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“Lotta people brag bout their first commode-lickin drunk, like it’s one of life’s sacraments. Yea well, my first drunk weren’t no sacrament. It snuck up on me, broke bad, then went completely to shit.”
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f you could boogie, The Clock, Rocket 88, The chances were good Great Pretender, Grits you’d slid a quarter in and Groceries, Ricethe Pavilion jukebox. B e a n s - A n d - Tu r n i p Before Hurricane Greens, Slippin and Hazel there was the Slidin, Bad Bad Marine Room, Spivey’s, Whiskey, Symphony, Robert’s Pavilion and the Jim Dandy, Ooh Poo Pah big Pavilion. After the Doo, Brown-Eyed storm the only place that Handsome Man, wadn’t driftwood was the Saturday Night Fish Fry, big Pavilion. Maybellene, One ScotchFOR 15 YEARS after One-Bourbon-One Beer, the hurricane, the It’s All in Pavilion jukebox was the the Game, One Kiss Led center of our social uniTo Another, Pink verse. Penny-loafer pegChampagne, Brazil, Ain’t pants headquarters and That a Shame, the best boogie music, Love Potion Number 9, bar none, on planet Corrine Corrina, Shakeearth. Fastdance and Rattle and Roll, Sexy cheek to cheek music. Ways, Ain’t Got a Home, Niggra music Southern Blue Monday, Let’s Go, 1963. The great Beach Club. Baptists called it. That Moma Said, Green Eyes, jukebox was audio cheese for the local jitterbugs. Lawdy Miss Clawdy, Willie and the hand jive, We hung out, talked daddy-o, sugarfooted, belSincerely, You’ve Got The Magic Touch, lyrolled, jumped, doo-wopped to somma the greatPersonality, I Like My Baby’s Pudding, Smokieest music ever written. part 2, Kansas City, Mack the Knife, Only You, Check out this typical selection . . . Stagger Lee, Work With Me Annie, Be-Bop-A-Lula, Fever, Let the Good Times Roll, Rock Around Lonely Teardrops, C.C. Rider, Rockin Pneumonia 187
and the Boogie Woogie Flu, Spo-dee-o-dee, I Only Have Eyes For You, You’re So Fine, There Goes My Baby, Honky Tonk, Searchin, Young Blood, Devil or Angel, One Mint Julip, You Send Me. Don’t get no dancin-better than that. That jukebox was the jitterbug Wailing Wall. Sixty Minute Man, a tune by Billy Ward, was also on that jukebox. First song I remember sayin the words rock n roll. “I rockem . . . rollem . . . all night long . . . I’m da six-ty minute man..” Those three little words, later coined by disc jockey Allan Freed, were soon gonna blow the britches off the entire teenage world. ROCK N ROLL . . . Singers like Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, The Coasters, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley and weird dudes like Nervous Norvous were mutating the rhythm and blues beat to a hard-drivin, undanceable wail. Kids, didn’t matter they could dance or not, were gettin hooked like somebody shot it mainline. The revolution was on. The Pavilion kahunas were lookin to cash in on the craze. Ten rolls of quarters per night in the jukebox wouldn’t get it. Wadn’t long before Pavilion big shots got greedy and shut down the jukebox so they could charge $3 admission to the wailin rock n roll shows upstairs. That was it. The end. Finito. Kaput. When they hand-trucked away the Pavilion jukebox, an angry crowd gathered. I was in that crowd. We cussed em like dogs. Removin that squat little Wurlitzer, yanked the rug out from under an era. Dinosaur’d the Myrtle Beach jitterbug. No more hot days and sticky nights of showboatin in front of 3000 people at the Pavilion. Nonna my crowd ever went upstairs to the rock n roll shows. Couldn’t dance to that stuff why go. That’s when we migrated north. We took our apache mocs, turnedup collars and skinny suede belts and migrated up to Cresent, Ocean Drive and Cherry Grove jukejoints. PFFFFFFT. The jitterbug was gone like the 50s, the carrier pigeon, the emu and the saber tooth tiger. THE PAD. The Pad in Ocean Drive was a Pabst-soaked plywood dump first day it opened in 1955 and it stayed that way. Known for 25-cent beer, a shitty coin-op pooltable and a jukebox perched on a platform to keep it from shortin out from Pabst piss. Music mostly old R&B stuff with a few off-the-wall songs like The Twist, Pony Time, The Loco-motion, Watusi, The Monster Mash, Walk Right In, If You Wanna Be Happy, Alley Oop and Along Came Jones. First time I escorted a girl to The Pad, a stocky redheaded boy who’d been suckin down too many 25cent beers stumbled into my date, bout knocked her down. Me and the boy had words. I ask him to apologize and he answers with a roundhouse swing. I shove him back into the crowd. Fight’s over before it gets started. While he’s tryin to find his feet, several people warn me I need to leave. “Why? Wadn’t my fault. That redheaded guy started it.” “Don’t matter,” they said. “That’s a Livingston you just shoved.” “Don’t give a damn if he’s a Rockefeller . . . ” “You better give a damn cause them Livingston’s got nine brothers. You hit one you hittem all. It’s like stabbin one of the musketeers.” 188
