Forrest Roth
As the unwritten house rule, no touching is allowed at the secret cowboy bar. That means no hand-shaking, no elbow-rubbing, no waist-grabbing, no rump-squeezing, no lovehandle-mashing, no happy endings. Get those thumbs hooked in your beltloops and your headsponge out of the gutter, pardner. Much obliged.
A fragile provision for any fly-strip bar. Its unpopularity at this particular bar keeps painless compulsion all the same. Stay out, hang out, and find out. Enter the latest newcomers sporting names like Edder or Norfolk to show for Slide Time, the loose change groveling in their linty pockets alongside an expired condom rubbing up against their malfunctioning, outdated smartphones. They survey the motley crowd of unisex Stetsons bobbing around because the hats barely fit right on their respective heads. Amble up. Take their very first shot of the nickel whiskey. Burn their virgin throats to a crisp. Announce aloud as though the Country Pope himself's hanging on every hoarse syllable, "I am go-ing to be a moth-er fuck-ing cow-boy to-night!" May as well dangle a DON'T TOUCH ME sign off-balance around their necks.
Enforcement of this non-negotiable statute, arbitrary and vexing as it appears to those who shun the edicts of the Country Pope, would fall upon management if management had an owner to report to here. Marcelle Marcelle holds the company line, then. What she does furthermore in her capacities is insult well, serve not so well, wipe the bar counter endlessly, make sure the fickle help tends to the crowd, and never insinuate there's a title deed to purchase from an interested party occupying the present space-time continuum. Filling the void of perceived stable financial backing, a wealthy owner confabulated by the regulars into Citizen Kane remade for the drive-in movie theater: due to a gruesome disfigurement he avoids the public eye, with decisions made by a receivership of four ex-wives having tried in vain over the years to unload the place. But no one in the loop wants to purchase the deed to the secret cowboy bar—that's for a hand of Texas Hold 'Em to deliver, won by an unsuspecting player too wasted to fathom what they took home, later discovering in the sober morning what they've lost. Next round the following night, that imaginary deed gets thrown out on the table again for a new Edder or Norfolk to get sapped into. Somebody will think it's a steal. Only they haven't heard the rumors about what this owner greases the gears of his gold-plated Segway with before rolling naked through a mansion hallway to ask marble busts of Roman emperors about pork belly futures. See you and raise, buddy.
These regulars (such a hateful term, by the way) are not secret cowboys outside of the secret cowboy bar. No, they brag, they are real cowboys who have, in fact, mangled their anonymity in plain sight by pretending they're not. And when they truly fuck up their shit among the normals, they walk—don't run!—to the secret cowboy bar to pull themselves together again, this rag-tag stucco-covered box in the middle of a state panhandle's literal nowhere with not a single window cut for watching them strut up to the stunted portico. A clarion call of hollers, shouts and breaking glass will surely convince them they live a double life, this fountain of sounding shenanigans they must slurp up to remain real cowboys in a slick market past its peak value, as they see it, unaware of how desperately it needs them to be secret cowboys instead. For though they aren't allowed to touch each other, every single gentle scrape and near-miss canoodling on the dance floor escaping Marcelle Marcelle's razorsharp patrol becomes that spacious prairie to nurture the lowing, grazing cattle of their depressed happenstance.
Except they may want to keep in mind that, fenced off in the far distance with her barbed wire posts, lurks a figmentary Last Call for the bar which, among other vital details required by state law, also doesn't appear in the ledgers.
A consistent overturn of barkeeps at the secret cowboy bar has assured many of them achieve an immodest celebrity ranking higher than a pedestrian bottle-popper, in sum consecrating a roll call of reputations having dished out the woozy suds. Pansy Veldt. Consuela MacPherson. Tudy "Oops" DiGiorno. Deesie Reaves. "So Cold" Helen Gudmundsdóttir. Each of these women follows a script to start the routine: arrives at secret cowboy bar alone, notices immediately it's too jammed up front to get served, swings herself behind the bar, rolls up her sleeves to start slinging booze, and drinks forever on the house courtesy of Marcelle Marcelle—provided she follows the prime directive. No tips in legal tender, no Health or Dental Plan. Not much else. Probably why the barkeeps end their stint within a year, maybe two or three for the heartier souls, then vanish forever without the standard two-week notice or much fanfare. "Where'd ole Pansy run off to," a secret cowboy will ask, or note "That Tudy sure was a looker, never could pour a beer with head on it." The end. Can't go further than those detailed evaluations among the entrenched out of learned caution.
Corsets, black high heels, and devices of torture from her former profession retired, Marcelle Marcelle holds court as the institution who stuck around. Suspicion lurks she operates to maintain it so until, that is, she shuts the loose lips quick with pointed reminders of an overdue tab. Doing so in that seventh arrondissement style of hers does render it threatening and toothsome and Left Bank fancy. Difficult figuring how management operated before Madam M whipped it and took the reins for good, as the secret cowboys call her behind her back, having pushed out a debauched ex-librarian whose history has been methodically effaced from collective memory thanks to those dangled tabs. To paraphrase a famous painter guy (something of a secret cowboy himself), she denies the accident. Otherwise, clear out when someone next to you calls her "Marcy" or "MM." Steal her spotlight expecting a disastrous spanking.
