Goodbye to Mr. Franklin

DATE: Monday, July 25
PLACES: Showme's, Krieger's, Hilltop, Harrah's
POISONS OF CHOICE: Budweiser draft, Bud bottles, double vodka cranberries
CAST OF CHARACTERS: Jason, Emma, Art, Christine, Katherine, Roxana, Eric, Patricia, Ashley, Dan


Mondays and Tuesdays are my days off work, almost without exception.

Mondays, from late August through early May, I'm on a men's bowling league with five other guys. That's guaranteed early drinking - the only week I skipped the beer during last year's league was when I was taking antibiotics for pneumonia.

We start around 6:45 or seven at night, buying each other rounds of pitchers and buckets, and usually at least three of us stay to bowl another game or four.

When the bowling alley kicks us out, we usually meet up with more friends at Krieger's. Or we head to Old Hilltop for shuffleboard or another hole in the wall, the Brew House, for karaoke. When the bars close, it's either someone else's house or the casino. This is the basic Monday night ritual.

In the off season of bowling, though, I usually hold off drinking until at least nine or ten at night. It's just good manners.

--

Today turns out a little bit different. Today's first drink is poured at 3:30 in the afternoon by a blonde bartender in pink hot pants.

I'm in the middle of an errand run with my friend and roommate Jason. He just braved the lengthy midafternoon line at the DMV while I wandered down the shopping plaza in hundred-degree heat for a dozen and a half miscellaneous impulse buys at Dollar Tree.

Now, on the way to Sam's Club, we decide to stop and eat at Showme's - a St. Louis chain very similar to Hooters. On the way in we're both seized with the urge to take advantage of the advertised happy hour specials.

We each order a medium-sized draft beer and are prompted by our pleasant, fake-tittied waitress to upgrade our order to a pitcher with two glasses. I assume she can smell my rapidly pickling liver from several yards away.

So one pitcher turns into three while we sit at a round-top table, eyes conveniently chest-level to the waitress. With the exception of a table over my shoulder, we are the only guys under the age of 45 in here. It's mainly the post-work blue collar crowd, with a couple guys in business suits extending their five-martini lunches well into the afternoon.

With a few exceptions, the classic rock digital satellite channel is providing pleasures of both the guilty and non-guilty varieties. The six-and-a-half minute album version of Boston's "Don't Look Back," a steaming turd of a pop song I never get sick of, definitely falls into the latter category.

I was starving when I walked into Showme's, but the empty calories quickly pile up. Fried, processed Philly Steak Rolls and a cheese-heavy house salad with honey french dressing both get washed down with 96 ounces or so of draft beer. All I eat of my actual meal are the seasoned fries that come in a separate bowl.

I end up boxing the monstrous chicken breast (it has to be an eight-to-ten-ounce filet), the cheese and vegetables piled high atop it and the bed of rice. Will eat that in about 24 hours. I've got a beer buzz to chase and don't want to weigh it down with something so trivial as a restaurant entree.

Jason is on a time schedule; has to get over to a friend's house to write and record country songs. Otherwise, we probably would continue our collision course in drunkenness and the evening would eventually turn ugly. Something about moderate drinking before you head to Sam's, though - you end up browsing and meandering a hell of a lot more.

We spend a half hour just inside the door, looking at DVDs and CDs and printers and digital answering machines and all kinds of other shit I can't afford because of stuff like the happy hour at Showme's. I'm here mainly for food items, and for reasons unbenownst to me, I seize upon a five-pound glass jar of Four Bean Salad.

--

The buzz slowly fades as I put away my Dollar Tree and Sam's purchases and occupy myself with other busywork around the apartment. Then I end up watching TV and giving myself an extensive beard-and-sideburns trim and don't have time for the shower.

I'm actually more occupied with figuring out how I was getting to Krieger's. It's a nice walk at night when the temperature and Missouri humidity aren't as high, but I'm a chronic, compulsive sweater. This time of year, even exertion of the mildest variety can leave my shirt soaked through.

I end up in the passenger seat of an enormous pickup truck driven by my friend Art from the Monday night bowling league. Summers, Art plays in a softball league with his daughters, both of whom are in their mid-twenties. Art's closer to fifty, but he's totally down to earth and stuck in time and guaranteed fun to party with.

I walk into Krieger's around 10:25 with Art and his younger daughter, Katherine. She's general manager of a Papa John's in a ghetto neighborhood close to where I grew up. With them is a younger guy named Eric - I've never met him before, and he's obviously not 21.

It's kind of a segregated situation at Krieger's. The only friends I have up there are two coworkers and friends - Emma and Roxana - and they barely know Art and Co. So I'm at the table with Emma and Roxana, which is right next to Art, Katherine and Eric, kind of chameleon-shifting conversations.

I cut out shortly after with Art and Co. He had told a couple other friends from his softball league he'd meet them at Hilltop, our regular corner bar destination. Emma makes plans to meet us up there sometime before close so we can all go to the casino.

--

Old Hilltop is fairly commonplace tonight - eight or ten regulars lining the horseshoe-shaped bar and four other fellow barflies playing darts across the room. I spend most of the next two hours slamming bottles of Bud and playing shuffleboard with Art, Eric and their softball-league friend, Theresa.