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Turns out they were right. I’d shoved a redheaded musketeer. For the next six months I had to get permission to enter the city limits of Ocean Drive. Couldn’t go nowhere without seein a redheaded Livingston. I got to know’m all. Damn good ole boys once you got to know’m. SONNY’S GRILL was another juke joint. That place was a weathered rhino sittin on stumpy concrete-block legs straddlin the sand dunes. Mostly 2x6s held together with gray paint, Sonny’s was a poor man’s version of the old Spivey’s Pavilion before Hurricane Hazel. At high tide the ocean would lap up under the wooden dance floor. Sometimes a strong wave would slosh salty foam up through the spaces in the wooden floor like a shook-up hot beer. Spent a lotta humid nights there hangin out with the madras and khaki crowd. Also spent a miserable night in jail cause of that place . . . I’m oglin at Jane Buchan, wishin I had the stones to sashay over, swoop her into my arms and tell her I love her, when Myrtle Beach lifeguard Buddy Aldret starts witch-ridin a broom across the dance floor. Tall gangly fellow who claims to be runnin the joint orders Buddy to get off the broom and put it back where he found it. Buddy salutes, hands it off to me. I sling the broom out in the parking lot. “That’s where we found it,” I tell the gangly fellow. No sense of humor, he grabs up a wad of my shirt. I yank his hand loose. He rears back, coldcocks me in my future baldspot. Dazed, I whirl around flailin. He frops me another good one on the top of my head. I drive my head right into his beerbelly to get away from those long arms. Fists flailin, we both crash to the wooden floor. I’m pumpin fists in his belly. He’s woppin me up side the head. That’s when a strange thing happens. Complete stranger shuffles out the restroom in his sockless Weejuns, zippin up his seersucker Bermuda shorts. Sees 15-year-old me and this big fellow wallowin on the floor and decides to help. He snatches him off and takes over. Bad fight breaks out. Hard licks thrown on both sides. Me and the Good Samaritan, whose name I found out was Jon Bench, end up gettin handcuffed and carted off to Nixon’s Crossroads jail, the Alcatraz of Horry County. Jails in Tijuana got nothin on Nixon’s Crossroads. On many a Saturday they’d arrest so many kids for underage drinkin or public drunkeness they had to handcuff em around pine trees. 4AM - SOMEBODY CALLS MY OLE MAN. He jeeps the 20-mile drive and posts bail for me and the boy who came to my rescue. Next mornin, we’re in kangaroo court in an Ocean Drive drug store. The pharmacist/magistrate is presiding. “The man you assaulted is an auxiliary policeman. You boys are accused of assaultin an officer, incitin a riot and disorderly conduct . . . how do you plead?” I explode outta my bentwood chair. “I PLEAD NOLO BULLSHIT! That guy’s no policeman . . . He’s a liar, he suckerpunched me, started the whole thing.” I’m yellin, jabbin fingers at the big guy who just sits there suckin a cigarette, fingerin his Semper Fi tattoo, smirkin at me and Jon. Judge bammin the gavel, dad grabs my shoulder, pulls me down, whispers in my ear. “Sit down and shutup son . . . we pay the fine and go home. You learned a two hundred dollar lesson.” “Two hundred dollars . . . but dad . . . ” “But nothing. Skassee vre, listen to me. The judge says we pay cash, nothing goes on your record.” Dad paid the judge $195 cash, then made up the difference with a $5 check from Bank of Intercourse. Drunk
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THE FORKS was another hangout. Not too far from the North Carolina line it opened bout 1956. Late night people gravitated there after the other joints closed, which meant a lot of their clientele was shitfaced or gettin there. All the employees were redheaded, freckle-face boys. Come to find out the father of all those tough-ass Livingstons ran the place. Mix in some North Carolina-line rednecks, a posse of Livingstons, some Fort Bragg soldiers, a few reefer hoods and some local Schlitz’d-up smartasses and it don’t take but a sneeze in the wrong direction for a fistfight to break out. Mister Livingston, a hardass himself, had to be to raise nine redheaded boys, was always ready. Kept a long power hose hooked up to a hot water line. He’d spray hot water soon’s the fists started flyin. Don’t care what kinda badass you were, scaldin water scalin up and down your backside took your mind off fightin. Best thing bout The Forks was they sold bootleg beer on Sunday. Mostly slapped together with scrap hurricane-lumber and paint, all these joints - The Pad, Sonny’s, The Forks-had to stand on their granddaddy’s shoulders to kiss The Pavilion’s ass. Knotholes in the dance floor, outta plumb walls. They were the Guggenheims of switchblade sculpture and smoke painting. If somebody jammed some drunk’s head through the plywood, that hole got graffitied into a Kilroy face or cooter. Every wall graffitied, every handrail switchbladed by old jitterbugs with caveman art and testimonials of summer love. Other dance joints like Turk’s, The Black Cat Lounge and The Rear End, came and went while Sonny’s, The Forks, Pawley’s Pavilion and The Pad took the brunt of the dance action durin the 60s. THE BEACH CLUB made its debut in 1961. Cecil and Charlie Corbett ran the place in those days. Large cinderblock building, when it wadn’t used for screamin teenage drunks, was used for older screamin drunks called Shriners. We were there when Bo Diddley opened up the joint that first summer. Later that first year we saw the Hot Nuts and The Zodiacs. Didn’t go there to dance. We mostly went to The Beach Club to stand up on folding chairs and watch the show bands. You’re talkin show bands, you’re talkin a lot more than music. You’re talkin beaucoup decibels, big-speaker music. Talkin pomenaded pompador’d men in gaudy neon jackets and pants so ball-bunchy tight you can see the circumscission scar. Talkin booty-rumped, glittercheeked, afro-sheened women in tightass slit-leg dresses and two-story spike-heels. You’re talkin big ole hair, big ole lipstick, big ole backup singers who do-wop the chorus and dirty-dance their lumpy asses off. There were a few good white show bands on the circuit. Not many. Bill Haley, Righteous Brothers and The Embers were strong. So were The Rivieras, Cavaliers and Swingin Medallions. When you say show bands, you’re talkin rhythm and blues, soul music, nifty footwork, hand-jivin, full-splittin, knee-slidin, microphone-jugglin, pelvic-pushin, mule-sweatin stage work. Huey “Pi-ano” Smith and the Clowns were a lotta people’s idea of the world’s greatest show band. Drummer Charles “Hungry” Williams bangin on everything cept his drums. Huey poundin the keyboard. Lead-singer Bobby Marchan screechin out the bronchial lyrics. 190
