first | second | the one before this one
The Late Night at the Bowling Alley with Dom as He Tells Old Stories and somesuch, with Shitface a few lanes down
Guess Starring Ex Treme
Ah, the bowling alley. Nothing quite like it. The loud hum of the balls rolling down the lanes, the crash of the pins, the ubiquitous chatter of the other players, the stinging scent of the cigarette smoke, the pungent odor of all those sweaty feet as they make the trip from their usual homes to the beautiful, multi-colored rentals. I was there last night with Dom, another good buddy of mine that you haven't met yet.
Dom is one of those people who have lots of stories to tell. It makes sense that he does, given how long he's been on this lonely little planet we like to call Earth. Anyway, Dom, he is quite old, his hair reduced to whispies of white and grey on a freckled, shiny cranium. The bags under his eyes are mostly hidden by his gigantic pair of glasses, the lenses so thick they make his eyes really, really big. He can be positively scary, like to little girls - the kind that run from him screaming when he smiles at them and offers them candy. And for some odd reason, chihuahas also do anything they can to get far, far away from him.
But I can get past the huge eyes, the brown spots all over his skin, those big, blue veins on his legs clotted by spots of purple, those wrinkled and deflated testicles that hang almost down to his knees that fortunately I only see at the gym, and I have learned to enjoy him for his wisdom, his kindness, and his storytelling.
"Oh my," he said in his trembly voice, looking a few lanes over at a woman who was bending down to grab her ball, "I wish she was grabbin' one o'mine, lemme tell ya sonny! Hee hee!" He stopped chuckling to gag and hawk one some loose phlegm in his throat, then continued. "Lookit the titties on that one. My God, what a glorious view she's giving us. I could suck on them alllll night, I tell ya."
"Very nice," was all I said. I was actually more interested at that moment in getting my finger out of one of my ball's holes. I knew it when I grabbed that one that it'd probably be too small. "Hey you got any Vasoline in your bag of creams and ointments?"
"Oh yeah," he said, still looking at the woman as she chalked up her hands, a trickle of drool appearing at the corner of his mouth, "Vasoline. Yes, that's a good idea, oh yes, me and her, we could have some fun with Vasoline..."
"ELEPHANT COCKS!!" yelled a familiar voice a few lanes to our left. I looked over. Why, it was Shitface! There he was, in his tattered, urine-scented attire: an old faded Megadeath tee shirt and worn out jean shorts. He was wearing a diaper on his head for some reason. It was probably some statement about how no matter how hard you try, you can never contain the genius that is always leaking out of his head, as if his brains were the bladders of a baby.
"Thanks for the compliment, my good man!" Dom said, waving to Shitface. "You must have been talking to some of my former lovers. But I only have one!"
"Didn't you once say that all your former lovers were dead?" I grunted, still trying to get my finger out of that hole. It was beginning to turn purple. I hoped that that didn't mean anything was terribly wrong with it.
"But not the current ones, sonnyboy!" he pointed out. "I had a nurse last week at that hospital. Oh yeah, she was a bit manly, but when she stroked my..."
"No, that was a man, I thought," I interrupted, "and wasn't he cleaning the cheese out from under your foreskin for you?"
"You don't know anything about it, boy!" he yelled. Then he turned and picked up his ball. Actually it was more like picking it up an inch off the.. the, um, ball thingy, and letting it slip through his fingertips back down.
"Get lighter balls," I suggested to him.
"LIGHTER BAAALLLLZZZZ!" Shitface yelled as he tossed his bowling ball. It hit the wood surface halfway down his lane with a loud crash then it careened through all his pins for a strike.
Shitface then promptly dropped his drawers and proceeded to mock the defeated pins by mooning them. "Eat my ass, you hairy cocksmackers!" he yelled at them. Then he grabbed his buttcheeks and and began flapping them rapidly to further his point.
"Man," I said to Dom, "this guy never ceases to amaze me."
"Who?!" Dom said as he was getting his Vasoline out for me. "Lou?!"
"Well, yeah," I said, a little startled that he referred to him by his real name, the first time in a long time I'd heard anybody call him anything other than Shitface, "lookit his ingenious statement about how we all like to turn our backs on our accomplishments in this postmodern increasingly politically correct and homogenous society. The man is brilliant and..."
"He's a raving lunatic!" Dom interrupted, looking at me all incredible-dously-like. "What the hell's the matter with you, boy? D'ya know why they call him Shitface?"
"I was never quite sure," I admitted.
"Looks like I don't need to explain it, lookit him now!" Dom said, pointing to Shitface.
"He's putting some brown war paint on his face," I said, "possibly declaring war on the bowling pins."
"It's shit!" Dom exclaimed.
I was shocked. "You mean all this time I thought he was putting brown paint on his face, it was actually feces?" I applied the Vasoline to my finger and it did the trick, it popped right out.
Dom sighed and turned around to grab his ball. "Boy, you aren't so bright are ya? Tch tch. You know, he wasn't always like that." He proceeded to roll his ball down the alley. He cursed when he got a 7-10 split.
"What was he like?" I asked.
