Uncharacteristic of my life these days, I found myself in a difficult situation yesterday. I was in a bar fight...with a toxic spike wielding ankle molester.
It was a strange bar--the kind where there's a sign that says "WE don't serve OUR kind here..." I read the sign twice, did a quick inventory of myself and shrugged. I needed to come in out of the salt and the heat, and since it was neither salty nor hot in the bar I felt relatively sure I would get served. I ordered a Molotov with a twist--on the rocks, in the dirtiest glass they had.
My would-be foe, the ankle molester, seethed in the corner, murmuring. To get my attention he hissed at me, "Apparently SOME people cannot read the sign," he prolonged the "s's" and rolled the "r's" like some Irish snake that I just knew no longer existed. He never made eye contact, rocking slowly to and fro with his attention on the table in front of him. I grinned, downed the last of my cocktail and chewed the "twist" clearing pulp from rind. I tied the rind in a knot with my tongue (a trick I was taught by a Finnish postal clerk turned Asháninka shaman in the dark alleys of the fourth world where the haircuts come with a happier ending than American Idol with Steve Tyler as "talent" judge) and flicked it across the room towards Seether, the molester. The rind nicked the corner of his table, which was waste high for me and required a bar stool for it to be neck high for him, and the ricochet angled the knotted rind slightly upward to bounce again off the molester's forehead and into his potato-leek soup causing it to slosh a bit onto the wooden table where he'd been carving his manifesto with the business end of his toxic spike. "My mistake, mate," I offered, "I was aiming for the waste bin just there behind and above your left ear. Certainly didn't mean to dampen your doodling. Say, that's quite a spike you've got."
Oddly, that was more than he could stand. He turned a crimson I have only seen one other time in my life--the paint my wife chose for the color of the walls of our kitchen. Alas, another place and time and too far away to matter.
In my momentary recollection of that kitchen my attention on the short-tempered ankle molester faltered. In that brief moment he apparently disappeared! Ahh, but the noise like that of a scampering rodent gave him away. Not vanished, just operating below the threshold of normal eye contact. He'd leaped from his bar stool and slipped beneath his table and was charging headlong at me slashing the air with his spike. In the forty or so steps it took for him to cover the 12 feet between us he continued to sputter something about launching me like a kite. Not understanding what he was meaning, and finding myself very much wanting to find out, I was left in the unfortunate position of having my guard down and reflexes slowed. It didn't help that I had washed away the salt and the heat with a rather powerful cocktail.
The dwarfish ankle mauler closed the gap and thrust his spike upward at me. Though it came close to finding its mark and rendering me a eunuch and lead falsetto of the choir, I was able to turn and follow his thrust upward to catch his energy sending the spike and the seethingly maniacal ankle demon into the overhead of the bar. It was a strange bar; the ceilings were covered in memory foam that had imprints of body parts--a hand, a face and a fist with a hole in it--randomly scattered as a set across its surface. Seether impacted the foam, first with the spike, by now dripping with a bluish iridescent toxin that smelled like Incheon harbor in late August, and then with his face. He hung there for only a moment, dazed as he pulled his face, still kitchen wall red, out of the foam and looked down around the bar area for me. Blinking twice, he used his free hand to push himself off the ceiling and free fall back to earth and the flagstone floor of the bar. It was a graceful fall and I must compliment him on his acrobatic skills. As he seemingly floated the 10 feet back to terra firma he oriented himself for another attack. I'd had enough fun and was ready to return to the salt and the heat. I didn't want to spend any more time with my new found diminutive friend. So I looked for a solution to the problem that would occupy him for a time long enough for me to pay my tab and return to my day's activities. The waste bin. Perfect.
I stepped back to avoid the falling foot slayer, and let him pass by waist height on his way to the level of my knee. I reared back and just as he lighted to earth, I let fly with a volley shot on goal relying on my experiences at playing football for Her Majesty's Club in West Hempheadshire. Seether-come-Soccer ball caromed off my boot and into the waste bin. When the dust settled and motion stopped I could see him peering out of the bin, grinning at me, pointing at my left ankle with the stubby fingers that once held the spike. Right then stars exploded in my eyes, and a searing ribbon of pain writhed its way from my foot up to my brain causing every muscle to seize and every nerve ending to sing an excruciatingly painfully off key chorus of I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys. Unbearable, and I was losing touch with my reality. All my extremities tingled and I could feel my breath shorten and vision fade. My last act was a growling yell at the severity of the pain, as if by yelling at it I could scare the pain and its toxic boy band out of my system.
I awoke some time later to an urgent need to use the restroom. My foot was soaking in a bath of warm water and I was surrounded by angels--my wife and a couple of ER nurses who I will call Brandi and Destinee (I had a an odd dream just before I woke up, I guess. Pity I never remember the details of those dreams). The pain was gone and I was hungry. Expertly bandaged and tutted over by Destinee, I was discharged in time for dinner.
Today I have a bruised and swollen foot. The story I am telling everyone is that I got spiked by a sting ray while preparing to go kite boarding, that it was the most painful experience of my life, and that warm water is the single most effective treatment for the pain. Really, the Percocet didn't affect me at all...