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“YOU GOT ME PUSHIN WHEN I OUGHTA BE SHOVIN . . . DOOONCHOO JUST KNOW IT . . . DOOOONTCHOO JUST KNOW IT . . . ”
The clowns backin him up with that memorable chorus . . . AHH, HA, HA, HA. DAAAAY A OH . . . DAAAY A OH . . . DOOBA, DOOBA, DOOBA, DOOOO-BA AHH, HA., HA, HA . . . Rogers and Hammerstein couldn’tna said it any better. The Clowns wailin and clownin behind Huey “Piano” Smith, who’s poundin his cheap keyboard with every part of his boneless body, head, feet, knees, elbows and ass, even his suede shoes. That’s where Huey got the nickname Pi-ano. Five years later Huey turned to the Lord. People said he was goin door to door in New Orleans hawkin Watchtowers and doomsday. The Isley Brothers were another show band. Seems like only song they ever sang, only song we ever wanted em to sing, was Twist and Shout. They had two versions. One 10 minutes long. The other 30 minutes long. Nobody I knew but hoods did drugs in those days, but that song was the ultimate mind-bender. People lost their shirts, shoes, wallets and virginity to that song. Specially the 30 minute version. The 30 minute version Pabst’d kids commode-lickin. Wall to wall white-bread, Weejun-Gant-Gold-Cup’d teenagers standin around waitin for somethin to happen would suddenly erupt into a drooly, hormonal, handwavin, dirty-knee, laryngytal, shirttail’d mob. “NOW WAAAAAAI A MINNNUTE . . . WAAOOH OOOOHHH OOOH . . . WAAAIIIOOOO . . . ” We all knew the lyrics. Knew all the WAAAIIIOOO’S. Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts was another show band. Best I can remember they only had one song. Their schtick was talkin dirty. Cept for old blues, X-rated music was as unusual as excellent phone service back in those days. NUTS . . . HOT NUTS . . . GETTUM FROM THE PEANUT MAN . . . YEA YEA YEA . . . NUTS . . . HOT NUTS . . . GETTUM ANY WAY YOU CAN . . . SEE DAT GIRL DRESSED IN BLACK . . . SHE MAKES HER LIVIN FLAT ON HER BACK . . . NUTS . . . HOT NUTS . . . GETTUM FROM THE PEANUT MAN . . . Show bands got people suck-egg crazy. Got people drunk up. Watchin jam-up showbands was like stickin a syringe of loud drivin music into an open vein. Head-slingin, hand-wavin, foot-stompin frenzies, very little dancin. The kinda music that forever wrapped white boys with the Can’t Dance rep. In the early 60s, somma the great show bands on the southern circuit were Chuck Berry, Catalinas, Martha & the Vendellas, Ike and Tina Turner, Fats Domino, The Clovers, The Coasters, Tams, Billy Stuart, Drunk
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Zodiacs, Major Lance and of course the James Brown Revue. By the mid-60s, the hot show band songs were Wilson Pickett singin Land of a Thousand Dances. Sam and Dave wailin Hold on..I’m Comin. Bobby Lewis’ high energy number-1 tune Tossin and Turnin. Junior Walker and the All Stars honkin out Shotgun. The Contours screechin out Do Ya Loooove Me. We all listened to the same unboogieable stuff, but when it came time to boogie, we migrated to places playin the right music. Right music with the right beat. R & B is what we called music. Wadn’t really music if it didn’t have a dance beat. Most Beach kids missed the Beatle’s invasion. Paid no attention to it. We didn’t know those long hair flits landed til years later. Most of us grew up on a steady diet of blues and soul. Wouldn’t give you two cents for Herman and the hermit crabs or whatever you called em. We fell in love, fell out of love, slow danced, french kissed, and dry-hunched in the back seat of Falcons, VW’s and Corvairs, to the sounds of Sam Cooke, Little Willie John, Earl Bostic, Hank Ballard, Shirley and Lee, Louie Jordan, Jerry Butler, Chuck Jackson, Etta James, The Platters, The Drifters, Roy Hamilton, Billy Ward, Ivory Joe Hunter, Mary Wells, The Flamingoes, Solomon Burke, Bobby Blu Bland, Maxine Brown, Fats Domino, The Miracles. Nobody I knew would admit to ownin any Beach Boys, Neil Sedaka, Connie Francis, Ricky Nelson, Beatles music or mental-midget stuff by Dickey Doos and the Don’ts. We laughed at Pat Boone’s version of Tutti Fruitti, tryin to be a white Little Richard. You had to get up early to find any of that stuff on local jukeboxes. And if it was, we’d no more punch up one of those songs in public than wear black socks with our madras Bermuda shorts. When we went to a club, paid our $5 to hear Jerry Butler, Chuck Jackson, The Drifters or The Platters, we took someone we loved or wanted to love. We stood tight behind her, arms snug around her waist, our swollen crotch against her girdle-guarded butt, swayed back and forth and cooed the correct lyrics in her ear in between nibblin. When kids went to see Huey “Piano” Smith, Sam and