Let her try stopping me if she's heard this one before: in strolls a Thai go-go dancer fresh from Phuket Island, ready to embrace little but her casual destiny after, I imagine, what was a long haul to get here.
Oh, the newcomer can't help herself. Look at this miserable crowd wearing their frowns with their designer labels. Busier night than usual—which is damn busy. These Edders or Norfolks are joined at the hip with Constances or Mineolas. Slopfest up front with sad-browed, overmatched Maggie Hawerchuk handling them mostly on her own for the last month. The newcomer's face bunches up. She is righteous pissed. Perhaps this scene constitutes an ugly look in her former haunt where thirsty patrons barely wait a Bangkok minute to get their rocks off. Get to it already. Jumping to Maggie's rescue without an invite, she pops and skims an impressive flotilla of open longnecks down the length of the muddy brass rail before anyone can ask what they want, scoring jubilation from the crowd. Serious green rains from those appreciative hands, no doubt admiring the meticulous rhinestone handiwork on her pink Stetson, and those sequined denim short-shorts. Secret cowboy talent resides in this shooting star. Setting me up with a cold one, she introduces herself as Nan.
"Remember, Nan," Marcelle Marcelle instructs her new barkeep, roughly pulling her away from me and doling out the usual curt run-down, "no touching. Spécialement foot massage. Oui?"
Madam M may know her business. On the other side of the bar, presiding over the perimeter of ramshackle wooden tables and chairs around what may be loosely called a dance floor, a retrofitted Wurlitzer spins tunes younger than the entombed 45s in there from before 1990. Newcomers should watch carefully as the secret cowboys take their place on the dance floor during the interval of sixteen and a half seconds needed for the Wurlitzer to change songs, some finishing their drink with the countdown in their head, loop those thumbs in their jeans, arms akimbo, and away goes another microlayer of the linoleum. These ostriches twirl with not a single feather ruffling another. Sure is a weird-o sight, to be honest. Heads jutting, hands doing nothing. Some legs careful and short, others rangy and daring, and the rest are hey there whoa there. Bunch of different styles on parade, though line dancing and square dancing are strictly out of bounds—not happening at management's request and subsequent wrath.
Parking lot bustle? Is none. Can't be the secret cowboy bar with every mudflap in the county hanging out front. Everyone walks to and walks home—assuming they leave on foot the conventional way. No cab will find the secret cowboy bar, either, no way, not without a single neon sign to guide. Bands? Yeah, right. Cover fee? The miles traveled will suffice. A price at any cost worth paying, Madam M has confidently explained. She's a frequent flyer, to be sure. Had some doubts about her at my debut. Or did I? Puzzlement eternal graces this dusty vaudeville. A better, solemn poet may call it the stubborn land which embraces its old curse. I've only noticed the cover of darkness tends to help beatify things during a long stumble back alone while I sweat over marauding jackalopes ready to burst out of the sagebrush and feast on my handsome ankles.
Nan in the everloving fold, and the secret cowboy bar gets mating season bonkers. To my surprise, the no-touching ordinance fails to push away the latest crop of first-time Edders or Norfolks as it usually does. They're back the next night a tad sharper yet insist on trying to pay their tabs with plastic. The only one not returning is poor Maggie. She throws in the towel despite this fabulous new barkeep to assist (or because of), likely hitching her way back to her ancestral town of Sasquatch Paw in the Quebeckian outback. Unfazed, Nan picks up the slack to keep the nickel whiskeys churning and the cash register purring. She's sporting a chrome motor Detroit needs to steal the blueprint for.
Standing six-deep away from the rail, I soon find the downside to this main attraction. Madam M observes me under her raven's brow with no small delight. Evidently I've glided head-first into a vicious irony eluding me. My apologies. Takes a lot of effort to concentrate and swim across this sea of elbows whispering lasciviously to each other, fantasizing about all those naughty elbow things they would do if she wasn't watching, just so I can tie one on. Nan makes the waltz worth the torment. She concocts, in my humblest of opinions, the loveliest boilermaker with the whiskey shot already sunk in the beer, neither of which I recognize by taste with the initial gulp.
"Something else's in that," I report to the French Panopticon, dragging herself over to my lanky side.
"Certainement."
"Not going to tell me what it is, huh?"