Theresa is closer in age to Art and resembles Kathy Bates. (I keep picturing her naked and climbing into a hot tub with Jack Nicholson.) She's also my teammate the first two games, which we tie with Art and Eric.

I'm on the end of the table closer to the bar, with Eric, and we have fun playfully trash talking each other. It's all tongue in cheek, especially when it becomes obvious we're both fat guys without much faith in our abilities.

When Jason shows back up, he insists on teaming up with me against Art's two daughters. We're just about to lose that game when time runs out and the Severe Tire Damage-looking metal teeth pop back up in the middle of the board. Jason insists the game doesn't count and pushes for a rematch. We win that.

Meantime, I remember I promised daughter Christine I'd put some hip-hop songs on the jukebox. Me, I love rap and R+B, but the Hilltop jukebox is far from the best source. For years, the only black artist on there was Al Green, and finally the owner added a single Motown compilation along with Now That's What I Call Music 14 and 15. Which feature the hits of Chingy and Ludacris, and induce winces from the redneck-ass regulars.

It's funny to watch Christine and Katherine's immediate transformation from wallflowers to booty dancers the second a rap song comes on. Even though there's almost no bass coming through the 1980s-era Hilltop wall-mounted speaker system.

--

When bartender Cathy begins the process of kicking everyone out, Art asks if we're still going to the casino. He's one of those social drinkers who's always asking what everyone is doing next.

"Where are you guys going after this?"
Five minutes later: "What do you think you're doing when the bar closes?"
Ten minutes after that: "You still planning on going to the boat?"
Five minutes after that: "You think you're going to the boat then?"

I ride to Harrah's with Jason and Emma. The latter is the inveterate gambler of our group - her last paycheck, cashed a week ago Friday, was donated to Harrah's in full that same night.

Emma has been borderline penniless in the nine days since. I think her mom gave her forty bucks or something tonight. She borrowed twenty from Jason at the boat a couple weeks back and still hasn't repayed. While we're on our way to Harrah's, Jason brings up the outstanding debt three times.

--

I sit at the main bar on the Mardi Gras side of the boat while Emma runs off to the Double Down Stud table and Jason to the bathroom. I'm like four bucks up on video poker, with a double vodka-cranberry in my hand, when Ashley and Dan walk up.

Both were at Hilltop, huddling together at the trivia box, and said they weren't coming to the casino. Of course not. But here they are, and apparently it's a little awkward.

When Dan heads for the men's room, Ashley tells me this is one of the first times they've hung out since they broke up. They're operating under the pretense of "let's still be friends," but she's not enjoying a second of it.

Ashley seems a little more interested in talking to me. And why not? I worked with her for over a year, partied with her dozens of times and turned her down for sex on several occasions.

I have somewhat superficial taste in girls - it's nothing I'm proud of but not exactly anything I've been able to change. Ashley, when I met her, weighed about 65 pounds more than she weighs now. I didn't look at her twice.

She was rather physically fond of me, though, and occasionally we'd make out at parties or she'd end up sleeping in my bed. Nothing but kissing and groping ever happened, due in no small part to the fact that after a certain point in my drinking night, my sexual equipment goes into sleep mode.

I started to come around on my opinion of Ashley, well, just when she got together with Dan. They lasted ten months, and she's moved on to some guy I haven't yet met. But they're "just dating." And Ashley is a Size 2 now. I have to say, I'm somewhat interested.

--

Over the next hour or so, I plop down into various faux-leather chairs and drop five bucks here, twenty bucks there.

Art is wandering around like a zombie, plopping twenties into any machine that will take them, while Emma and Jason end up on the other side of the casino, playing the Men in Black penny slots.

I end up in the seat next to Ashley at a penny slot in the corner. Dan is playing the machine to her left, and Art's daughter Christine is sitting to my right.

I bring everyone Brass Balls shots from the bar, then for no apparent reason, Ashley gives me ten dollars to gamble with. I lose it, but in the length of time it takes to lose it I suddenly feel like I've gained back a little ground with a girl who should have every right to hate my fucking guts. I was a dick to her on a few occasions. Like ten.

Ashley and Dan leave around 3:15, I guess, and even though she doesn't seem too wasted at all, Dan won't let her drive. Won't leave her side, in fact.

So they disappear, and I have that same conversation I always have with Christine - how is it that she always stays relatively sober, has the job of babysitting her drunk-ass dad and still seems to have a good time. She kind of shrugs her shoulders and says that's just the way it is, some things will never change, and I head over to Men in Black.

--

I lose probably thirty bucks to Harrah's, but in the process of my drinking day I spend $130. That's not even counting Sam's and the Dollar Tree. My last seven bucks goes toward a chicken salad croissant from the Jester's Deli at the boat.

Then, after Jason and Emma have lost damn near every dollar they came with, we stop at the Cafe Aroma all-night diner for the gaudiest in late-night drunk munchies, the three-foot chocolate longjohn donut with red, white and blue sprinkles.

Jason and I simply refer to it as "The John," and between the two of us we've consumed eight to ten of them this year alone. The John is never purchased before the hour of 4 a.m., and its grease shows through the paper bag that holds it before we can even take a bite.

I eat some john, watch the first two episodes of the "Daily Show" Indecision 2004 DVD (a Sam's Club half-drunk impulse buy) and slink off to bed around sunrise. I'll wake up dead broke, hung over and without a damn thing to do.