Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Chickenhead Gets Drunk

April 26, 2001
THE PERILS OF GIRL SCOUT COOKIES


 


Rick, Ed and I started setting up the equipment. Our band, Rock Paper
Scissors, was playing at the Happy Hand Grenade pub. Jeremy, a friend of
Ed’s who worked security at pro-wrestling shows, helped us out. We were told
that the other band, The Sockdolagers, had cancelled; so, we had to play two
sets. It’s not as if we didn’t have enough songs, but, hey, we weren’t The
Who, and two sets of any unknown band is a little much. But we were
troopers, so we agreed.
After setting up, we all sat at or around the bar until it was time to go
on. I don’t usually drink, but I figured that if we were the only band
playing, I needed to be feeling a little something. Now, I’m not a fan of
beer, or wine, or scotch, or anything like that, which is why I don’t go
into bars ordering drinks willy-nilly. I remembered a drink I had at my
sister’s boyfriend’s bar called a Girl Scout cookie, a very effeminate drink
to be asking for with vodka, peppermint schnapps, and something with cocoa
in it. It was like a thin mint. I didn’t get too many weird looks as I sat
next to Jeremy, talking about his security endeavors. The drunker I got, the
more loud and bizarre my end of the conversation became.
“Do you know any bar jokes?” I asked Jeremy.
“Bar jokes?” he said. “Uh, a ham sandwich walks into a bar, and the
bartender says, ‘Hey, we don’t serve food here.’”
I laughed obnoxiously like Max Cady in a movie theater, and then begged
him for another one.
“All right,” he said. “A termite walks into a bar and says, ‘Is the bar
tender here?’”
There was more ridiculous laughter on my part, but I quickly became
serious.
“Jerry,” I said. “What does your bar look like?”
“What?” he replied.
“When you hear a bar joke, what does the bar look like in your head? My
bar is Moe’s bar on ‘The Simpsons,’ and the bartender looks like the guy who
owned ‘The Regal Beagle’ on ‘Three’s Company.’”
“I think of ‘Cheers,’” Jeremy said.
“Oh yeah?” I replied. “Hey, listen to this.” He seemed interested, but
even if he wasn’t, I was going to continue anyway. “I can prove to you,
through logic, that a peanut butter sandwich is better than eternal
happiness.”
“Really?” he said.
“Yep,” I replied. “Check it out. Nothing is better than eternal
happiness. Okay? And a peanut butter sandwich is better than nothing.
Therefore, a peanut butter sandwich is better than eternal happiness.”
“I see,” Jeremy said.
“Hey, is Todd coming tonight,” my band mate Ed asked me as he sat down.
It was this thing heterosexual men sometimes do in putting on an effeminate,
even gay, voice. It had escalated between us band members that I even had a
companion named Todd. That we were in a straight bar full of seedy
characters, and I had already ordered three of the same uber-gay drink,
which I was drunk from, didn’t occur to me.
“No, we had a big fight,” I said in my best flamboyantly gay voice. “He
got all huffy, so I told him to stay home. I said, ‘This queen’s gotta
perform tonight, honey. Maybe I’ll pick up a real man.’ Oogah!”
I could already see that Jeremy was troubled by this display. Within
three minutes, he quietly left and didn’t look at or speak to me the rest of
the night. Set one went fine, and during the brief intermission, Jeremy
stayed far away from me. I was drunker and a real raging queen during the
break.
“I can’t believe I’m a homophobia victim and I’m not even gay,” I said,
using the voice that could have gotten me beat up. “I mean, who does he
think he is? He should be so lucky. Look at me; I’m a vicious cross between
Gregory Peck and Harvey Fierstein. Oogah!”
By the end of the first song of the first set, we had completely worn out
our welcome. I was so drunk that I could hardly play, and the crowd was
yelling for us to stop. We didn’t, sadly, and it became more and more
embarrassing, but also funny, the way we sucked so badly. After we finished,
I was almost falling-down drunk, and decided it was a good idea to confront
Jeremy the homophobe with my slurred insults.
“Let me tell you something, buddy,” I said to him. “Mr. Bigot Homophobe,
I’m not gay. I love womens, all kinds of them. That hidden dragon chick in
the Groucho Tigger movie, Bruce, uh, Willis’s wife in ‘The Sixth Sense.’ I’d
even do Miss Henrietta Pussycat from ‘Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood. I love
women and really fufu drinks. I’d have Carista Pop Tarts, Anna Kourncabana,
Mae West, it doesn’t matter. I’m a crazy, insane hetero, and you’re a
stupid, nasty racist. Wait…I mean, what’s like racism, but for gays? That’s
you, and that’s me. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. And if I were
gay, I could do a whole lot better than you, Grizzly Adams. Do you watch
‘Will & Grace?’ I’ll take Paul Lynde for the block.”
Then I passed out. I don’t know what happened right after that. What I do
know is that I woke up the next morning in my underwear somewhere along the
Massachusetts Turnpike like I had just been John Malkovich.
Beware, children. For these are the perils of Girl Scout cookies.