"Vraimont, no," she gleefully squeals, clapping her hands to the escalating hoots from the drunken owl crowd about ready to graduate into the chaste ostrich crowd. I stand alone, staggering with my measly thought as she breaks away to shout "Slide Time!" Off they trot to the dance floor warmed by the steel guitar peals of Buddy Merrill's "Honey" lighting their joy up. The contrast in my head wrecks me some. Have to sit down a while. Hell, DeVita Murphy—the "Baton Rouge Stiletto"—couldn't spike her drinks with that much baffling whoop ass, and without her trademark verbal scourging as a chaser. Throw in an unfamiliar cheeriness Nan exudes while pouring sweet nectar and this dive'll never get a secret cowboy sniffing around again. Edders or Norfolks and their AmEx cards until the Redemption.
Maybe I should've bought Maggie a bus ticket for the both of us.
No offense to Nan's considerable people skills, but Slide Time is and will always be the superstar marquee deluxe at the secret cowboy bar, the lily that gilds itself clean, the ace all comfy in its permanent hole. Think the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle meets whiskey tango foxtrot when someone does it right, and in a few instances when they do it wrong as well. Mull over the bizarre stuff you've read about the possibility of spatial anomalies and worm holes so you can ditch the calculus that MIT cranks out on those subjects for blind peer review. Pack extra socks.
In the abstract, Slide Time presents a deceptive gambit: it happens when getting too far out of your own place on the dance floor before anyone there realizes it, including yourself, and zzzappo—you've been slid. For instance, a sharp ostrich who's getting their moves on one side of the floor can find themselves on the opposite side in a fraction of a heartbeat. Or if they feel nature calling at that precise gap, it's the toilet stall instead with a hundred thousand personal phone numbers. Or if it occurs to them they need new boots, it's under a table to sample an up-close look at someone else's Larry Mahans. And so on. Physical impediments are no issue. Don't bother trying to figure out what happened, or why your socks stayed put at the point of departure. Don't expect to duplicate the event anywhere off this dance floor. Do take uneasy comfort, however, in knowing anyone can participate in Slide Time as if they crashed a wedding they wish they hadn't afterwards. This ride is not for everyone at every occasion, regardless of what Madam M claims. Free your mind and your ass will follow, says the primeval axiom, but at the secret cowboy bar its corrected revision states, Free your mind and your ass at the exact same nanosecond or you ain't going nowhere.
Such careful timing requires the gift of secret cowboy music.
Madam M, I grant her, has the unenviable task of walking a slippery tightrope. The secret cowboy bar must dispense the secret cowboy sound which could transform a burlap sack into Queen Anne's lace and back. That threadbare dance floor has been graced by the likes of Patsy Cline's "Walking After Midnight" and Dolly Parton's "Dumb Blonde," the sudden high plateaus of Linda Martell's "Bad Case of the Blues," the messianic valleys of Johnny Cash reminding us where we're all heading to in the finale. In these songs and many others of their contemporaries slumber an older wisdom to move or sit or drink to; and despite her not being a local, Madam M understands secret cowboys well in this respect, their wanting to drag things back a tad. Time, unfortunately, always creeps forward here, regardless how Slide Time lets you cheat on a few exam questions in the process. Need to maintain fresh rotation on the Wurlitzer for the younger money walking through the door to satisfy their curiosity, then. Concessions are made. Some of them aren't horrible, like "Friends in Low Places," I guess, but a future filled with the stained bloodlines of "Cotton Eye Joe" or "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver" may yet prove the deal-breaker. Adding to that sacrifice, she also has crammed in choice tunes which sort of sound the secret cowboy part but you'll have to squint your eyes at them.
Speaking of which, my my my.
Along comes a striking specimen of Italian manhood tonight. Influencer, lord help us. Straight from Milan by the dreaded word-of-mouth. He screws up the works post-haste with Nan, doesn't like the nickel whiskey, takes several photos of it with his smart phone, texts in furious irritation, apparently unaware of the absence of cell phone towers in these parts. Wastes not a minute in making a pass at her. She snaps his trap shut, with Madam M swiftly in behind the bar to tag-team and educate him on the no-touching deal. He finds that hilarious. Blockaded there, he gripes about Ruby Falls' "You've Got to Mend this Heartache" playing, wants to know if the jukebox has Depeche Mode. Madam M gives the secret signal to Nan it's only beers for him, breaking off to sidle up next to me watching this euro-fiasco.
"You will look at this guy," she grumbles. "My whole life running from these."
Between the patterned silk shirt and long ponytail, he is ostentatious with a capital oh shit. He makes it plain he's not leaving soon. Grabs his beer and heads for an empty table to check out the dance floor action while scrolling for messages which won't arrive.
Takes me three seconds to size up. "I'll try him," I offer, hoping Nan will catch the fireworks.
Slide Time features an unusual wrinkle. Most instances, if you pull it off, you'll get slid within the premises; a few rare instances, a skilled ostrich can move themselves outside it, and at great distance, depending on the song selection. Timing the slide perfect with a lyric of particular emphasis is the key I've found with much trial and error. Recent tunes don't hurt. That Garth Brooks number does well for sliding, for example, provided the secret cowboy hits it at
I'm not big on social graces,
Think I'll slip on down to the OOO-ASIS—
blammo, off their particles fly to dip their reassembled bare feet in a secluded puddle a ways from the secret cowboy bar to take in the midnight shade under a joshua tree.
