It was a Typical Saturday Night

It was a typical Saturday night ... meaning I was drunk. But I'm not to blame.

No. The fault lies in my morals and in the availability of a bottle and a half of scotch. See, if the scotch hadn't been there, I would be sober as a cat right now ... but then someone else would have drunk it.

It was some very good scotch after all.

And knowing that, I felt morally obliged to do my best to get rid of those two bottles before anyone else partook of them. After all, most normal people don't deal with alcohol like I do; they have not the intestinal fortitude to kill first one bottle and then the better part of a next in a single sitting. Those poor individuals might have consumed this supply of excellent single malt and found themselves in a place where their lives would have been in danger due to their inebriation. Had it not been drunk by myself first, that is.

So see, I'm saving some poor shmucks miserable excuse of a life. Hell, I should probably get a medal, given all the lives I must have saved by now. I tell yah, that number that must be in the hundreds, since I find myself in this state every Saturday night about this time. They give out medals for saving fewer lives than that ... in a war. I know, since I have one for doing just that. It's in a shoe box. In a closet somewhere. Probably the same one I have my old uniform in. I take it out and shine it up once a year. The medal not the uniform, fuck-it you understood.

Somehow, I did manage to choke down two more double-shots, lowering the level of that last bottle till I was sure it was safe to leave. No longer a danger to humanity.

Getting to my feet, I acted far more sober than I was. Hell, fuck the medal I'll take an Oscar. I would like to thank the Academy of Motion Pictures, my mother, and my costar with the huge tits. All the rest of you prissy Hollywood fucks can go fuck off, your acting sucked. Oh, sorry not you Cary. I loved you latest movie, Father Goose, it was brilliant.

Great picture.

Saw it last week. Right?

Stumbling out the door of the bar, I let my feet carry me down the street. These shoes have walked this path from Joe's bar to my door so many times they don't need me to guide them anymore.

Which is a fuckin' good thing. I'm in no damn shape to be guiding anyone, most certainly not myself. Oh look, some kids have been playing hopscotch. Let see ....

Reaching into my pocket I pulled out one of the beer bottle caps I had been playing with on the bar top. Tossing it onto square one, I balanced on one foot, and then hopped my way over one, and then on down the pattern. I swayed bit at the turn around. Earthquakes? But made my way back to the first square and then, with the entire pirouette grace of a Detroit Lions Linebacker, I leaned forwards and took back my bottle cap. Then I stood up and wobbled to the side till a street lamp caught my fall.

"Thanks buddy, I'll do the same for you one day," I told my newest friend and then, when my world was right again, I let my shoes continue their guided tour of the old neighborhood. Not that I don't know the place like the back of my hand. There's Jimmy's that place used to be the hottest pool hall in the city. And The Vigilant, the movie theater where I first touch a woman's naked breast.

Ah, the beautiful Vigilant theater. What was I watching? Frankenstein! That's right, it was old Karloff at his best, scared the crap out of me ... and Emily Wilks. God, I haven't thought of her in years.

As I walked past the long dead, once bright-purple/red and blue neon lights of The Vigilant old memories came at me like stray dogs and I had to sit down. The city trash can out front of the old theater had been knocked over, those damn beatnik bastards. No respect for public property. Probably one of those tripping "hipster" tripped over it and then they didn't have the fuckin' decency to sit it upright again. Sitting there, (my feet in week old newspaper, telling of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution no doubt, not that I give a two-penny tin whistle about any of that crap. It's the other side of the fuckin' world. Bunch of fuckin' red-commie-bastards starting shit in a shit hole. Like that's news.) I looked at the old theater. Just looked.

"Damn, how many hot summer days did I spend sitting in you?" I asked the old boarded up doors. "Paying a quarter to get a drink and popcorn and then a dime to see the movie. A nickel if you were a big spender and wanted a Moon pie. Hell, you were where dreams were born ... were memories got made." I absently tossed the beer bottle cap I was holding at the old place.

That was when I noticed that some boards had been taken off one of the side doors. Lurching to my feet, I did not stumble more than once between the trash can and that uncovered, partly-opened side door. Looking into that dark place, I wiped the grimy taste from my lips. This was the place where I had first seen Dracula come to life. Where Frankenstein had walked and the Wolman had howled. Here within these shadows had the first monsters of my life been given birth, but it was also here that I had my first job. Sweeping popcorn between shows, for a few pennies really, but I could watch movies for free.

