My Nighttime Ride with Shitface
(his real name is Lou, dammit)
or...
Discussing Deep Philosophies in the Late-Nite Drive-Thru Amongst All Of Those Sandwich Wrappers That Have Come Before Us, bitch
Yes. It was late at night. Very, very late. I wasn't sure how late. Shitface's clock on his radio on his old rusted Monte Carlo always says 12:00. It seems he cannot figure out how to set it. Every once in a while he'll fumble around with it, but that usually ends in him smacking the dash above it hard, which for some reason always switches the station to somebody preachin an an AM station.
Ann the laaawwwd is watchin' ovah you, mm-mmm! A-Men! Praise the Lawd God!
...and then he gets so mad because he hates religion that he curses and smashes it again. And this action always puts it on a hard core rock station that blasts the hell out of my eardrums.
So anyways. I was riding with Shitface late at night and he turns to me and says in his whiskey-soaked voice as he slowly begins to creep into oncoming traffic in the other lane: "I feel like some..... burgers!" His acrid, dripping breath would kill a weaker man, I have a feeling, but luckily for me I have some of the toughest ol' factories on the block.
Amongst much screeching, honking, and yelling, I pontificated that he was suggesting a White Castle run. But for some reason he violently veered into a Taco Bell parking lot.
"Holy fucking shit, it's raining fuckers!" Shitface bellowed as he careened his convertible into the drive-thru lane. I don't know about "fuckers" but it definitely wasn't raining water. Not in that drought. So yeah, soon he was in the drive-thru of the old Bell of Taco. He screeched to a very uncomfortable stop at the menu.
"I feel like some pooo-saaaayy!" Shitface declared.
"I don't think that's on the menu, dude," I mumbled as I admired a picture of some beans, cheese, and other shit wrapped up in this culinary device undoubtedly made from some type of grains.
Shitface laughed. No, actually, he doesn't laugh, he cackles. He would make the goddamn Blair Witch crap in her purple stockings sometime, I swear. The brown and liquidy kind. It's not just the cackling, of course not! just factor in his stringy, greasy greying hair, mostly toothless grin, freakishly popping eyes, and ratty old hat. Factor that shit in and you'll be manufacturing brown liquid, too.
Slowly Shitface pulled up to the speaker.
"Welcome to Taco Bell, may I take your order?" mumbled some kid, sounding like he was sentenced to work there there by a judge, no doubt for loitering or something.
"Why don't people take pride in their jobs anymore?" I asked Shitface as I took off my shoe. I had previously stubbed my toe really bad and was curious as to the status of the nail, y'know, what color it was, if it was falling off yet.
"I wanna prideburger!" yelled Shitface. Then he wheezed all the air out of his lungs slowly.
"A wha--?"
"I'll take a beef Mexi Melt!" I yelled.
"OK, and--?"
"I want a fucking Big Mac!" Shitface yelled. Then he proceeded to swat around at a fly. I didn't see
a fly, though.
"Sir, we don't have those..."
"I'll tell ya what it is, sonny," Shitface said, turning to me. Boy if I had had a slightly weaker constitution his breath, in that particular instance in time and space, might have murdered me. "But I gotta whisper it 'cuz it's a secret!" I wondered, then, why he had yelled that at the top of his lungs. "Jobs are like farts," he wheezed, "you can blow 'em out all ya want, but people only notice it when they stink!" The he promptly farted to perhaps further his point. It was the kind that starts out loud and flappy then peeters out into a loud squee.
It was perhaps one of the most profound things I had ever heard. Undoubtedly, he was capitulating about how jobs in the natural gas industry were having an adverse affect on the global economy. That would be a matter I'd have to investigate further.
"I'll have a Nachos Bel Grande!" I exclaimed as I slipped my sock off. My foot was wrinkled as had lots of little white sock leftovers.
"I'll have a camel toe!" shouted Shitface.
The speaker boy seemed to chuckle. "We, uh, don't have those, either, sir."
"I'll have your mommy, boy, with a side of ssshhhhitknockers!"
"Shitknock--??"
"Gimme a taco pizza!" I yelled.
"I wanna fucking JUMBO JACK!" Shitface screamed. "With grilled motherfuckers!"
"Uhh... sir..."
"Lemme tell ya somethin boy," Shitface said quietly, turning and pointing at me, "don't ever expect anybody to polish your camel balls for you, some things ya gotta just.." he stopped to wheeze "..do it yourself!"