What's more, this sliding stuff ramps up double when someone else is trying to slide next to you. Assuming they've discovered the trick and honed it with accuracy.
Heading to the Wurlitzer once he's past his sixth beer, I punch in "Personal Jesus" for the Italian. The second that big twangy loop hits, he's out there on the dance floor as expected, and so am I.
Madam M claps and sends the call.
Soused as he is at this point, it's easy pickings. I let him lather himself for whatever secret cowboy thing he desires, although he's the worst ostrich I've parked next to in several months, his arms flapping without any direction or purpose, his legs stiff, yeesh, a complete mess. Getting in place, I start winding myself into a careful gravitational nudge, watch his face for the tell-tale sign, and release my hip-check at the third bursting god-voice refrain of
REACH OUT AND TOUCH FAITH—
landing Mr Milan and his likely pedicure, by my rough estimations, hard into the wooden confessional booth at Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio. Thereabouts in that zip code, at least.
"God-damn," I exclaim, looking down at the floor, "even his socks were silk."
That successful intervention wins me a free shot of the dollar whiskey at the bar, served by Madam M herself with Nan beaming bright next to her. Mighty generous of management considering I violated the second unwritten house rule underscoring the first: don't play songs on the jukebox that mention touching (uh huh, no joke). Devious she is to let me forget it. Am I being set up for a fall? Down the hatch, mio amico.
They say it's none too difficult to find fragile love at the secret cowboy bar in spite of the no-touching enforced. I regret I can't vouch that personally. Based on my observations, best to consider the phenomena here as disjointed germinations springing up like colorful mushrooms on a rotting log in the forest, with funny shapes and curlicues to make the bystander stare in wonderment and awe and ten feet away. I've seen more than my fair share of mismatched people walk out together. Hear later they're getting hitched by the Country Pope, never returning to the secret cowboy bar until His Eminence concludes the divorce proceedings, back they come to stake their fortunes again. Since I can't bend the floppy ear of any deranged owner who may or may not exist, my opinions about whether the no-touching ordinance contributes to the marital sabotage in advance wither on the vine (the sabotage is probably intentional anyway). Someone else further tells me to shut it before Madam M swoops in and mentions my outstanding tab. So I do. Regretfully. Pains me to admit this isn't the place for either radical dialectic or humdrum sophistry to awaken this token sample of the masses. They sit and listen to Lloyd Green play his "Drifters Polka," and take in the thumb-hooked stare of every Stetson playing chances while happy grins and rubber heels beat that linoleum into an airy film of its former self, as they reach and slide out for another dubious hat they can woo.
Some bar crowds are lithe as fish bones, others a tenderloin steak cut wrong. Sooner or later, the teeth will hit something not accounted for—in which case, have to figure whether to keep chewing for appearances or spit the deal out, forget those table manners mama taught you. Thus profess the secret cowboy poets.
With her getting gradually worn down night after night, Nan enjoys this analogy of theirs, I find, resembling an adage straight out of the village she grew up in before escaping to the sin city by the beach. On the other side of a shooting breeze, she tells me, a Thai grandfather and I would get along simpatico. I counter, for her feeling's sake, a particular Neil Young song about a sinking cowgirl might suit her current malaise better than any personal gems I'd offer regarding the fate of her predecessors.
The secret cowboy poets reside closer in the meanwhile, assuming anyone can agree upon who they are. Given the longevity of this flawed establishment, you'd think a few select names get thrown out with universal approval. Hell, these are the loudest arguments nearly spilling into haymakers thrown. Competing reputations. Professional jealousies. I seldom include myself in these debates, thinking instead of who would've been the non-secret cowboy poets in our midst—cummings? Sexton? Levis? I'd offer up dignitaries to be weighed against our minor laureates with trivial proof that reading does occur here: the song collections in the Wurlitzer, the undersides of tables, the space above the standing urinals. I can't be sure a secret cowboy bothers jotting something of note on paper at risk of getting noticed. Are they unnerved by an audience possibly waiting outside for the secret cowboy verse of our clumsy meanderings in the whiskey flats, too scared to touch each other because of a former Parisian dominatrix? By the grace of all there is or was, we may hope there will never be, lest the great human collective comes around to becoming fully, methodically, inescapably ashamed of itself.
