Collected Prose

oblivion. Everything was always bare inside. Not a single picture on the walls, not one touch of publican warmth. At most there was a quarter-a-rack pool table, a jukebox stuffed with country-and-western songs, and a drink menu that consisted of just one drink: beer.
    Once, when the ship was in a Houston dry dock for some minor repairs, I spent the afternoon in a skid row bar with a Danish oiler named Freddy, a wild man who laughed at the slightest provocation and spoke English with an accent so thick that I scarcely understood a word he said. Walking down the street in the blinding Texas sun, we crossed paths with a drunken couple. It was still early in the day, but this man and woman were already so soused, so entrenched in their inebriation, they must have been going at the booze since dawn. They wobbled along the sidewalk with their arms around each other, listing this way and that, their heads lolling, their knees buckling, and yet both with enough energy left to be engaged in a nasty, foul-mouthed quarrel. From the sound of their voices, I gathered they’d been at it for years—a pair of bickering stumblebums in search of their next drink, forever repeating the same lines to each other, forever shuffling through the same old song and dance. As it turned out, they wound up in the same bar where Freddy and I chose to while away the afternoon, and because I was not more than ten feet away from them, I was in a perfect position to observe the following little drama:
    The man leaned forward and barked out at the woman across the table. “Darlene,” he said, in a drawling, besotted voice, “get me another beer.”
     Darlene had been nodding off just then, and it took her a good long moment to open her eyes and bring the man into focus. Another long moment ticked by, and then she finally said, “What?”
    “Get me a beer,” the man repeated. “On the double.”
    Darlene was waking up now, and a lovely, fuck-you sassiness suddenly brightened her face. She was clearly in no mood to be pushed around. “Get it yourself, Charlie,” she snapped back at him. “I ain’t your slave, you know.”
    “Damn it, woman,” Charlie said. “You’re my wife, ain’t you? What the hell did I marry you for? Get me the goddamn beer!”
    Darlene let out a loud, histrionic sigh. You could tell she was up to something, but her intentions were still obscure. “Okay, darling,” she said, putting on the voice of a meek, simpering wife, “I’ll get it for you,” and then stood up from the table and staggered over to the bar.
    Charlie sat there with a grin on his face, gloating over his small, manly victory. He was the boss, all right, and no one was going to tell him different. If you wanted to know who wore the pants in that family, just talk to him.
    A minute later, Darlene returned to the table with a fresh bottle of Bud. “Here’s your beer, Charlie,” she said, and then, with one quick flick of the wrist, proceeded to dump the contents of the bottle onto her husband’s head. Bubbles foamed up in his hair and eyebrows; rivulets of amber liquid streamed down his face. Charlie made a lunge for her, but he was too drunk to get very close. Darlene threw her head back and burst out laughing. “How do you like your beer, Charlie?” she said. “How do you like your fucking beer?”
    Of all the scenes I witnessed in those bars, nothing quite matched the bleak comedy of Charlie’s baptism, but for overall oddness, a plunge into the deepest heart of the grotesque, I would have to single out Big Mary’s Place in Tampa, Florida. This was a large, brightly lit emporium that catered to the whims of dockhands and sailors, and it had been in business for many years. Among its features were half a dozen pool tables, a long mahogany bar, inordinately high ceilings, and live entertainment in the form of quasi-naked go-go dancers. These girls were the cornerstone of the operation, the element that set Big Mary’s Place apart from other establishments of its kind—and one look told you that they weren’t hired for their beauty, nor for their ability to dance. The sole criterion was size. The bigger the better was how Big Mary put it, and the bigger you got, the more money you were paid. The effect was quite disturbing. It was a freak show of flesh, a cavalcade of bouncing white blubber, and with four girls dancing on the platform behind the bar at once, the act resembled a casting call for the lead role in Moby-Dick . Each girl