Dave, The Tams or Wilson Pickett, they jumped up outta their bentwood chairs, fell down, gatored, got back up, slung foamy beer and screamed the whole time like nobody had good sense and didn’t want any. People did a lotta that at the Beach Club. The only other places around Myrtle Beach, besides the Beach Club, to soak up first-class rhythm and blues music was the Bamboo Club or Charlie Fitzgerald’s Place on The Hill. The Hill was colored town. Long before black groups were allowed in the local white clubs, all the great R&B groups played The Hill. Billie Holliday, Little Richard, Etta James, Georgia Gibbs, Earl Bostic, Clyde McPhatter, Joe Turner, Fats Domino, Ink Spots, Ivory Joe, Jerry Butler, B.B. King, Bobby Blu Bland . . . Little Willie John. For white folks, these clubs were the forbidden part of town, playin forbidden niggra music. Sometimes whitey was welcome, sometimes he wadn’t. Charlie’s Place was the site of the notorious Klan shootout, where they sliced off Charlie’s ears and shot a Conway cop in percale sheets dead. Saw somma the world’s greatest performers right there at the Bamboo Club and Charlie’s place. Saw Little Richard when I was nine years old. Clyde McPhatter and B.B. King when I was ten. Later in my teens me, Monk and Tommy Crocker went there to see Jerry Butler, Hank Ballard, Georgia Gibbs, Billy 192
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Stewart and Brooks Benton. Long’s we didn’t show our ass, blacks didn’t mind us whitey’s venturin over to their side of town to soak up their music. They even looked out for us. They knew they had somethin we wanted. Most were proud to share it with us. Very little black/white trouble at the clubs on The Hill. Back in those days everybody knew everybody. Long as whitey minded his manners everything was cool. Porkchops, Myrtle Beach’s first colored policeman, watched out for us. So did Charlie, Eyes, Bertell, Seth King, Wild Bill, Bubbles, Big Robert and Leroy, who’d let me dance with his lady, Costella. On more than one occasion when somebody was chasin me I’d lure em to Charlie’s Place and find the boys. They’d just give’m a little eyesex and POOF. But later on when it became available, most us whitey’s, when we wanted to watch a show band, migrated to the Beach Club. The Beach Club was just north of Myrtle Beach city limits . . . south of Windy Hill and Crescent Beach. Middle of nowhere. Boondocks. TONIGHT, two carloads of us gearin up to see Ben E. King. Monk and I double datin in his Nash Rambler. A-rab and D.H.Bomb doublin in D.H’s ’57 Fleetwood, the one with the passenger door that won’t open and the driver-side door, when it wadn’t wired shut with a clothes hanger, won’t stay closed. Round a corner too fast and D.H. Bomb was always polite enough to reach over, grab your belt as you leaned out the open door and say, “Relax baby I gotcha.” A-rab, cause his bellydancin Lebanese momma tended bar at the Oasis Club, was always in charge of mixin up the Purple Jesus. Sockeye useta call A-rab’s momma Bagdad. For this particular occasion, A-rab and D.H.Bomb had spent the better part of the afternoon roundin up the necessary ingredients to make two gallons of PJ and two gallons of wine spo-de-o-dee. We arrive the Beach Club early enough to drag our metal folding chairs ringside. Monk a firm believer in bein in sweat-slingin range of the performers. Always front row or nada for Monk. All of us spiffed. Got my skinny suede belt on the side, collar up on my mongramed Gant shirt, white duck pants, my lace-up Weejuns on. My date’s stylin in a brand new Villager dress, ankle bracelet and navy Weejuns from Jack Crawcheks in Charleston. Six hundred loud-music aficionados crammed together in one room, one stand-up air conditioner, mostly for morale, in the corner. Warmup band crankin up. Beer, if you were 18 or older, was sold at the concession counter. No big deal, just stroll up and swear you’re eighteen. If pretty Miss Corbett was beertendin, she’d swat you on the head and say, “You just a baby.” I’d usually buy one cup of beer and carry it around all night. Big on control. I might act the fool, but I didn’t wanna be one. Tonight it’s hot enough to melt Brylcreme. I reach into our cooler and pour myself a milkshake cup of A-rab’s green concoction. Can’t taste any liquor. Ice cold, slithers down easy. Right before the Beach Club promoter comes on stage to introduce Ben E. King, I pour myself another cup. “LA-DEES AND GENTLEMEN . . . THE MAN YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR. IN-TERNATIONAL RECORDING ARTIST FOR ALANTIC REDORDS . . . THE SMOOTHEST VOICE THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN. THE MAN WHO BROUGHTCHOO THERE GOES MY BABY . . . AMOR . . . SPANISH HARLEM . . . ” Drunk