My own notions of the secret cowboy poets rest upon them being the long-gone ones taken by that final Slide Time, their insurance cashed in and spent by relatives, their words no longer spoken by the Edders or Norfolks unaware of their passing. Lore has them sliding straight into unmarked graves near the secret cowboy bar, those unable to donate their livers to the organ banks, or the rest of them not in high demand from the scientific community. Sizing up the dance floor some nights, frightens me to picture those misshapen gallbladders and terminally puckered intestines doing the two-step. Worse yet when imagining them in jars of formaldehyde, communicating with each other at night soon as the lab techs go home, and through Morse code by knocking against the inside of the glass, quiet messages translating to Umm hmmmmm. Just as well those poets slid into the earth without a hassle so they could sleep it all off. Kind of Biblical, too, and practical because tough-as-a-leather-buggy-whip Marcelle Marcelle won't touch a shovel to save her own skin. Who knows who's napping out there, then. No candles are lit where devotion sets itself aside.
Between getting tipped by the secret cowboys with English lessons in lieu of phony two-dollar bills, Nan confides she doesn't get why I came knocking to begin with. I can't explain it to her, feeling for something I used to carry in my pocket but is misplaced. Suppose it's possible I got trapped by the secret cowboy poets, thinking I'm next up to assume their humble mantle. As I ask for her reasons, she tells me of the desperation of wanderlust, I think, moving around too many times before figuring she's ended up in the last place that wants her to stay. I'm about to riposte with an elegant turn that the secret cowboy bar might very well be her promised land—until some polecat at the bar interrupts me, demanding a barrage of shots. Best I can do is watch her swivel on an agonized heel and say "Ouch" to myself.
Blanketed by an inferior copy of a rosy-fingered dawn from eons ago, with most of the secret cowboys having walked or slid off, or others setting their heads down on the bar for a spell, the serene, hung-over interlude marks my free range of the premises, sitting me at a table with my legs out and crossed, one hand wrapped around a neglected beer parked there, the other dangling from an armrest. Her other talents from home being wasted on the dance floor, Nan sweeps up the numerous socks to the tender notes of "Big" Al Downing's "Touch Me," a number I had deliberately punched up in the Wurlitzer for her musical consolation, and for my welcoming the irritant that goes along with it. Things are peaceful, but it's only me making noise—best of both worlds. Madam M, soon to retreat and hang up her spurs until evening calls again, comes sauntering up to remedy this outrage.
"Mon petit Javert," she begins nonplussed, "how you forget yourself."
No reaction from me. Her bookish suggestion in annoyance twirls. Yet my sunrise mind favors those dactylic Greek warriors lapping the green waters of Hades, thoughts of home they had cherished vanishing over and over with the slow tides. Unwisely ignoring my inebriated state, I convince myself those guys would have a demoralizing retort settle this. As a student of her punishing ways, I'm a know-it-all through the fall and a constant thing through the spring.
"Get me one of those Lethebräu Reserves, Marcelle."
"What are you talking about," she scolds me.
"Or a Dank Lethe IPA will do 'er."
". . . ."
"Just set me up, okay. My crafty plan's afoot to evade your snares."
"You are no Ulysses," she ratchets up her abuse, wiping her hands on a towel.
"The hell I'm not. His soul-sucking zaniness panned out," I contend, pausing to jerk my arms around to draw weak equivalence, then resuming, "so the story preserves him alive and kicking."
"Because he had family to return. Someone loved him. Where is your reason?"
Madam M leaves me to stew. There've been four occasions, by my reckoning, when she made me both want and not want to visit the seventh arrondissement. This would be numero cinco.
Recurring lament at the secret cowboy bar which boils the week-old coffee: How'd I get my sorry ass roped into this box? Hear it endless from the grizzled veterans whose faces are too beat-up and gnarly to put on the side of milk cartons. Futile exchanges with Madam M notwithstanding, I can't make out anyone past the Edders or Norfolks or Constances or Mineolas eager to tolerate my presence. Did someone close drag me along, only to slide themselves to where they really wanted to settle? The way I scan everything down to the nails in the floorboards, I start dancing to help my considering whether a purpose had led me astray instead, soon getting washed out in an extemporaneous gulley of stepping in time to La Melle Prince's "All Alone in this World." That's where the music sends me when I stay put. More assurance is required. Much more. Why some normals out there think secret cowboys don't need much else other than the event horizon of a black hole is beyond me.
So, typical night. Decent crowd. George Strait getting a solid work-out on the Wurlitzer. Madam M humorless. Nan pouring out constant whiskey shots with a torrent of Thai curses I wish I could understand because they sound intense. And boom—total darkness. Cerebral hemorrhage? No, a profane secret cowboy groundswell joins Nan from all corners. What fun.
"Forgot to pay your bill, Marcelle," I poke her from my usual spot at the bar. Though I confess I've never spotted a single power line running to the place outside.
Rightly ignoring my mildest of zingers, Madam M fishes for something below a sink. A flashlight beam illuminates her irritated face, and she yells out towards the dance floor, "Stay calm—I send someone to take care of it." She hands the flashlight over to me. "Here you go. Take care of it."
"Take care of what?"
"Ma grand-mère."
"Sorry to hear she's not well, hope she pulls through."