"Oh I am an avid fan of personal responsibility, Sir," I said with confidence. "That is definitely one of the problems of society today, a lack of the good ol' PR. Not press releases, mind you--"
"I SAID PEPPERONI!" Shitface screamed, turning to the speaker suddenly. His crazed voice echoed off into the night. "What the fuck do I gotta do to get some goddamn PEPPERONI?!"
"Listen, sir, we don't have burgers or pizzas here..."
"Gimme a spicy chicken Crunchwrap Supreme!" I exclaimed.
"Crunchwraps are like Jennifer Aniston and Samuel L. Jackson!" Shitface yelled. "She might suck
his dick, but when they fart, who really gives a shit?"
His astute observation of the media demonization of the sexual exploits and bodily functions of American celebrity sent me reeling into unforseen ponderances. I almost forgot to order those five tacos I'd wanted.
"OK," the boy said, "now, I've got your Mexi Melt, your Crunchwrap Supreme, nachos, Mexican pizza, and your tacos. But nothing this guy has said--"
"FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOZEBAALLLLL!" Shitface suddenly yelled into the speaker as if he was in a foozeball-drive-thru-speaker-yelling contest. He certainly would've deserved the blue ribbon if I do say so myself.
Ah, life is but a game, after all. I was beginning to wonder if Shitface's astounding life observations were going to go on all night. He is truly a Renaissance man, a regular modern-day Don Quixote, daring to hit the drive-thru speaker as if it were a windmill and he had some sort of jousting thingy.
I put my sock and shoe back on after coming to the conclusion that I would have to wait before I could put the toenail out of its misery.
"Listen, sir--"
"BAAAAAALLLLLLLLLZZZZZZZZZ!"
"SIR--!"
"BAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL LLLLLLLZZZZZZZZZ!"
Shitface's loud declaration of the roundish parts of the male anatomy caused some dogs to begin wailing and some car alarms to begin barking. Now I began to wonder, at this point, if he was stark raving mad, or maybe he was postulating so deeply and profoundly it was beyond even my intellect's grasp.
It just had to be the latter. "If you don't have those," I said, "just give him five tacos, too. And how 'bout adding me a burrito on there? A chili one."
"All right," said the shaken-sounding boy, "that'll be twelve-sixty-six. Please pull around."
"It's about fucking time!!" Shitface exclaimed. Then he put the car in reverse, hopped up onto the rock garden around the speaker and spun some stones into the building. "You gotta get a swing at these goddamn things!" he yelled as he put it in drive. In a few seconds, after a launch NASA would have been proud of, we landed at the drive-thru window around the corner.
"If shit were made of manure, I'd be rich by now!" Shitface cried at the boy as he began to flip crumpled bits of Monopoly money through the window. Even though his eyes were mostly covered by his dark, encroaching mutt of hair, I could tell the boy looked a bit bedazzled. The pink, yellow, and white paper bouncing and floating into the window reminded me of the days of my misspent board-gaming youth.
"Dude, you're defective!" the boy declared. This caused Shitface to convulse into hyena-like cackles. Knowing full well that a fine establishment like Taco Bell did not accept any currency except that officially sanctioned by the US government, I released a $20 bill from my wallet and reached across Shitface to put it on the gleaming, metal window sill. The boy accepted it and handed me my change.
As Shitface continued to cackle uncontrollably, the boy handed us our bags of food and we sped off into the night. As if to celebrate our successful authentic Mexican food-gathering mission, Shitface drove with one hand and tossed the contents of his taco into the air as if it were confetti with the other.
"Whoo hoo hoo!" Shitface said gleefully as he tossed bits of lettuce, cheese, and meat up and into the night air. "Lick her in the balls, poke her in the taco!"
I pondered his gender-confusing comment carefully as we continued traveling, the grass whishing and the sticks crackling below the wheels of the Monte Carlo. I came to the conclusion, as I barely avoided being bitch-slapped by a thin tree branch, that Shitface was questioning the very concept of biological gender and indicting society at large for artificially perpetuating flawed ideas about what it is to be a man or a woman.
But, I thought, as I attempted eating a nacho (something made very difficult by Shitface's insistance on driving over that log), "What does it all have to do with tacos?"
It would probably be one of those questions - and there are many - that man will struggle to answer in the centuries to come.
"Baaaallllllllzzzzz!!!" Shitface yelled as he finally decided to drive on a road again, nearly hitting a few perplexed drivers and pedestrians in the process.
Maybe Shitface had the answer to that question. Or maybe all of them. Perhaps, though, his enigmatic languagations would keep them locked forever in brilliant, fantastic mind.
For Wordmongers' Masque
Baaallllzzzz!!!!