“Come over to see us, you whore!! We’re up on the top deck of the bar, Bitch! Get your ass up here!!” and click, he was gone. What intelligent, tender people I’ve hung with throughout my life.
Well, I thought, may as well take another few days off my life, so I stopped at the bar and headed upstairs to the rooftop deck. Dominic was standing in the center with four other friends when I walked up. He was so drunk he could barely stand.
“Whore! Where’ve you been!” he screamed at me.
“It’s nice to see you too, sweetie…” I replied, giving the others a look of “How long’s he been like this?”
They read my mind and said, “He started drinking at noon. He’s called everybody in this place either a hot daddy, a whore or a bitch.”
I replied, “I take it from his announcement at my entrance I did not get placed in the hot daddy category.”
“You bitches!! Buy me a drink!” he yelled out to us.
The deck was crowded with people and little Dominic had everyone’s attention on him. Many were amused, Dominic was certainly a funny, colorful personality, but an equal number of people could only put up with him for so long before they’d shake their heads and move to another spot, as far away as possible.
A cute guy walked by and Dominic twirled around to get a look at him. He grabbed the guy’s behind then pointed at me, saying, “He thinks you’re hot! He wants to go home with you!”
The guy looked at me and smiled, knowing Dominic was just saying it. Everyone up there realized within one minute he was full of shit and just wasted.
Dominic stumbled into my arms, “Buy me a drink, Bitch!”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough? Everyone here is starting to wonder why the little doll from It’s a Small World was let out of the boat ride…”
“You bitch! I’ve gotta pee-pee!” was the reply.
“Pee-pee? How butch…” I dryly said, holding him up.
“Dammit whore! I am butch!” he yelled out, smiling and waving his hands all around.
“Butch? You? Maybe if butch was spelled with an i…” A chuckle rose from the crowd, for some reason whenever I was with Dominic the puns just came left and right. He always gave me so much material to work with.
This went on for a good half hour until we took him downstairs to use the restroom and hopefully get him out of there and into a cab home. It was getting embarrassing. While the crowds at first found Dominic an endearing little loudmouth, he was wearing thin.
Holding him up and leaving the restroom, I was on one side of him and another friend, Steve, on the other. Dominic kept loudly critiquing the butt of every guy who walked by, when he broke away from me and staggered to the edge of the bar.
One of the bar’s employees walked up and said, “You’d better get your friend some water, he is really close to being asked to leave…”
I grabbed Steve and told him what the man said, but Dominic heard me, whirling around yelling, “Who the fuck said that! Don’t they know who the hell I am!! Where is that asshole?!” and I was surprised the employee walked right by him, heard it, shook his head, yet didn’t do anything. Personally, I would have put a little “Skinny & Sweet” in his cocktail.
“Dominic, we need to get you some water. Sit on this barstool and be quiet,” I said.
“No!” he yelled out, “Let’s have fun!” and he put his arms around Steve and I, “I love you bitches…”
Having had enough of this shit, I literally picked Dominic up completely, carried him five feet to the barstool and sat him down. Being so small, it was about the same as picking up a large husky.
He gave me a dumbfounded expression, and was quiet for about fifteen seconds, not quite certain what had just happened. His brain was still swimming from the multiple vodkas he’d downed in the previous six hours. Then, once he got his bearings, he yelled at the bartender, “Hey sweetieeee!”
The bartender turned around, and there was this little Phillipino giving him an adorable puppy dog expression, his tone soft and pleading, “Can I pleaaasseee have a vodka and diet coke?”
“He’ll have a water…” I told the bartender.
“You whore! I want a vodka!” he yelled back at me, dropping the puppy dog eyes.
“You’ve had enough,” Steve interrupted.
Dominic appeared to be calming down on the barstool, so Steve and I talked to a couple of friends who approached us. When we turned back around, there was another vodka in front of Dominic. How he’d gotten the bartender to give it to him while we weren’t looking, I don’t know.
He lifted up his glass. “Cheers, bitches!!” swung his arm out, the glass dropped straight from his hand, right on the floor, shattering. He immediately went wide eyed, putting his index finger to his pursed mouth, like he was some four year old who had just broken a lamp.