"Head to the basement and check the circuit breaker."
"This joint has a basement?"
At her shrill whistle, a smallish dude steps up. Someone I think I've noticed on the dance floor during Slide Time before I slide out, but not acquainted with on a first-name basis. Or last-name, for that matter. His shirt's buttoned up to the neck and wrists. Pressed chinos. He smiles with an angelic face. Politely tips his hat.
"This is Pablo. He is my bouncer. He will show you the way."
Bouncer? I politely tip my hat in kind. "Howdy, Pablo. You good with circuit breakers?"
"No," cuts in Madam M, "you are."
"News to me. Been ages."
"I hear it is like, what you say, riding a bicycle? Hop on it."
Thankfully my hand was wrapped around my beer mug before sudden midnight arrived. I chug it for courage and take the flashlight, resisting a perilous urge to ask Madam M why she doesn't do this herself. "You're my man, Pablo. Lead me on," I say, some residue of distrust latching onto whether I had seen him prior to my secret cowboy bar daze on a champion horse at the Kentucky Derby. He seems well suited to play the part for my foggy intuition.
Following the lightbeam, Pablo slices a neat path through the disgruntled ostriches milling about on the dance floor without George Strait to guide them, carefully avoiding contact. He does this so skillfully that I get the distinct impression he doesn't need the flashlight. We wind our way around towards the bathrooms and arrive at the empty cigarette machine. Pablo pulls two knobs on it at once and, presto, a section of the floor pops up enough to separate it from the rest. He pulls it back on a hinge below the surface. Wary, I take a peek. A ladder heading into . . . something? With that same smile, he motions me to go first. Naturally.
Wouldn't describe the climb down as steep, but it's sure a long long ways into the void. Nearly two or three minutes I stay on the rungs. Only when I finally ask myself what the hell's happening and point the flashlight down do I find the ground a few feet below me. I jump off with Pablo following close and offering no reassurances whatsoever.
A quick, jittery sweep with the flashlight also doesn't reveal much. Ground's sandy firm, like I'm outside, until I trail Pablo for a few paces, whereupon it turns into what resembles concrete. Then, some bottles.
No, wait.
Many. Many. Many bottles.
I stop in my tracks to take the whole damn thing in. Walls. Made of glass bottles. Huge piles of them. Drained. Every single empty this place has cranked out, beer, whiskey, tequila, mescal, completely surrounding me. Hundreds of thousands? Millions? They've been trucked and stacked in wooden crates, a Grand Cowboy Altar of Bacchanalia blessed by the Country Pope that grows by the day in a basement that, for the life of me, I can't figure where it ends. As deep and wide and tall as all the passing years put together reminding me what I've missed along with every other secret cowboy.
"Hol-lee shee-it," my philosophy reigns supreme.
Pablo, to his credit, has been patient waiting for my bedazzled ass to get over it already. Since he doesn't talk much, I presume he's enjoying himself watching my revelation to the secret cowboy bar's biggest cowboy secret. Withholding commentary he motions with his head, and away we go into a labyrinth of labels that, at a glance, I've never drank or heard of before.
After a choreographed series of turns Pablo appears to know by heart, we arrive at the end of a long hallway comprised entirely of crates filled with cobwebby empties that have no labels on them. There's our circuit breaker I train the lightbeam on, or what appears to be the closest thing. Also not a model I have any know-how with. For what I'd guess at this point, doe-eyed Reticulans might've left it behind centuries ago after they kidnapped the Mayans for brunch. Heavy-duty electrical cords run in and out of it, then back into a brick wall. Pablo gets up on his toes, flips open the cover, points to the circuits.
An atrociously dated contraption. Not a switch-type. Uses mini-plugs, yet the model's so antiquated even the mini-plugs don't resemble what I can recall—who the hell made these? No clue is my associate willing to provide. I have him hold the flashlight while I fumble away, unplugging by sheer intuition the main breaker so I won't kill myself, then taking out the offending mini-plug, completely scorched as it is. What now? Pablo points the lightbeam to a grimy box sitting on top filled with plenty of new old mini-plugs in multiple protective layers of cardboard as if they're unhatched dinosaur eggs. Problem solved. I screw a fresh one in, giving myself a tiny shock at the fingertips, reset the main breaker. Looks good enough. A tingle runs through my arm from where I was shocked. Nothing lights up in the basement to indicate power's restored. Behind the brick wall a humming noise starts. I freeze up.
Pablo pats me on the back.
The fuck?
Can't react. Can't react can't react can't react.
Christ almighty―the bouncer, of all people. Will he ding my skull with the flashlight and dump the rest of my impeccable skeleton here? The nerve to turn to him arrives.
And I do.
He gives me back the flashlight.
Pulling out a paper pad and stubby pencil from his backside pocket, he writes fast as I have the light on him, which he shows me: gracias por todo señor.
