EMAIL HIM

His Philosophy

We’re in a dark nightclub with small round tables. There is a dim, blue lamp and a red glass ashtray on each table. All of the tables are occupied by at least one person. Some smoke. Most are drinking martinis or brown drinks from tall, thin tom collins glasses. Ice clinks. A man converses using business-like hand gestures to a woman who tilts her head more than slightly and nods as her bleached-blond, hair sprayed poof hangs off the side of her head. Her face is gnarled by an overly polite wincey statement as she nods, “yeah, yeah”, as if to say, “I’m interested in your intellectual conversation,” when really everybody knows she is saying, “I’m a sober, dignified, and divorced woman of 43, and I won’t be having sexual intercourse with you unless you prove yourself to be a highly paid man, take me out on a few dates to expensive restaurants, and develop an exclusive relationship with me. Until then, I'm hard pressed to find any interest in you.” Which, of course, is the socially accepted way of being an expensive whore.

Opposite the bar there’s a small stage in front of a brick wall, and in the center of the wall the name of the nightclub buzzes in blue neon, the only light on the stage. Front and center is a single microphone on a microphone stand and a there’s a wooden bar stool in the corner. A spotlight comes on and out jumps a funny-looking little man dressed in a old black tux too big for him with a red bow tie, and a flat, Styrofoam hat with a red, white and blue band, and he carries a cane. He’s not Danny Devito short but he’s pretty damn short. Short enough that it’s funny when he starts to dance, when it wouldn’t be funny if he was like 5’10”.

“Ah cha cha cha! Yatza ha! A cha cha cha! (tap dances) Yadda cha, yadda cha, yadda cha! (throws Styrofoam hat and cane off opposite sides of stage and throws out arms as though saying “I’m finished now. Wasn’t I a wonderful dancer? Now is the time for much applauding”).”

The audience claps half heartedly and a couple people offer laughs. They are confused and waiting for the comedy. Apparently, the performer decides they are not confused enough, so he puts his hands behind his back and makes a fish face and gallops around the stage in a circle like a prize equestrian.

The people are waiting for airplane jokes and relationship humor and maybe a poltically unbiased impersonation of the President of the United States. One woman laughs hysterically but most of the audience stare and chuckle uncomfortably, and you can hear guys audibly whispering “What an asshole,” to their dates. But the dates know the audible whisperer is really saying, “Ain’t I much more of a man than that guy? I’m worried that deep down I might be half-gay and I’m using this easy target in order to highlight how much more desirable and heterosexually attractive I am than him.”

Then the weird little man takes off his tuxedo jacket too big for him and twirls it around and throws it out to the audience as though they would kill each other to get a piece of it, but it falls to the floor and a the people around it give it a bored glance. Then the performer takes off his tie and does the same thing. It lands on the back of the chair of a plain-looking woman sitting with two plain-looking friends. She picks up the tie with her thumb and index finger as if it’s a pair of shitty underwear and tosses it on the floor as if to say “I cannot believe I am in the same room with this dwarfish, degenerate twit, and there’s no way in hell I would ever have sexual intercourse with him, let alone touch his flea-bitten tie, how disgusting,” when everyone knows she’s really thinking, “I’m a plain-looking woman out with my plain-looking friends and the most exciting thing that ever happens in my life is when I get to wear jeans to the office on casual Fridays, so now I’ll attempt to degrade this easy target as though I have high standards, or even standards at all, when in fact this is just the kind of odd-looking man that I’m destined to marry and have children with.”

He starts to unbutton his white, fluffy tuxedo shirt too big for him and Bill lets out a “Woo!” Bill is the guy that yells “Freebird!” at shows that aren’t Skynyrd shows. That’s him. It’s one guy that does that. Every time you’ve ever heard that, it’s Bill. He’s a middle-aged man balding on top with a gray mullet in the back, who doesn’t know much about music outside of the play list of Classic Rock 100.5 FM, which has been the exact play list for the past 25 years. He's a stocky, about 5'9", and he usually has an odd colored golf shirt on with the collar messed up and some stone wash jeans. He wears Reebox but does not lace the top three lace-holes so the tongues appear as large as a cows' tongues. He's usually holding whichever brand of beer running a commercial campaign at the time with the most bikini-clad women. If you ever see Bill, do me a favor: Go up and say hi, and then when he’s not looking, put cyanide in his drink.

So the performer is unbuttoning his shirt and when he opens it we see that he had a tuxedo T-shirt under his real tuxedo the whole time. That gets a few laughs.

Now the little man is staring to the left and to the right, wide-eyed at the audience, bobbing his head and smiling as if to say “Yeah…yeah…yeah, al-right! Outta sight,” as he struts up to the microphone, all cocky. He grabs the microphone off of the stand and his head is still bobbing and he puts the stand aside and puts the microphone up to his mouth like he’s going to say something but he doesn’t.