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Everybody screamin, hardly hear the announcer. “THE MAN WHO BROUGHTCHOO I WHO HAVE NOTHING . . . STAND BY ME . . . ” Two trumpets and a keyboard fire up. Drummer hits a killer roll. Ben E. King slides onstage, grabs the mike on the way by and starts right off with . . . “Therre is a rose in Span-ish Haarrrr-lemmm.” Entire block building begins to rock. The floor trembles. Within minutes Monk’s shirttail is completely out, monogrammed Gant shirt completely unbuttoned, cowlick hangin in his baby face, shirt soaked with perspiration, lit cigarette with a two-inch ash danglin out the side of his mouth. Swayin so hard to the music he’s sloshin Spodeodee on everybody near him, screechin out lyrics along with Ben E. King, two seconds late, off-key as vocally possible. Monk lives for this shit. By the time Ben E. King sings his 5th number, I’m workin on my 5th cup of green stuff. Wax cup losin shape in my hand. Band members losin visual shape. I’m blamin it on the smoke, heat. Ben E. King sings two more songs and breaks for intermission. “BEN E. KING . . . BEN E. KING LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” Band manager keeps hollerin as the star sashays off the stage in a sweat-soaked, pastel-blue, widecollared suit. Wilted pompadour hangin in his eyes. “BEN E. KING . . . . . !” Points at the fleeing star. Another cup durin intermission. Ben E. King returns 35 minutes later decked out in a Panama-Pachuco-pimp yellow-sequined jacket, baby-blue migraine pants and re-gonked pompador. My eyes now so out of focus he’s lookin like a bunch of Chiquita bananas backin up Carmen Miranda. Damn, smoke is bad in this place. He starts right out with . . . Save The Last Dance For Me, another song he released while lead singer for the Drifters. This is real music. Music with a dance beat. Drink two more cups and watch in giggly amusement as A-rab somehow convinces three redneck Conway boys not to whip Monk’s ass for flippin ashes in their hair. I notice Jerome “Speedy” Selvee leanin against the wall. Looks to be sound asleep with his hand comfortably over his crotch. Jerome, who carries two razor sharp hawkbill knives, one in each backpocket, never misses a concert. Also never fails to pass out before intermission. Watch a chubby drunk girl, Purple Jesus lips, tryin hard to be sexy. She’s squealin, purposely pourin beer down the front of her rayon blouse to cool herself off. I can make out the outline of her nipples. Don’t care how old or young you are, somethin magic about wet fabric grabbin at an angry nipple. Monk screams out “BRYANSTEIN.” I look and see Bo Bryan, white banlon shirt, weejuns no socks, sunglasses perched on top his head, Salem hangin out his mouth, warm beer in his hand, other hand leanin against the wall. He’s got some peroxided girl semi-cornered. Ben E. King’s puttin on one helluva show. He saves Stand By Me for his last song, a song he wrote for the Drifters but they didn’t want it. Right as he finishes, the Beach Club announcer is back on stage screamin again . . . “LES HEAR IT FOR THE ONE, THE ONLY . . . BEN E. KING! BEN E. KING! INTER-NATIONAL RECORDING STARRR . . . PUTCHO HANDS TOGETHER FOR BEN E. KING . . . BEN EEE. KING!” We stomp our dusty Weejuns and scream our asses off. 194
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Backup band sends him off playin his theme song, Spanish Harlem, another great dance rhythm. He vaults back on stage one more time, sings the hell outta Spanish Harlem for three more minutes, blows kisses to the audience, spins to his knees, rises up slow and holds a 30-second bow while we continue to scream, stomp and clap. Blowin kisses, he slowly backs off the stage. Ain’t no comin back this time. The show is over. They bring up the lights. Sharilyn, my date, quits lapdancin on my numb legs. She stands up, tugs on my hand. Tries pullin me up, but my disconnected legs won’t cooperate. Try to stand. Flop back down. “Legs fell asleep,” I mumble. “I’m not surprised honey. Seven cups of grain will do that.” “Huh? That green stuff was hooch?” “Spo-dee-o-deeee man!” D.H.Bomb hollers out and does a perfect James Brown spin. “Spo-Dee-O-Dee!” “How you make Spo-Dee-O-Dee?” D.H. Bomb explains his recipe. “Lessee. There’s uh, gallon frozen limeade, two quarts 180-proof grain alcohol, gallon of Manishevitz and four limes for flavor. Smooth ain’t it?” Smooth? I drank seven cups of that purple paint thinner? I stay stuck in my seat pretendin I had good sense. Hate bein outta control. Room cartwheelin one way, me the other. Must be how a turd feels goin down the dumper. Somehow Monk is drunker than I am but I’m too drunk to notice. A-rab and D.H., who both have first class buzzes, have him under each arm draggin him out. One of Monk’s black Weejuns keeps coming off and they finally pick it up and tuck it in his back pocket like a wallet. Monk’s one bare foot turnin black as soot as they drag him toward the door. I’m starin up at the roof like I see somethin. Sherilyn smiles knowingly. “You bout ready to go honey?” My tongue feels thick as a foot. “Let’s just thit here for a few minuths. Let the crowd thin out.” “Gets any thinner it’ll be empty,” says Sharilyn. Only people left is the band grips, the Corbett brothers countin up the door, Miss Corbett breakin down the beer concession and the cleanup crew broomin out flotsam from five hundred kids. I’m still in my seat, pretendin I’m watchin the band grips break down the equipment. Stage gets empty, but I still don’t move. I watch the sweepers move all the metal chairs to one side of the room and pushbroom all the cups, beer cans and butts into one huge pile in the middle of the room. “These boys can sweep.” Sharilyn prods me again. “C’mon honey, everybody’s goin to The Pad. You bout ready?” “These guys can flat-out sweep . . . ” Sharilyn’s unfazed. “C’mon now, time to go.” She’s whinin now. Starts pullin me up. I go with the flow, somehow get my feet under me. Soon’s I get vertical I reel right, then fall against Sharilyn. Steady myself by holdin on to the tops of two metal chairs. For the first few steps I drag the chairs along like crutches. Soon’s I take my hands off the chairs my right leg whispers, “We need five more minutes.” Windmillin my arms to keep from fallin back. Sharilyn catches me. “Grain’ll sneak right up on you, won’t it?” Sharilyn kisses me on the forehead. I’m puttin one foot in front of the other like I’m steppin over imaginary dogshit. Right bout then, the concrete melts into thick soup and I sink up to my chest. Battlin a gumbo current. Australian crawl, Drunk