"Well," Dom said as he waited for his ball to return, "me and him, we go way back. I'm still quite a bit older than him, though. We met in the summer of 1975. He was a young whipper snapper then. We cruised around in his Monte Carlo - when it was new - at night, the top down, cruising for chicks. I had just divorced my third wife. Oh yeah, sure I was gettin long in the tooth by then but I still had most of my hair and it was just a little grey, I could still turn plenty of heads. His hair, though, it was jet black and cropped neatly, not the stringy, dirty, long and greying mess he has now.
"Anyway that was the summer he met his ex wife, Clara. Those two, and this broad I'd met named Nancy, we went to the clubs, parties, generally had a grand time. I acted like a teenager! Being around Lou really got me feelin young again.
"You know, when I was young, back in 1943, I had some fun. It was overseas, though. As you know I was in Dubya Dubya Two, a sailor on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Saginaw Bay. One time while docked at Thailand for some much-needed R&R, I found this little Taiwanese whore, boy I tell you what, she had these juicy little titties that you'd just like to take a bit out of. Oh I fucked the shit out of her, used a Hershey's chocolate bar for payment. Sure I used the first one I'd gotten a hold of for months, but it was well worth it..."
"Well, back up," I said, not interested in tales of sexual debauchery, "whatever happened with Lou and Clara?"
"She left him," Dom said as he rolled his next ball down the lane, "in... 1983 I think." He only got the pin on the right. "Took his toddler daughter away from him, moved to New York City, hooked up with some doctor making a lot more money. That's when he started to go nuts."
We looked over at Shitface. He was leaned over, licking his ball while it sat on the ball... thingy.
"I don't think he's nuts," I said, "he's probably just doing that for good luck or something."
"Are you nuts, too, boy?!" Dom exclaimed.
Shitface tossed the ball down the lane while yelling "Elvis Tittylicker fucked your mother!" CRASH! Another strike.
I could not immediately divine a deeper meaning from that statement like I usually could. "Elvis Tittylicker fucked your mother" turned out to be quite vexing.
I rolled my ball. It supsensefully rolled right along the edge the whole time, at the very last second pulling out of it to hit one pin. "Yes!" I yelled. My previous eleven attempts had all been gutterballs.
"I think, boy, the only reason I bowl with you is so I look better!" Dom said as my ball returned.
I looked over at Shitface. He was hopping on one foot, holding the other and wincing in pain. His ball was careening down his lane. STRIKE! He must've kicked it!
"Was he as formidable of a bowler then as he is now?" I asked as I pitched another gutterball.
"Oh yeah," Dom sighed. "We used to bowl in a league together. He still scores about the same, the difference is, the crazier he gets, the more unconventional his methods. Somehow that son of a bitch still knocks 'em down!"
Shitface had dropped his pants again and was fanning his genitals at the knocked-down pins in triumph. Then he yelled "TWIG AND BERRIES! TWIG AND BERRIES! COCKBAAAAALLLZZZ!"
"Extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeme!" I heard a voice bellow a few lanes to our right. I looked to see that Ex Treme had arrived with some of his extreme friends. They were all young like him, spiked hair, pants falling down, and very elastic faces.
"Extreeeeeeeme bowling!" Ex Treme yelled to them. Then they all began shouting "Whooooooooooooooo hooooooooooo!"
"I hate those god damn kids," Dom grumbled right before he picked up a spare. "Put a pussy right in front of 'em they'd probably not know what to do with it. Extreme! Pah! The only thing extreme about them is the amount of unused cum they have!"
Ex Treme shotputted a bowling ball down the alley. It hit so hard it caused me to jump. He didn't get a strike but knocked most of them down.
"Extreeeeeeeeeeme!" they all yelled.
Me, my next turn wasn't so extreme. I got a total of eight pins with both tries. It was my best turn all night.
"I think I'm gonna break 30," I declared proudly as I noticed Shitface on the floor with a ball. He was lying on his side, panting and was moving the ball up and down, around and around his crotch area.
Dom looked over at Shitface, too. He turned away, slowly shaking his head. He was about to bowl again when a slightly chubby, fortyish red headed woman waved to us from the lane to our immediate right.
"Excuse me, anybody using this one?" she asked us.
"Not at the moment," Dom said, brightening up, grinning from ear to ear at her. He pointed to his crotch. "But honey you can use it whenever you like."
The woman blushed, then grinned at him.
I ended up driving home even though we'd gone in Dom's car. He was busy in the back seat with the woman he'd met at the bowling alley doing a lot of heavy breathing. I don't quite know how Dom does it. I never do. I smiled as I looked at her bare ass in the rearview mirror. No wonder he was voted "Most Likely To Have Sex Before The Next Party" at his retirement community's annual get-together last spring.
As for me, I did break a 30 that night - a 32 to be exact. Dom got 180, which was typical for him. Shitface... well, he was a few strikes away from a perfect 300 but unfortunately some bowling alley employees took exception to his humping the balls and urinating on the ball returner and they chased him out.
Yes, that's what it's called. A ball returner. I think.
For Wordmongers' Masque