But, of course, the main "attraction" of The Vigilant was, it had been air-conditioned.

One of the first buildings in town to have been so, in fact. So, as I stepped through that door and into the shadows of the old theater, I was not in fear of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, or the Mummy. Nor was it some long forgotten boss with a broom, telling me to stop trying to kiss the soda girl and go sweep up, that scared me. No, it was that I was mostly afraid of tarnishing the sparkling moments of the past, which shown so bright when compared to the dinginess of today, with the reality of what this place had become.

Old, broken down, forgotten and abandoned. Just like ....

"But then there is a lot of that going around, huh old girl." I fished my zippo lighter from my pocket. "Well, I guess if you can stand my wrinkles I can deal with yours."

By lighter light I saw that the ceiling was spotted from the roof leaking. There was peeling paint everywhere and the carpet was badly stained. There was a damp, moldy smell, like any old shut up room might have, but I smiled when I breathed deeper and smelled the oily popcorn smell. It was still there. No amount of years could ever erase that smell. Hell, there are times I still smell it on my hands, here decades since I last shook the pan to make the popcorn kernels touch metal and pop faster.

"Well, I guess we both have been through hell, huh girl?"

There were so many good memories here, from the times when this place was an ocean of lights, and from when the mighty Wurlitzer organ would make the walls shake. From when this place was packed with all ages, young enough to be in diapers and old enough to need to be in them again. They had all been in here, simply happy to be cool, for once, and to see the latest movie. Be it Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of OZ or The Terror of Tiny Town. Packed like sardines in their oily little can. In this very place, in these very seats. I stopped at the doors to the theater itself. The rows of wooden seats were still there; right where I saw them last, almost as if they were waiting. Waiting for someone to come and take a seat and for the big screen to brighten up once more.

"You're going to have a long wait."

Choking back a sniffle, I wandered down the rows.

Idly I wonder if they, the seats, missed all the butts? I mean they had some really prime examples in here sitting on them. I know, I certainly watched a lot of them back in the day. Big butts, small butts, sagging butts, perky butts, and just plain dumb-as-hell-butts with the asshole more often than not attached to their pie hole. Rude people and this place were no strangers either. Damn ... I did so many things in this place for the first time. Kissed a girl. Felt up a girl. Punched a guy. Not a kid, or a boy, but a guy, a full grown, loud mouth, bitching like a two penny whore who got short changed a cent. And he had been just like a dumb whore, too cum-tarded to notice till "the Johnny" had left her there all wet-cunt and broke.

And for about the same reasons, come to think of it. A penny. A penny got his nose punched.

Dumbass.

A habit, so old I couldn't really just say when it started, (even though the event that lead to it was still crystal clear I my mind), stopped me by the balcony stairs. No matter how busy this place had been or what movie had already started, that I just had to find a seat before the lion roared as it where, I would always stop at these stairs. Look up. And smile. That balcony held such fond memories. Curious, I held the lighter higher and, after deciding the steps would take it, I headed up there. Where once the Richie-Rich of this dirt ball town, had come to slum with the poor folk from across the tracks. They would pay a whole extra quarter so they could sit up here and lord it over the dime payers down below.

Oh, little did they know. There was more dried cum on these seats than on the underwear of a Catholic priest. I should know since there had been more than my own fair share of it, to be sure. Molly-get-her-a-Lolly was the first gal to make me cum. Dump my seed, as we said it back then, farm hicks that the lot of us were to be sure. She wasn't right in the head, retarded like, but she was a woman grown and for the price of a penny lollypop she would let you feel her boobs. Naked, as it were. Of course, I was the one who found out what Molly would do for a whole bag of candy.

I patted the back of one of the wooden seats, my hand making a little dust raise off the old, rotten, red velvet cushion. My grin was nearly as big now as it had been back then.

Closing my rummy eyes I can picture it, clearer than I can even see at the moment. Molly up here with me, The Dawn Patrol up on the big screen, and my cock in Molly's mouth, the head of it using her uvulae like a boxer's speed bag. Oh, my god! Is there any feeling in the world better than your first blowjob?