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sidestroke, backstroke for a ways. Why ain’t Sharilyn swimmin? When I burp kinda funny, Sharilyn turns my shoulders toward the bathrooms and gives me a gentle shove. “Best you make a pitstop before we get to O.D.” Can’t see the bathroom door but I can smell it. Start sidestrokin toward the smell. Stumble through an imaginary door. Wade through stale piss deep enough to tarnish the pennies in loafers. Puke smell gags me. My hand finds the wall. Fumble with my fly, locate my johnson and start to pee. That I don’t feel anything goin down my leg is comfortin. Pee in squirts for at least five minutes. Walls solid black with graffiti. Can’t write the word “shit” without separatin the letters. Who the hell brings a pen or pencil to the Beach Club? Shake it off. Stare at the galvanized 6-foot trough. What’s with the ice? Even the toilet in The Pad has ice. Why’s there always ice in these things? What’s with the piss-on-ice theory? And who the hell is Syphillis and Gonnorea? Burp several times. Cud of PJ’d puke rumbles up my esophagus. Grits blowin time. Settles back down. Ralph passes. Sharilyn waitin for me at the front entrance. One thing nice girls don’t do at the Beach Club is hang around the men’s bathroom. Guys would stumble in there, piss all over their khaki cuffs and shoes, puke on the front of their shirt, shuffle out with their shirt-tail pokin out their fly and immediately hit on the first girl they see. “Hey sweet thing . . . what’s yo name?” Me and Sharilyn fall out the front door in one romantic bundle. Coolish night air momentarily settles me. Does nothin for my balance. Rained earlier. Everytime my foot hits the ground I hear a sucky noise. Step in five mud puddles on the way to the car. Gritty water squishin in my shoes. Don’t really care. Monk’s car is parked 50 yards behind the club near the waterway. We finally get to the car. I see a shoeless foot stickin out like some kind of weird left-turn signal. Peek in and see Monk jellyfish’d in the backseat. His date Chloee is sittin on a tree stump. A-rab’s in driver’s seat revvin it forward, back, forward, back. Smell of burnt rubber in the air mixed with sour smell of wet gumbo. Monk had backed the Rambler into soft clay. It rained. Now the car’s mired to its tailpipes lookin like a tow-truck’s wet dream. When A-rab sees me he hollers for me to help push. Push? Me push? I stumble through the bushes lookin for something to wedge under the wheel. Locate a large pine branch, drag it over and jam it far as it’ll go under the back tire. Before I can get out the way, A-rab stomps the accelerator, shotguns me with mudspatter. Holdin on to the side of the car I carefully slog my way around to the window to tell A-rab what a goddam idiot he is. “Dammit A-rab. Least wait til I get outta the way before you hit the gas. You bout threw my ass in the waterway. Wait til I slap on the trunk and give you the signal.” A-rab nods. Right then I remember D.H.Bomb. “Where’s D.H.?” “Got a hard-on in those tightass Sansa-belts and went home to let the air out,” A-rab says. “Rambler’s all we got. Let’s get this mother unstuck.” Sherilyn and A-rab’s date Lulu join Chloee on the stump. All three sittin with their backs together discussin Ben E. King’s tight pants, where to get navy-blue Weejuns and watchin us with amusement as we try to rock the car out, when two card-carryin rednecks on the way to their Bondo’d pickup stop dead in their tracks. Sherilyn greets them with a real toothy smile and a big . . . “Hey, how y’all doin?” 196
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When you’re liquored up, troglodyte ugly, got a case of the dumb-ass, been hittin on girls all night with no luck and a cute little gal perched on a tree stump in the dark says “Hey, how y’all doin?” Well that don’t mean “Hey how y’all doin?” That means cooter. The taller and redder of the two rednecks struts over to where the girls are sittin. “Well I’m doin fine now I found you sweet thang.” A little conversation filters over my way. I figure Sharilyn’s askin the boys to help us push. But what she’s doin is what she normally does when she has a buzz on. She’s flirtin. Sharilyn’s a good girl but has been known to be a major-league prick teaser. Soon’s the redneck tries to step between her legs she don’t think it’s funny anymore. She hollers for me. “DIIINO . . . ! These boys’re botherin us.” Terror in her voice, I come round the car fast as I can, hangin on to the side of the car like a lifeline. Survey the fuzzy situation, walk over to the one fellow. See’m all puffed up, shirtsleeves rolled up tight around his biceps, Jerry Lee Lewis spitcurl hangin in front of his eye, cigarette tucked behind his ear, one in his mouth. First thing he does is reach down and adjust his balls. Rememberin what Big’un use to say about rednecks . . . “Known fact, rednecks with big muscles got little dicks and can’t fight. It’s the little skinny muthas you gotta watch.” “Aw-ight buddyrow . . . she’s with me,” I tell Jerry Lee. Well the word “me” no more clears my mouth when a boney fist locates the side of my face, rocks my head back. Damn that