Trache Man

I walked in late to work a few Sundays ago. The other asshole that was supposed to open the bar never showed up which means I need to go haul all the bottles upstairs, into the bar and put them on the shelves, neatly. I do this with grace and patience if not a bit of laziness and to my own speed. There's a man sitting in the bar. Old, frail, salt and pepper mustache, Airborne Marines hat. Before I step behind the bar he approaches me and puts a hand over his neck and grumbles..."Bar open?" As goddamned hungover and "fuck you" that I am, I begrudgingly say "I can serve beer and wine, but I don't have ice yet to pour a mixed drink."
He looks at me, I look at him. He stares at me for a moment and my eyes slowly scan down his face and to his neck where there's a hole a little larger than a quarter. He puts his hand over the hole and says, in a garbled voice, "Budweiser." He takes the fifth bar stool to my right, his left, the one closest to the wall.
I unlock the cooler, grab a Budweiser, take off the top and then put his drink in front of him. He grabs it and guzzles.
He puts his hand over his throat hole and says "thanks".
"No problem," I said and began unpacking the bottles of liquor.
From behind me, he started to speak.
"I was on the train and they took me off because I was passing out."
I turned around to look at him at he just had this odd blank stare.
"Fuck," I thought, "I just fucking got here and now I have to deal with this?"
"Sucks" I said to him and continued to put the bottles on the shelf.
"Was going to Montana" I heard a thick, marbled voice say.
I turned around and looked at him.
"Sucks." I said again.
He stared at me from behind his glasses, from beneath his trucker-style cap, from over his black and white mustache.
"Well, you're here now," I said both pissed off that this guy was actually here, on a Sunday night and when I first walked in.
He remained silent for awhile as I put the bottles on the shelf and turned on the official "Open for Business" lights.
I turned on Baseball Tonight and began watching a Dodgers game.
"Blarghfullmetaught" I heard a noise come from behind me.
"Manny," I heard him say.
It was one of the first games Manny Ramirez had played since he was no longer a Boston Red Sox but an LA Dodger.
"Who would have thought" is what I finally deciphered from his hand on hole communication.
"Yeah, he's been hitting pretty well," I said.
"Yarglmefarg," is all I heard from the man.
I walked out from behind the bar and stood just beneath the television, my back to him.
That's when I heard it. A motor. And a slurping noise. I turned around and the man had grabbed a three-foot hose from his bag and stuck one end into the hole in his throat.
A thick sludge-sucking sound came from his surroundings.
"Oh fuck," I thought and walked outside.
Now let me just say, I have nothing but sympathy for this man. But most people that have a tracheotomy usually cover up that hole and use the phlegm shop-vac in a private place.
I walked back inside and the guy just looked sort of dead, staring at the ground. Occasionally slugging at his beer. Nobody else was in the bar. Just me and him and a baseball game. It looked like a scene right out of a David Lynch movie.
I walked behind the man to see if he was almost done with his beer. I figured the guy wouldn't want another and that as soon as he finished this one, he'd leave. Just as I walk behind the bar, he perks up and puts some money down and motions to me that he'll take another.
"God fucking damnit!" I thought. Get out of here, man. Take your hole, your spit vacuum and your bag of phlegm out of here. I grabbed another bottle of bud and put it in front of him.
He nodded.
The guy started weirding me out. He just sat there, looked at the ground and then every fifteen minutes he pulled that hose out from his bag, turned on his device and slurp, slurp, slurp, a brown chunky syrup was extracted and sat warmly in a container inside a beaten up gray gym bag that had been trying to get to Montana.
Every time I heard that motor kick on I left the bar. I'd stand outside and look in to see when he was finished or I'd walk into the back office, choking back my own urge to vomit.
At one point when I returned to the bar, a woman was sitting on the opposite end of the drinky-suck guy.
"This should be interesting," I thought. I stood behind the bar and this guy was staring at the woman. He put his hand over his throat and said "Hello!"
She smiled politely and asked for a martini. Once we determined what kind, I began putting the ingredients into a shaker and shook up the liquor and ice.
"Don't see that too often," the man hacked out. "Shaking drinks."
"Well, you're supposed to shake martini's or stir them I suppose but usually you shake them."
He looked at me with that blank stare that made me what to smash the martini shaker into his skull.
Instead, I poured the drink into a glass and set it in front of the woman.
"Thank-you," she said and took a drink, "Yummy!"
"Mmm, yummy," I thought, just as the man began fingering some napkins out of the napkin caddy and wipe at his dripping hole. He crumpled the used napkins and set them down on the bar.
With a sick smile I turned my head and looked at the woman. She looked at me with the same kind of smile, the kind that you paint over the look of disgust.
Silence.
It was a very long and uncomfortable silence. I could have said something but I didn't want to instigate a conversation that this guy might try to join in on. Luckily, I didn't have to. He reached into his bag and grabbed the tube.
Just before he inserted it into the hole in his neck the woman got up and said, "I'm going to sit over in the corner."
She got up and the guy waved goodbye as he inserted the tube and hit the "on" switch.
"Shit motherfucker!" I yelled in my head and walked outside. I was just getting annoyed. The sound of the motor, the slurping noise and just the idea that this guy thought it was socially acceptable.
But what the fuck can I do? He's handicapped. I can't discriminate. You don't bar people in wheelchairs, or have massive burn scars or deformities or anything like that. But damn it, can you just fucking get up and walk the 50 feet to the bathroom. Suck away in the stall, man!
I was getting irritated. I started half-choking. I walked away again. I mean shit. I can understand that a guy in that position, the one thing he both needs and doesn't need is a drink. I would want to drink too. But I'd probably sit in my room and be tipping a bottle of vodka.
Anyway, I couldn't take it anymore. Even when he wasn't doing it, I could see in my mind the insertion of the tube, the sound of the motor, the sound of the phlegm being removed and then the sight of him pulling the tube out and the long strings of brown crap hanging around the hole. Then watching his hand get all spider-like as it pulled napkins out of the caddy and wiped his throat hole and then balling up the napkins and putting them on the bar.
He did it again and once he finished, once he turned the motor off, put the tube back in the bag and wiped his throat, I said:
"I'm sorry, sir. I understand your situation but can you please do that in the bathroom?"
I was shaking. I didn't know if this guy was crazy or now that he had two beers, maybe he was drunk (he was pretty skinny).
He puts his hand on his hole and says "What?"
"Look," I say "I've got ice, I've got glasses, food and stuff right here and you keep using your device, right here at the bar where people drink and sometimes eat. Can you do that in the bathroom?"
"No one has ever said anything to me before," he said and took his beer and walked away.