I exhale. Hard to be upset in front of that smile of his. Close to his face now, it finally hits me. Turns out he and I do have history.
"De nada, Pablo. Thank you for being my bestest empties sherpa."
Following him out and climbing back upstairs towards a light, I find the electric age has returned to the bar. He closes the hatch while I dust myself off. Without further gesture he disappears into the dance floor crowd already swaggering to "All My Ex's Live in Texas." Adios, I wave to him. I attempt re-taking my seat of honor as the scruffy peacock I am, though still simmering over his touching me. Plus what was meant by that everything he wrote.
To cap off the adventure, Madam M greets my triumphant sashay with another frosty mug.
"You have performed a valuable service for us, cowboy."
"Least I could do," I feign indifference as I hand her back the flashlight and pull my leg up on the barstool, "pretty sure your bouncer won me big money years ago at Churchill Downs."
Assuming I don't slide right off the planet and into a binary star system, my daily routine is mostly consistent. Wake up next morning back at my own cluttered dwelling, face-down and bare feet hanging off the sofa bed, shower, relatively fresh clothes, new socks, corn flakes, resolve to return to secret cowboy bar to get answers, return to secret cowboy bar, never do get answers, may as well have a drink.
Today is not routine. Nowhere close to it. Pablo's moment of indiscretion has me in a whole different mindset racing in other directions, paired with what I saw in the mysterious underbelly.
"I want to settle my tab and buy this place," I tell Madam M at the bar straight up as I walk in holding a thick bill clip. "Screw whoever holds the deed."
Unmoved by my demand, she wipes the counter without looking at me. "Already told you. No owner step forward, nothing to sell."
"Except this inventory and a quantum shifting self-teleporter."
"The secret cowboy bar has many benefactors who choose a low profile."
"They handle your payroll as well?"
She throws me an insulted glare.
"Do I look like a fool who works for free?"
"No, and you also don't look like a fool handling taxes or liquor licenses. Maybe someone else needs to clarify this situation."
I hear a glass shatter behind me on the floor. Everything goes hush.
She tosses aside the towel. Breaking out a refined Palais-Bourbon stink-eye saved for the most thick-headed Edders or Norfolks, she draws herself close to my face, closer than she's been or should be, spelling out her displeasure with my ultimatum in severe French peppered with white-hot obscenity. Which I'm able to summarize as, "Go ahead and try, soft dick."
Okay. Right.
I'm banished to the shittiest table propped in the dingiest of the four corners for the rest of the evening. No clear view of the bar or dance floor. Secret cowboys left and right avoiding any looks in my taboo direction. Worse punishment yet to materialize, I feel. Though all is not lost. Nan at no small risk finds me and gives mercy (or pity) by leaving a full fifth of the good stuff at the table, with a shot glass and a consoling wink. Back she goes. She's a special woman, no doubt. Wish I could tell her she deserves a federal holiday named after her.
In short order I'm sauced proper for the dance floor. Madam M's call goes out while I nurse a small, dangerous notion collapsing in my head which soon explodes supernova. Finding my balance I sprint over to the jukebox. Cue George Michael's "Faith," understanding that the breathy opener of his,
Well, I guess it would be nice
if I could touch your body,
should perk her ears up. And others are listening. The crowd whooping, recognizing the tune and what goes along with it, serves me up an unexpected bonus. I get a strong gravitational flux stirring on the dance floor of many secret cowboys wanting to go far.
Slide Time revving up. That tingle from the basement returning. Hairs on my arm standing on end. Shit, my hair all over is at attention. I'm feeling amazing. I decide to kick it in highest gear to show these ostriches how it's done, winding myself tighter and tighter, waiting for the roundelay to merge with that pleasing but brief honky tonk guitar solo, eventually bridging headlong into
Before this river
becomes an ocean—
lights out, fffff
fffollow crashing waves.
I wake up.
Howdy, y'all.
Ten. Eleven. Dozen or so Thais standing above me. Looking concerned. Check that—amused. Could be my large pale feet. My jeans filled with wet sand. Hat and leather boots washing up beside me. Hang-over more pronounced than usual. Sun's brighter than hell. I don't get up yet. Try some basic conversational phrases I picked up from Nan. Crowd appears relieved by my false explanation of falling off a cruise ship. They laugh and commence disregarding my self-inflicted plight.
Just as well. I'd lose interest in me, too, if I could.
The action in Patong Beach doesn't appear advantageous to new entrepreneurs in the area aiming for enough scratch to get back stateside. Bars and whatnot cramming themselves into every street and alley, trying to race each other to how they can sell beer and company and have their bottom line land in the black by the end of the month. Spendthrift tourists worsening prospects. Police begging for kick-backs. Hustlers galore. Nan would be proud to find my agreement in everything she told me about this town coming true. Rainy season around the corner did help peel off a sleepy watering hole from a duffer wanting to tap out, my capping off its re-brand as The Double Barrel for a fresh secret cowboy-themed bonanza finding the unexploited clientele. The bill clip I had with me prior to the slide didn't hurt, either, in addition to the favorable dollar-to-baht conversion rate.