“Come aaaaaaaoonnn!” yells a drunk, bearded man who plays guitar in the city’s token Terrible Old White Man Blues Band that covers “Soul Man,” Blues Brothers style (and they all have Blues Brothers sunglasses that they wear just for that song, but the singer usually keeps his on the whole set), Stevie Ray Vaughn with note for note solos courtesy of the tab in the back of Guitar Magazine, and if they feel really freaky they might reach into the White Man Blues Archives and pull out some Johnny Winter. The man is aged 47, and is out on a date with a barfly. Immediately upon hearing the heckle, the performer drops the microphone, walks quickly over to the man who calls himself a “blues man” ala Ralph Macchio in Crossroads, and stands right in front of him and looks him in the eye. There is a tense silence as though a fight is about to happen. The 47 year old bearded obnoxious drunk stares at the performer with a cocky smile as if to say, “What are you gonna do to me, tiny?”, when everybody knows he’s really thinking, “Fuck I don’t want to land in jail again tonight over this turd, and when they get wind of this on the PetersBluesCafe.com guestbook, I’ll be dead meat.” The performer then turns around, bends over, and drops his pants and moons the man whose only enjoyment in life is purchasing blues records like Robert Johnson’s boxed set and only listening to them once just so he can brag about how many blues records he owns. Painted on the performer’s left bare asscheek is the word “BURP” and on the right bare asscheek the word “ME”.

The bearded old drunk, thinking himself justified in kicking the small man’s ass (his prim and proper barfly was with him, after all), lunges from his seat. A huge, muscular dude of about 6’5” who’s been standing in the corner all night acts quickly, grabbing the middle aged drunk, restraining him.

The performer gets back up on stage and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, Ox Johnson, my bodyguard.” Ox Johnson waves and three people clap, sloooowly.

Finally the performer speaks. He curls around the microphone, acting like Jim Morrison and says in a breathy Kathleen Turner voice, “Daddy needs a mama.” He reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out red lipstick and applies it to his lips, sloppily, saying “Daddy needs a mama” over and over again. There’s still that one woman laughing hysterically, but the rest are sighing and booing.

Then he walks off the stage, goes to the bar and orders a Jack and Coke. People are booing and yelling bad swears, like the “F” word, and the “A-hole” word and the “S” word and the other “F” word and the "B" word and the "DH" word and the “MF” word and the “SH” word and the “D” word and hell (I can say hell can’t I?). He walks back up to the stage, grabs the microphone, brings it out into the audience among the squeals of feedback and sets it on the table of the plain looking woman. He sits in a chair next to the plain looking woman who acted so superior with the tie. He starts yelling “BAYYYOOOO!!! BAYYYYOOOO!!!!” still with the lipstick on. He says to the plain-looking woman in a Pittsburgh accent, “Man, 'is guy sucks, don’t 'ee. I mean, look at de jark.” (She cocks her neck back with a disgusted look on her face). “I know what yay mean. You’re much better'n 'at guy. I mean, huney, what're yay even daying inna same rame with dis dworfish, degenerate twit. There’s no way in hell yay would have sexual innercorse with him, let alane touch his flea-bitten tie. How 'isgusting.” The entire dialog is picked up on the microphone and broadcast throughout the entire nightclub, even in the bathroom. The woman’s friend says, “Let’s go Darlene,” and Darlene and her plain-looking friends get up and leave.

They leave a tip for the waitress. The performer takes the five dollars and puts it down the front of his pants.

By this time the club owner is getting pissed because more than just Darlene and her homely friends are leaving, the waitress is getting pissed because the performer is putting tips down his pants, right next to his twig and berries, and the bouncers are getting pissed because some of the pissed customers (both applicable in the English slang of the word pissed meaning “drunk” and in the American slang of the word meaning “angry”) are becoming extremely hostile and there’s nothing worse for a bouncer than a drunk patron in a foul mood.

So Moe, the club owner (not the Moe Sizlack on the popular animated television program The Simpsons, although this Moe also has the last name Sizlack), tells one of the bouncers to throw the performer out, but when he tries to do this, Ox stands in the way. They square off and are about to fight, when in walks an Afghani man in the latest crude-but-effective Palestinian psycho bomb suit fashion.

“Meckaleka hi mecca hiney ho!” yells the suicide bomber. He didn’t say those exact words but that’s what Jombi on Pee Wee’s Playhouse used to say, and it sounds somewhat Arabic, so I figured I’d just use that.

At least ten men rush toward him, but he lights the fuse and blows the entire place up along with half a city block, and there’s much carnage.

Three days later a firefighter finds a notebook, charred around the edges, but the words inside are still decipherable. Within the notebook are 7 writings that will have revolutionized Humankind 40 years from the day of the nightclub suicide bombing.