Two weeks later, he showed back up and ordered a Bud Light from me. I pretended not to recognize him. He sat in the corner and drank it. He didn't use his pump or anything.
He just drank his beer and left.
I'm guessing that I was the only person on the planet at that time dealing with a situation like that.

Ever Heard Of Just Shutting The Fuck Up?

Yeah, you. Talking to me. Talking at me. You have no idea as to how much I want to recreate your face, just stick my fist into your mouth and twist, twist and twist some more until your eyeballs are itching and flickering due to you own chin hair crawling and growing long in the night.
Shut up? Maybe?
Here's the new Zen...death. Don't meditate, perform yoga or light a fucking candle. Take a glass and smash it on your face. Let your eyes bleed and distort your vision. Follow that new map. The crimson map. Buy a canoe or a shotgun, or both. Travel or suicide. But all in all, put your goddamned mouth to rest.

I Can Get Us Out Of Here (No, I Can't)

We need to leave this place. Pack your bag with bottles, the fuller ones, paper, pens and an old t-shirt, one that you can use to either wipe your ass with or wrap a wound with.
The shitstorm is here and I know you don't love me and that's fine but we'll want to get the fuck out of here and maybe we'll re-learn to like each other after we escape together, by a hair, by a thread, by a shot, because we split a smoke instead of each dragging full. We got out of that place. That place that is in my head, in my nightmares and my dreams, that escape that a tornado always manages to find. "Fuck you, 'nado!"
I call upon bravado, bullshit and phoniness. "I will lead the way!" You look at me like I'm a fucking idiot. I am one. My back hurts and spasms. "I've got nothing." You run. Typical. As soon as I admit that I'm out of gas you go look for a ride.
Alone now. I feel it on my back. The night is thicker, denser, heavy like a fur coat thrown on my back. I can barely breathe. Thankfully, you dropped the bag. I really want a drink, in the middle of this darkness. I can at least try to get me out of here, after a few hits...

The Human Living Hangover

I am a hangover, I am not sure if I am human anymore. I barely know what not being either drunk or hungover feels like. Sleeping through most of the day, awake until 7 am, drinking coffee at 8pm, looking like a bloated tick, full of lyme disease. Surrounded by scissors and the idea of painting all the crosses in the city black. Drunk, hungover, I struggle to live in any "normal" society. Try to figure out when to keep my mouth shut or recognize when my voice is getting loud. Slow down when my drink forces me to speed up.
I stand behind the bar and struggle to put on a happy face and say "hi, there, how are you, what may I get you?" I just stand there, look dead, struggle to not throw up on myself, grip my side of the bar.
I leave work early, telling myself I'll just go to sleep. I crack open a beer, just a beer, make sure I'm good and tired. Alright, have a shot, really put me to sleep. Fine, have another shot and another beer. Not tired. Alright, give me the bottle...pass the fuck out and feel the pain of it all tomorrow, just let me sleep tonight.

Suck My Fuck Clock

I don't want to get out of bed, ever. A drink is placed just out of reach, it forces me to crawl onto the floor and I grab the drink and suck it down like a prisoner turned into a starved rat. I look around, I look for another drink and find it, just a few feet away. I don't bother to get up, I just crawl to the next drink. The sun is out and I say "fuck you, sun" as I suck down the booze. I don't know if I have to go to work. I think I might...just have another drink and *poof* there it is, in front of the TV, using Voltaire as a coaster. I need to finish both of you...I think as I drag myself across the floor, pick up the drink and the book. The room is too bright, I only read in the dark, or in burning apartments and right now I have neither. I sense that there is a drink in the closet, I move toward it with book in hand. I open the closet door and there is the gold, the oil, the forget, the fuck you, the eat shit motherfucking drink. I get into the closet, sit beneath suits and winter coats and close the door. I suck the drink, and finally my brain is alive...yes, thoughts by way of death. Suffocating, cut off, alone, shrunken. I feel more alive now than I do on the bus, going to a fucking job.
In here I will escape and I will not go to work. Do I even have a job?

Cocksuckers

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