Maybe it was meant to be—a motto I detest above them all. Yet I'm living on it after the mechanical bull on Greenhorn Level threw me 0.42 seconds out of the gate, rounding out this humiliation by scoring on another useless bumper sticker: Failure is not an option. Such bold achievement started scenarios of my having Slide Time here and a thousand other joints I own elsewhere with a thousand franchiseezees forking it over to me. Except duplicating the original's favorable astrophysics remains out of the question. Have to roll through monthly expenses with my own shady ledger narrated by Marcelle Marcelle's voice-over reminding me how I bailed on the secret cowboy bar to strike another path. What's left in the margins? It resembles the usual Patong compromise. My wallet's thick, my head's thin, and the rest of me in between scrambles the weeds.
I'd pull the quitter talk from any hypothetical franchise manual, however, and have the Founder's Credo attribute my remarkable success to what has been learned of bar management by observing the comings and goings of decent, hard-working patrons. Might include a few special tricks a certain someone did which she thought nobody had noticed. "Quickest fingers I seen to cook the books," I hold forth about Madam M in great detail to my enrapt Thai customers (the tourists couldn't care less), conveying to them a former expertise I can't account for. Whatever. See, absent Slide Time, it's not the low prices I set or the relative quality of my grey market booze. One bar story intertwines with two or three more, those start crossing paths with a few more along the way, until my regulars start to sense it's all the same rodeo outside. They ought to park their vacuous keisters smack dab in my immediate area instead and listen up. Save themselves the wear and tear.
Learn the worst of the best from the best of the worst—that's a motto I'll salute.
Would the phony patriotism fill more than my hidden wall safe. Watching these pretty sundowns alone from the beach often has me peering towards the other side of the pond. Country Pope worrying about me back there? Anyone? Nah, that's a laugh. Another candidate steps up to slide out the undesirables or mend an antediluvian circuit breaker. But the grievance prods. Could it be a need to prove my mettle—I survived this, I'm walking around, I'm flush, I'm getting drunk, I'm bringing down the roof, I'm owning it? This world should be larger than a stone's throw indeed. I wouldn't even trust myself to forget things right anymore, as I apparently used to do. Few potential secret cowboy poets among my customers to be found. No Nan as well. When, of all the wayward influencers mucking about on the Phuket Island WiFi, ole Mr Milan himself walks into The Double Barrel one night, sizes me up behind the bar, looks me square in the eye, orders a Heineken, and doesn't recognize me before snapping a selfie, well, that settles my hash.
Year and a half into my Patong residency is when I sell the bar. A back row seat's afforded me in budget class of a jumbo 747 on Jasmine Air, drinking money to spare. Should've made it two years to get to business class. Rubbery pad thai dinner. Can't sleep upright. Feet itch. Music channels so anemic with the J, K, and L Pop wonderboys, it takes Dire Straits's "So Far Away" playing on a scratchy 45 in my now-bubbling memories to distract me from judging which of them is the whiniest. Then the walk from the airport after I land will be the biggest unsatisfactory bitch to end that competition for good.
Sun's about to set again when I get to the vicinity with my carry-on looped over my shoulder. At a distance I've seen a sneak preview of the news I'm late for. Not much use acting surprised for an audience of none. So I keep walking on a pillow of blisters anyway.
Head low and tired, I step up to the absolute fuck-all.
Whole thing's gone. Floorboards and faulty plumbing along with it. Only this rectangular impression in the dust hinting what stood here. The continual wind brushing it smooth, save a metallic glint sprouting from the dead center. I hesitate a moment before bending down and picking up a badge. State Detective.
The weight in my hand as I pocket it.
Can't resist dawdling to admire this postcard management left for me. A seasoned forensic team with a map couldn't detect the hatch to the basement. Is there an Everest of bottles waiting miles below my bleeding feet? Clandestine alien electrical hook-up? Particle accelerator prototype? Not counting on any of that. Fine crib notes she must've taken on my proficiencies, I bet. None too shabby. Biggest goddamn slide since Al Capone's vaults. Next year I'll find sitting on where my spot at the bar was a cellphone tower flanking a billboard for condoms that never expire in the wrapper. A most fitting monument to our collaborative effort.
I tip my head to the wind gusts, holding my hat in place as it slowly turns dark.
Smarts like hell, people moving on from you while you thought you were working your way back to them. Regardless whether the prelude to the sting operation crapped out or not. With a limp I point myself in the general direction of Albuquerque.
Guess I ought to report officially to some honcho above me that this abandoned patch I tend is what secret cowboys earn for their trouble.
I may be wiser omitting the rest: they're lucky, just a bit, should they get some attention for it that one and only time, the rider making them believe after the race they were a beautiful horse carrying him first across the finish line.