it is drunk

a girl slid off a bar stool at Doyles and melted into the floor. her unsteady, lean-on-whatever's-within-reach hobble to the exit was in slo-mo and hysterical to watch. i put my hand on a table as i choked back a laugh. the poor thing had no clue. tomorrow morning she'll be 'sick'. i sat next to an off-the-boat Irish kid at the Behan who had 7 empty pints of Guinness in front of him lined up like clay ducks. he was counting and gulping and midway through #8 i asked: 'how can you get away with this and not be out cold?'. 'i'm tough' he squinted. as soon as he drained the last pint his head hit the bar like a brick. an older woman drinking giant buckets of cheap Merlot was ok until she ordered 'just one more tiny li'l glass'. her phrasing clear as day until, when i checked back, i got this: 'erm moumph frun grad ur'. she had crossed the slur river into Neanderthal. an octogenarian and Very Proper Lady in high heels, a sparkly blouse with exaggerated eye-liner (improperly applied and smeary) was on her way to the ladies room. a low heel cracked under foot. she grabbed a railing in the nick of time. a waitress asked if she was alright. 'i'm fine,' she insisted, 'just a wee bit tipsy'. after 'tipsy' paddled her way into the loo the waitress rolled her eyes: 'tipsy?! my ass. she's hammered!' funny how we pretend we're not destroyed when everyone else can see that we are. just try to convince a drunk he's been shut off for his own good. he goes ballistic. if they're cute you put up with the vomit potential in hopes of a score, but inevitably pretty becomes not so pretty and you make your way home alone. on the other hand, one lame night in a glitzy bar in Amsterdam called 'It' as in 'look at it, she's gorgeous!' i'm drinking and staring and hoping and worked up all at once in this Dutch playground crammed to the gills with the young and the hot. a skateboard hero with a watercolor moustache is so drunk he 's propped up like an abandoned doll. his legs hang wide, his arms weigh a ton, his hands are engorged. he slouches against a mirror wall, nursing a vodka. every thirty seconds he belches. you can tell because his cheeks puff out, 'bluh.' his lips are parted and slippery behind a puke pout, puke breath, puke skin. one chartreuse bubble floats sadly in front of his Novocain face. i want to rip his clothes off but i keep to myself. 'it' wouldn't go over big at 'It'. it is drunk.

ass

because you sit on it for hours, it is rarely clean or smooth or pretty. ass topography is speckled with pimply red dots + cuneiform hairs. a hammock of water balloon flesh hides the under-ass parenthesis + worse - a shit chunk gets caught in ass hair, dangling like a tick in the jungle. a pristine shiny clear-skinned tight ass is a rare find indeed. it doesn't survive much past 14. which is why, after a few beers, a martini, a weed hit you blur the view + make it right. you ignore the spots, the dingle berry, the saggity ass + give it a squeeze or a bite + as for your very own back porch - it is next to impossible t take in. a twist in front of a mirror can offer a 3/4 snap, but gives no indication of how broad of beam or distended one has become. the stand-above-the-mirror-on-the-floor approach reflects an alien ass crack high on spider legs, walnut balls, a cock tip in a peek-a-boo, sweaty bush. without a friend with a camera you'll never see your fat ass the way it really looks. a friend of mine twirling out of the shower felt a soft slap on the back of her upper thigh only to realize that it was delivered by her very own cheek. a blubbery wet buss. it made her laugh, but she was horrified. i think asses begin, unless belonging to an athlete or a ballet dancer, to find gravity in the late twenties + even if it's a tight ass, it becomes a dirty ass. it's been sitting on itself long enough to accumulate a collection of creases + black heads. if yr lucky yr boyfriend or girlfriend will pop n scrub n smooth you out like a soap stone. but the thing is, no matter how disturbing this part of the body might be, we're interested. we look. maybe face first, or tits, or crotch, but a nice shot of a nice ass in blue jeans will not be ignored. a kid walks by, you turn + you look (nervous that you might be caught + hoping at the same time he wants t see if you wanted t see + you both hide behind a fluttering japanese fan + a faux 'what you lookin' at?' pissed-off face). still, you look. you always will. the way an ass walks is an action miracle. male or female. a big hefty left, right, left ass-in-a-dress is a fellini spectacle worshiped for centuries. + how many tourista walk all the way around the statue of david just t catch a glimpse of that forever young rear end? maybe, unless you're a total pedophile, a dirty ass, a be-zitted bum, an ass crack with pubic seaweed sprouting out like gunfire, is hot as hell. we all have our favorites. we all fantasize about how so n so's will look out of shorts or stepping out of the shower. we can't help it. we even watch each other watching. it gives us a snort. still, there are some asses impossible to imagine. on some, there's no movement whatsoever, or what appears to be no ass at all, just a plumb line from upper back to legs, or, weirdly, an indentation - as if there's a vacant lot where on others actual chub bounces along with a smile. i would kill t examine, like an archeologist, one of these ass negatives in the flesh.