In reality, he was actually a four year old who had just broken a vodka glass. He jumped down from the stool and started sweeping his foot to the left and the right as if nobody was going to notice it.
“Stop that!” I yelled at him, “You’re getting glass all over!” and again, picked him straight up off the ground and put him on the stool. “Sit there and shut up, you little pin-headed monster!”
He smiled at me, “I love you whores…”
The same bar employee who had threatened to kick him out came over and swept up the mess. He didn’t say anything this time either, but within a minute every trace of glass was gone. As he walked away, he shot Dominic a look similar to what Sweeney Todd must have given his prospective clients.
“Now, be quiet and sober up, we’re taking you home soon.”
“No, you’re not! I’m having fun with my friends. I love you guys…let’s go dancing!” and once more swung his arms out. This time he fell backward off the stool onto his back, legs flailing in the air like a beached octopus.
The entire bar went silent. One group of guys behind us said, “That poor little thing’s a mess.”
I was getting quite a workout picking the little rat up, but once again I lifted him bodily off the floor, all the way in the air and sat his ass down on the barstool. “You’re going home!”
“No, I’m not! I want to talk to the big hairy bears…” and looked behind him. There were four guys behind us, all stocky and bearded. They had been observing this comedy floor show the entire time.
“Hello bears!! How are you?...I just love bears…”
At first they thought he was cute and charming, probably because they didn’t have to deal with him and they played along with his flirtatious comments.
“Would anybody like a little Boo Boo bear to take home?” he smiled, batting his eyes.
“You would fit in a picnic basket, that’s for sure,” I cracked behind him, “Hopefully one with a lock on it.”
“Oh, shut up whore! I want to talk to the big fat bears!”
The word “fat” obviously did not sit well with this group, because at that point they just gave him this, “Lord child, you need to sober up,” look and turned away from him.
“What’s wrong!?” he asked, perplexed they were now ignoring him.
In five seconds he suddenly changed his tune and yelled out, “Fine! I didn’t want to be a little Boo Boo for you fat old bears anyway!” and he started pouting. I was certain he was going to get the shit kicked out of him, but the four guys patiently just looked at Steve and I, obviously sympathizing with our situation.
One of them shook his head at me and smiled, while another said to Dominic, “Drink your gin, Shelby, drink your gin….”
I’d had enough, told the guys sorry this mistake of a science experiment had bothered them and picked Dominic off the stool. I marched him through the bar with my hand over his mouth, got outside and put him in a cab with Steve. Three times Dominic called that night, over the next two hours.
Each time, all I heard was “You whore!” or “You bitch!”, then he’d hang up.
Such were my colorful little comrades. Funny, endearing and over the top in some ways, incredibly tragic and dysfunctional in others. Sort of like watching Fozzie, Gonzo and the Swedish Chef all walking around in rehab.
The next morning, Chris and I took a walk, and like always, I’d share all the fun experiences from the bar. The number of interesting characters I’d met was almost Dickensian.
He told me, “I could never be one of those people sitting in a bar all the time. I had enough of all that just observing people while I was bartending. I love going out as much as the next person, but I wouldn’t even be at a bar on a regular basis once a week, let alone every other day. Too easy to get wrapped up in everyone’s drama which in the end, isn’t really my drama at all…”
Of course I had to say, “Are you making a comment about me?” not really believing he was, knowing how Chris tried not to judge. Even when I’d ask his advice about something, point blank, he’d usually not want to answer it too judgmentally.
He’d always just say “This is what I would do. I’m not you.” One of the best parts of having him as a boyfriend is he let me make my own mistakes, knowing I’d eventually learn from them. None of this telling others what to do, it’s what made this particular relationship work for me.
“Nope, I am not talking about you, I’m talking about me. I just know how people can get when alcohol is involved. They forget what’s really important.”
“Smartass, you are talking about me,” I said, smiling. “For what it’s worth, I haven’t forgotten that you’re important…to me.”
He smiled back, “I realize that.”
Happy he didn’t get too mushy back at me, I contentedly held his hand as we strolled down Halsted past a dozen bars.
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