guy’s fast. Last time I saw his right hand it was movin his balls around. Under normal circumstances I’da been mud rasslin with the dude, but these ain’t normal circumstances. Drunk as a duck on ice, I’m in no condition for fisticuffs. “What the hell was that for?” I step back, try to clear the cobwebs. “That weren’t for a goddamn thing,” he hisses. “Want som more?” Bein face-punched and insulted is usually more’n enough to get me rollin. But little tiny drunk buglers are blowin RETREAT in my head. “Nobody here wants no trouble,” I tell him. “Just leave the girls . . . ” WHAPP! He nails me again. Damn! Didn’t see that one either. Must be more than the dark. Must be the purple paint thinner. Back up two more steps into a soggy patch of gumbo. One more step and I’m cartwheelin down a 30-foot root-filled bank into the Intracoastal Waterway. My shoes slurp in and out the stickum. One shoe sticks and I haveta step back into it. Embalmed or not I ain’t up for an ass whippin. “Aw-ight Bubba, me and you.” I drop into my ready-to-dance Sugar Ray Robinson stance and shoot him my Joe Louis stare. A-rab, oblivious to my predicament, is still fiddlin with the column shift, floorin the gas, slingin gumbo mud into the waterway. Monk still corpse’d out in the back seat, smile on his face, hand coverin his pecker. I’m on my own . . . Redneck’s hand drops low, and for a second I figure his balls need re-adjustin, til his arm comes back up fistin somethin shiny. The yardlight fifty yards away glints off the wide Buck knife blade. Knife . . . Big ole knife . . . one a them deerskinner jobs. Sliver of honed steel all along the edge shinin. “Thoughtchoo wanted to fistfight?” I say Drunk
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“We just did fistfaht. Now ahm gonna fuck you up.” “Why don’t you put that thing up before you stick somebody?” “Consider yosef stuck shithook.” Ain’t this somethin? Celebrate my first drunk by gettin my butt whipped, called a shithook, and about to be stuck by Jerry Lee Lewis. He eases closer. I glance behind me. Steep bank and a jungle of roots, rocks and catfish. Waterway somewhere down there. Kill m’self if I jump. But then if I don’t jump . . . Spitcurl’s gonna carve me a new one. Mambo two steps to the side. My foot kicks somethin big. It’s the pine branch I’d jammed under the back wheel. Stickin out doin nobody any good. Usin both hands I slurp it out. More a dwarf tree than a branch, I start swingin it like Spanky swingin Babe Ruth’s bat. Jerry Lee jumps back as pine needles and mud slash cross his face. I swing again. Back him up into the open. Get some dodgin room. Only problem is my dodger’s broke. Damn that Spo-Dee-O-Dee. Right then someone screams and mounts me from the back. First I think it’s the other redneck, but the voice is too high. Turns out it’s Chloee, Monk’s girl. She’s tryin to get me to stop fightin. She hates fights. She’s one of them conscious-objectors. On my back, skinny arms all in my face, legs around my waist, got me wrapped up like a monkey in heat. She’s screamin crazy shit. “OOOOH GOD, OOH GOD, PLEASE YALL STOP! Somebody’s gonna get hurt. Yall puhlease stop fightin . . . !” Meanwhile the redneck’s pokin at me with his knife. I’m tryin to fend him off with the branch and at the same time get crazy Chloee off my back. Her sweaty little legs are mayonaised to me. I back up fast and slam into the side of Monk’s car. Chloee blows out a pitiful “OOOMPTH” when I smush all the air out her soft little body. She slides off my back like a silk robe. Still drunk, but lighter now by 110 pounds, I Wiley Coyote in every direction. For a moment the redneck is spellbound. When I think I gottim completely bedazzled, I joust forward holdin the branch out like a lance and slam into his chest and neck. Sprawl him to the ground, I land on top. Not sure where his knife is, I roll like a netted gator hopin to evade the blade. This boy can’t be from Tabor City (Razor City we call it) I’m thinkin as I roll across the ground. Tabor City boys grow up totin shivs and razors. Sashay into a Tabor city jukejoint and the bouncer checks you for knives. If you ain’t got one he gives you one. Tabor City boys can peel an apple before it hits the ground. Ask Lavon Alford. He slapped a Tabor City boy at the Army-Navy club and got a permanent zipper on his cheek. If this was a Razor City boy I woulda already been peeled. I hop to my feet and commence yellin and swingin. “C’MON SHITHOOK! C’MON GET SOMMA THIS STICK!” My eyes beginnin to focus. While I’m flailin the branch in a circle, one of my roundhouse swings catches him chest high. Feels so good I 360 around and frop him another one right below the neck. “Howsat feel shithook?” Frop him another, then another. This shit startin to feel real good. I get’m down. Whap’m on the back twice. Get’m crawlin, whap him again so hard he flattens out for a second. Got’m crabwalkin on all fours tryin to get away from me. 198
