracked open another beer. As I did so, I could not help but recall the astute words of one Lord Simpson: "To alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
Epilogue
Shortly after the Banana Hammock Incident, as it came to be known by anyone unfortunate enough to hear this story from me, I would learn that Jethro had intended to propose a threesome that night, and my protest was the only thing that had stopped him. I would also learn that Jethro was a registered sex offender, convicted of four counts of child molestation. Nice.
Since I am a glutton for punishment, I decided during that slow evening at work where boredom reduced me to tracking down sex offenders online to find out just how many near-misses I'd had with deviants in my travels. I discovered that at the sketchy apartment complex where I lived prior to moving into the apartment where this incident took place there were no fewer than four violent offenders residing, their crimes ranging from incest to voluntary manslaughter. Someone, or something, wants me dead, maimed, molested, traumatized, or otherwise irreversibly damaged. That is what I could be thinking were I not a fighter and a generally optimistic person. Instead I'll just reflect on how this tale is a cautionary one, not to mention damn funny to tell at parties.
I had seen more than enough of him, so I turned my attention to his friend, who had been curiously silent during the debacle. She smiled at me as if no irreversible emotional trauma had just been wrought, and took the opportunity to comment on the brand-new psychology and philosophy textbooks I had bought that very day that were sitting on the table. Psychology and philosophy. Fitting combination, that. I'm sure a healthy dose of both could explain how what was happening now was a direct result of the time I slapped a girl in the face in kindergarten for tickling me with a Christmas tree ornament, but at that point in time I feared no amount of book-learnin' could clean the dirt off of my poor beleaguered psyche.
"Oh you are simply going to love studying philosophy," she gushed as she cracked open the fresh binding on my book. She licked her thumb before turning the pages, something I fucking HAAAATE when people do that, but even that was far from the most pressing issue at hand, so to speak. As I watched her paw my $125 book, I was fixated on the horrifying possibility that she had "sampled the goods" while I was in the loo, and as a result I would now be second...third...what-the-fuck-ever-hand exposed to Jethro's sad meat platter every time I flipped through those pages. I resigned myself then to the fact that I was now likely the proud owner of the World's Most Expensive piece of kindling.
I was about as broken as a being can get at this point, and of course that was when Jethro managed to horrify beyond belief yet again. Well, I blamed him at least; I'm not sure who initiated it since I now refused to look at either of them. All I know was there was a colossal boob now exposed and being fondled. And this chick was still fucking talking about Kant and Epistemology with a vaguely aroused look on her face.
Meanwhile, I was having something of an existential crisis. Fitting, I suppose, though I mourn now that I could not reference my textbook for answers in my life's darkest hour, as it had since been bathed in impermissible taint. That being said, I couldn't help believing I had brought this on myself through a series of very bad choices. I always said the world would end horrifically, probably because of something I did, and this event suggested that time was indeed nigh. I'm cool with the idea of lighting the fuse on the Apocalypse, but I would much prefer to do so with incendiary grenades, or at the very least a woefully misfired nitrous-fueled potato cannon. Suffice to say, neither of those things typically involve a mullet-headed male stripper, so clearly something had to be done.
I wish could say at this point that I dispatched the jackanapes with slick sexy jujitsu razzmatazz and a snappy one-liner that would force David Caruso into early retirement, but alas. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. Also I'm kind of a chicken shit. This was a golden opportunity to diffuse a sticky sitation like a BAUS, since for once I was not in the wrong. Instead I stood up with half-assed authority and mumbled something about being tired and having some pressing task to accomplish before bed, etc. I suck.
Apparently, though, this was sufficient to get the point across that I was no longer amused, as they both instantly turned fifteen shades of purple and apologized profusely. Jethro looked ready to cry as he retrieved his wayward garments from the living room floor and insisted that I keep the rest of the beer for myself. The friend apologized even more, saying she felt so bad we got off on a bad foot and hoped we could hang out again sometime. I half-ass accepted their pleas for forgiveness and walked them to the door. I then went back into the kitchen and cracked open another beer. As I did so, I could not help but recall the astute words of one Lord Simpson: "To alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
Epilogue
Shortly after the Banana Hammock Incident, as it came to be known by anyone unfortunate enough to hear this story from me, I would learn that Jethro had intended to propose a threesome that night, and my protest was the only thing that had stopped him. I would also learn that Jethro was a registered sex offender, convicted of four counts of child molestation. Nice.
Since I am a glutton for punishment, I decided during that slow evening at work where boredom reduced me to tracking down sex offenders online to find out just how many near-misses I'd had with deviants in my travels. I discovered that at the sketchy apartment complex where I lived prior to moving into the apartment where this incident took place there were no fewer than four violent offenders residing, their crimes ranging from incest to voluntary manslaughter. Someone, or something, wants me dead, maimed, molested, traumatized, or otherwise irreversibly damaged. That is what I could be thinking were I not a fighter and a generally optimistic person. Instead I'll just reflect on how this tale is a cautionary one, not to mention damn funny to tell at parties.
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