To look down and see a woman doing something so just nasty-sexy as to have you in her mouth, and then to feel that wet heat. That soft tongue. Grabbing her head, holding her by the back of it. Putting your balls on her chin. Hell, yeah! And then it happened, she opened those pretty blue eyes looks up at you with tears streaming out the corners and ... POP! You're painting her tonsils. I laughed remember that wasn't all I painted. I looked at the red velvet seats, grinning cheerfully, picturing all those rich fucks sitting in my dried spooge after that night.

And many other nights just like it as well. Hell, she only wanted a bag of candy after all. Twenty-two years old and had a sweet tooth from hell. Well, I kept her in Mary Janes and Tootsie Rolls for a year, till they picked her up for soliciting.

M&Ms came out. If I had only known she would do "that" for those. Damn. But then ....

My eyes went up to the small, square holes in the wall above me. I could almost hear the playing-card-in-a-bike-tire sound of that old Simplex E-7 projector, and smell the hot bulb making the room stink of warm film. I could also imagine that I could still hear the soft protests of Cora Johnson. Telling me all those silly things about how she was saying herself for marriage, how she was not that kind of girl, how she had never been even kissed.

Then the Black Swan came on. She took one look out the viewing window at Tyrone Power, all-pirated-up with a bandana and boots, and off went her blouse and bra like she was a burlesque stripper. Her lips hit mine with an impact that nearly cost me a tooth. Then her hands were pulling at that stupid usher's uniform, trying to strip me out of it. Stumbling, my pants half-way down my legs, we had both felled ass over teakettle backwards into some pasteboard boxes, the ones the movie reels come in, and there on the floor, with a bed of cardboard and film cuttings under my ass, a woman took my virginity from me.

And I mean took.

Cora pulled me out my boxers, spit on her palm and slicked me up, hopped on my dick like I was Count Fleet and she was John Longden and she was trying to win the Kentucky Derby. It would be many years of my life latter, hell after I got back from Korea, before I would ever meet a woman more ready to fuck me silly than Cora Johnson had been that night. And damn she had been so tight I felt like my cock was getting skinned-up from the rough riding. Her long brown pubes, wet as hell, had gotten wrapped around me and before I flooded her basement she managed to rub me flat-fuckin'-raw! But oh, damn did it feel good to cum in her. Now, I have been in a lot of pussy since then, dozens of women, but none have ever left me so drained to the nut, as it where, that my balls hurt for a day.

Of course I got fired. When the theater manager, her father by the way, came running in to see why there was a hot projection bulb burning the film into melted plastic for the whole theater to see. And instead found us both there, her topless those beautiful titties just a bouncing like two white, pink-nosed bunny rabbits, and me locked into a total butt-cheeks-clenching orgasm inside her. I know, I probably looked silly as hell when I ran out to the fire escape of the theater, me trying to get my pants back on, him two steps behind me trying to kill me with a fire axe

"Yep, old Mr. Johnson never took too kindly to me trying to make him a grandfather. Wonder if they left any of the old film reels behind up there? Oww, fuck!"

My zippo lighter hit the balcony's dry rotted carpet, with a splash of lighter fluid from the overly full case. And of course immediately those, eternally, popcorn-oil soaked red carpet fibers caught on fire. I stared at the flames while sucking on my burned thumb. They sure were a pretty blue-red, was my first thought. I guess you can blame it on the scotch that the fact that, the-floor-was-on-fire, didn't register for more than a good twenty seconds in my mind.

"Oh, shit."

Now a sober man would have probably done things differently. But I was not sober. I was in fact still so plastered that the first thought, through my inebriated head, was I needed to find a fire extinguisher. Which was just enough time lost to stupidity for the fire to get to burning very ... well.

Well enough that, when I tried to stomp it out, I was already fighting a losing battle. In fact all I achieved was to set my right pants leg on fire.

Yeah, I said I was on fire? You want to make something of it? I was drunk, I've already said this. I cannot be held responsible for the fact I was not acting rationally! I mean sure, to a drunk, pulling off your pants when they are on fire and then using them to try to beat the flames out a blazing theater floor makes perfect sense. And yeah, to a drunk you will possibly think that you have some sort of amazing super powers that will allow you to deal with a burning movie theater, once the bone-dry wall curtains have caught and the flames are flowing their way up to the ceiling above.

And that Saint Peter would be how I, a simple man with a small drinking problem, ended up here at the Pearly Gates, having fallen twenty feet to break my neck, off a fire escape, that twice in my life I found myself standing on with no pants.

But seriously, I'm not to blame. "That was some damn good scotch."