The Poke of a Toothpick

One of my favorite dive bars ever is called the Hi-Brow. It's anything but highbrow, however, so either the owner has a sense of humor or he's oblivious to the atmosphere he's created. The fact that someone tried to sell my friend meth in the restroom leads me to believe it's more of the latter. I love it for the cheap, stiff drinks and the fellow patrons who are hilariously... well... "white trash" is considered a racial slur so I won't use it, but in a community where whites are a minority, this bar's clientele is both Caucasian and trashy.

On one visit, my friends and I sat near an amorous couple. A woman, whose bejazzled tank top didn't quite cover her protruding belly, plopped herself down on the lap of a much older toothpick of a man. I call him a toothpick of a man not just to emphasize how scrawny he was, but because he had a toothpick in his mouth. He even left the toothpick in while sucking face with the woman. That seems like a dangerous activity, but these two clearly lived on the edge, which they demonstrated by trotting out to the parking lot together.

I don't know how much time passed, but it couldn't have been much considering the jukebox hadn't even played two full songs by the time the woman re-entered the bar. She scurried toward her friends and screamed loudly enough for the whole bar to hear, "I just got fucked in the car!" while beaming with pride. One of my friends did a spit take, and I'm sure I would have done the same were I currently sipping my drink.

I don't know what happened to Mr. Toothpick, but the bejazzled and freshly-fucked woman got herself another beer and tried to make some new friends on the dance floor. When she started shimmying in my direction, my first instinct was too flee. It wasn't just that I didn't know where that crotch she was gyrating toward me has been, it was that I knew exactly where it had just been... the backseat of a car. Ultimately I decided to playfully grind against her for a song; it might not have been highbrow, but it was definitely hi-brow. Sometimes you just have to embrace moments like this and remember to shower later.