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Snarlin now. “C’mon you Gomer Pyle sonofabitch. C’mon . . . !” He gets to his feet. His knife at jabbin ready, but his eat-shit-and-die look is gone. He’s in his backup’n jab mode. I’m in my don’t-give-a-shit mode. I charge him again and he breaks into a run. He’s sprintin through the woods, yellin over to his spectator buddy. “HOYT, CRANK UP THE TRUCK. LIL MOTHA’S CRAZY AS A GUINEA HEN. LES GIT BACK TO TABOR CITY. I’LL CUT HIS SKINY ASS LATER.” So he is from Razor City? Must be a damn rookie. They head off into the woods to their pickup. A-rab pokes his head out the window. “C’mon Greekboy . . . quit friggin round and les get the car out.” I somehow overcome the urge to wop A-rab up side the head with my small tree. Bout a minute later is when Mister Overcash, the Beach Club’s one and only security guard, arrives on the scene. Officer Overcash, as he liked to be called, silver cereal-box badge, handcuffs, grey uniform coverin a potbelly and unloaded gun, is the Barney Fife of the Beach Club. He insists on arrestin me cause I won’t put down my branch. “Drop that stick!” he says while he cautiously circles me. Draws out his blackjack. I’m yellin, “SOME GUY’S TRYIN TO CUT ME!” Goober and his sidekick long gone, nobody in sight with a knife, Mister Overcash correctly accuses me of bein drunk. The three girls all begin chorusin at once. Somehow they manage to convince Officer Overcash there’s a man with a knife after me. Officer Overcash finally settles down, puts away his blackjack, locates a 2 x 10 board, slides it under the back tire and helps us push the Rambler out the mud. Right when the car lurches outta the soupy bog, Monk Boris Karloff’s up from his backseat coffin, throws up both arms and rebel yells, “RAAAISE HELLLL! LES PARTEEEEEY . . . !” Pukes Spodeeodee’d purple potato chips all down his bare hairless chest and collapses back into the seat. Mister Overcash turtles his head inside the car, whiffs Monk curled up. “Zat Bill Taylor’s boy lyin there?” I nod. “Ummmm uh . . . you boys better get his drunk tail home fore his daddy kicks his butt.” “Yes-sir,” we all shout in unison as we pile into the Rambler. Before we even get the doors closed, A-rab’s got the car in motion. I’m holdin Monk’s head out the window, puke shoelacin out the side of his mouth. Chloee swabs off Monk’s face with a sandy beach towel. I holler over to Sharilyn. “Sharilyn. What the devil d’jou say to that goober?” “I didn’t say a thing.” “Dammit Shar I saw you comin on to the guy.” Then Chloee says, “Sharilyn you know good and well you said, hey . . . how y’all doin?” Sharilyn gives her hair a flip. “I say hey how y’all doin to everybody. I’m friendly . . . That a crime or somethin? I didn’t tell the fool to try an get between my legs.” Roll my eyes at Sharilyn, then over at Chloee. “And Chloee, what in God’s name possessed you to jump on my back? You coulda got us both killed. That redneck was doin his damndest to stab us.” “Well . . . I was just kinda tryin to keep you from . . . can’t believe you’re fussin at me for helpin.” “If you wanted to help why didn’t you jump on his back?” “That’s the thanks I get for tryin to help.” Her voice cracks, tears well up in her mascara eyes. She puts her chin on her flat chest. Drunk
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“Just tryin to help? You had me wrapped up like a cheese ball. Little monkey fingers all in my eyes and mouth . . . ” Tears alligatorin down Chloee’s cheeks, I decide to drop it. Why is it girls always whimper and cry when you fuss at em and boys just get pissed off? The car tires chatter. I cut my eyes up at A-rab, who’s cruisin 75, right wheels on the road-shoulder, Lulu draped all over him, her purple tongue three-inches into his ear. A-rab’s one hand on the wheel, the other hand on Lulu’s titty. “Watch the damn road A-rab.” Slap’m gently on the back of his head. “ . . . And you didn’t have to slam me against the car and nearbout smush me.” Chloee whines, tears still streamin. “And then you dropped me right in that red mud. You oughta see the back of my coulottes. They’re absolutely ruined. I can’t go to Ocean Drive lookin like this. I’m gonna have to stay in the car.” I apologize to Chloee for smushin her and for droppin her and her coulottes in the mud. “You know you’re damn lucky he didn’t poke you a new one in the back of those coulottes while you were ridin me . . . ” She giggles a little. Tires chatter again. A-rab is now French kissin Lulu, catchin glances around the side of her head at the road. I thump his head again. “Watch the damn road A-rab.” Chloee screams when we hit a deep rut and just miss a NO LITTERING sign. Chloee’s scream lurches Monk back from the dead. He slowly raises up in the back seat, blue eyes big as poached eggs. He starts to heave. Me, Chloee and Sharilyn throw ourselves into a madras heap against the car door. Monk bows up, GRRRRs an animal noise deep from his belly, pukes a spoonful on the window crank, then throws his head out the window just long enough to scream at a car goin by. “LES GIT DRUNK AN GO NEK-KID!” Ten seconds later, like he’d been clubbed, Monk collapses again. Chloee gently covers his head with a beach towel. By the time we reach the Ocean Drive city limits, I’m sober as a judge. Or as most judges. Sharilyn snuggles her pretty brown eyes up underneath my shoulder. She kinda coos out. “I’m sorry I caused so much trouble.” “No you’re not.” “Yes I am.” She snuggles farther into my shoulder. “I know you like stirrin it up. You were talkin trash to that boy.” “I was jus sayin hello is all. I’m friendly. Always have been. I can’t help it if I like people.” Wiggles her legs a little closer to mine. Slides her warm cheek across my shoulder and starts cooin in my ear. Her foot slithers out of her loafer and starts slidin up my calf. “C’mon now . . . don’t be mad.” She reaches up, kisses me on the cheek, lets her mouth slide over to mine. My lips can’t hold a grudge. I kiss her back good and deep.
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