The Altar of Her Love

"What exactly did he do that made you feel that way?"

"He insulted everything -- my house, this town, the University, Hector's, the people I work with, the girls I live with -- everything."

"And why do you think he did that, Erin?"

"Because it makes him feel better about himself. It sort of justifies his not going to college. If going to some shitty college in some shitty town is just some stupid thing that losers do, then he must have been right in taking over his father's business."

"From what you've told me about it, it seems like it's a pretty successful business. Maybe Ryan didn't go to college because he knew he would make a lot more money running daddy's construction company as opposed to anything that college could offer him. Maybe that's the reason he didn't go to school."

"Tom..." She shook her head at me in disgust. "Ryan couldn't have gotten into school, not this one or any other one. He's not very smart to begin with, and when he was in high school, he did absolutely nothing, literally nothing. He would get girls that liked him to do his assignments or write papers for him. I even wrote one for him, though to his credit, he was smart enough never to ask again."

"As near as I know, he's never read a book, and I don't think he learned a single thing at Watertown High School, except maybe some girls' phone numbers. Almost all of the teachers hated him because he was such an ass to them. He was big man on campus, all right, because he played football and was pretty good, but even that wasn't a sure thing. There were rumors that the football coach talked some of his teachers into changing grades a couple of times to make him eligible, but as soon as the season was over, he was flunking out all over again. Frankly, I don't know how he even graduated."

"You must have liked something about him. Why did you date him at all if you found him that unattractive?" That word seemed to cut into her, and I got the sense that it left a particularly deep incision, one that was deeper than all of the other wounds that ol' Ry had inflicted on her.

"That was the problem, and that's why I'm so embarrassed -- I ignored all of the ugly things about him, because he was so good-looking, but that was the only thing that was attractive about him, and I can't forgive myself for being so shallow that I let it blind me to everything else that was wrong with him."

There wasn't a lot more I could have said, and continuing the conversation could only have encouraged her to reconsider everything she'd just purged from herself. Besides, talking about Ryan was just about the most depressing topic in the history of the world. "I don't know what to say, Erin, but it seems to me you've already made up your mind."

"I have made up my mind. I'm done with that jerk." At that very moment, I realized that this was exactly what Erin had expected me to do, and I had walked unhindered right into the trap she'd set to get me to do it. It struck me that I had been needlessly brought into this matter, since I was only there to parrot back Erin's own emotions to her, and now that said matter was put to rest, my involvement in it could be put to rest, as well.

"Okay. Job well done! You can put that file in the "Completed" basket!" I said it with particularly derisive sarcasm. She looked at me really curiously when I said that, and I could tell it annoyed her that I wanted her to know how little I enjoyed that conversation.

"You didn't really want to talk about Ryan, did you?"

"No, I did not."

"I'm sorry, Tom. I just thought that if you were my friend and all, you'd help me."

"Erin", I shook my head at her in much the same way she'd just done to me, as if I was disappointed that she wasn't smarter than that, which was ironic because she'd just proven to me how smart she was. "Look, I am your friend, and I want what's best for you, but it would be patently self-serving of me to tell you that what's best for you is if you were with someone who actually appreciated you for who you are, someone whose own qualities enhanced your best attributes rather than someone who has no attributes in the first place. But, come on, you already knew that, Erin, and if I tell you that, it isn't going to change anything anyway."

"I said I was going to break up with him."

"Then, do it. Once you have, you can start looking for somebody better. Just don't ask me to help you do that."

"Maybe, I'm looking for somebody better right now. Did you ever think of that?" I stared her. Somehow, I didn't believe her, and I think she could sense that, and so I didn't say anything.

She had this really serious look on her face, more serious than I had ever seen from her, and I got the feeling that she was hoping I would have been more understanding and accommodating. "I have to go, Tom, but thanks for talking to me, even if you didn't want to."

She got up from her chair, and started for the door, but then she seemed to change her mind, abruptly reversing course to come back toward me on the couch, and suddenly, without warning, she climbed on top of me, straddling my thighs with her legs, and leaning in so her modest breasts were pushed up against my chest, she started kissing me with an enthusiasm for which I was totally unprepared.

It didn't take long before my hands were roaming all over, caressing her shoulders, back, and ass, and then around to the front of her body, to her face, then her neck, and finally her breasts. But honestly, it was the kissing that really turned me on the most.

Erin didn't kiss like any girl I had ever been with previously, or any that have come after her. She was simply the best kisser that ever lived. I can't even really explain it, except to say that her whole mouth: lips, tongue, and teeth were involved, and it didn't seem like any single thing she chose to do with them was ever awkward or clumsy in any way. If she was this good at synchronizing her mouth with mine, I began to wonder what it would feel like if she ever put it to use on some other part of my anatomy.

We kept at it for a good long time, and after a few minutes, I know that she could feel my erection pushing against her pubic mound. And as much as I was trying to show restraint, I couldn't help but to arch my back so my crotch was grinding up against hers. I have never cum from dry humping a girl, but that was the closest I ever came to doing so. And the disturbing part about it is that I would have, if Erin wouldn't have suddenly disappeared!

In what struck me as an impulsive and unexpected change of heart, it was like a red light went off inside her, and she just stopped, hastily climbing off me and saying without looking my way as she sped to the door, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I have to go."

I was left there sprawled on my couch with my hair tousled and Erin's lipstick smeared over most of my face and the worst case of blue balls I've ever suffered through -- I literally couldn't walk for the next hour because they ached so badly. Though I really needed the release, I couldn't masturbate for the next few days. It hurt too much, in more ways than one.

After that incredibly frustrating night, I knew it was going to be hard working with Erin again. If she wasn't so good at what she did once she walked inside the doors of Hector's, I don't think I could have put up with the sexual frustration. I thought about that night a lot over the next two months or so, and even wondered a few times whether she had done that to me on purpose, to prove some kind of point, but then Halloween finally arrived and put that notion to bed.

In cold, hard fact, that fall might have been even more intolerable if it were not for the fact that business was so good that I didn't have time to think about Erin and me. The new schoolyear arrived and every football weekend the place was just a madhouse. We had not only returned Hector's to its past glory, I think we may actually have surpassed it. John was ecstatic.

Homecoming Week in early October was simply incredible. The sales rep for the beer distributor who supplied us told me he thought we sold more Old Style that Friday and Saturday night than every drinking establishment in the entire City of Chicago put together. I'm not sure I believed him, but we were going through kegs by the dozens. I had to put in emergency calls to the guy on three different occasions on Friday and Saturday, so his delivery guy could haul in another three dozen kegs each time. In all, we went through over 100 kegs of beer on Saturday night alone.

At one point, I gave Erin one walkie talkie and the other one to Pat, one of our bartenders, and told him to go down to the basement beer cooler with his winter coat on and simply stay there just to re-tap kegs. Erin would call him and tell him the number of the keg that needed changing, and every two or three minutes he'd switch out another one. It ended up saving a lot of time, not running up and down the stairs every couple of minutes.

Three weeks later, Halloween was upon us. Once I started working in drinking establishments, I began to dread that holiday. There is something about people dressing up in costume that brings out the worst in human beings. I think there's a simple psychological explanation for this phenomenon. Costumes, especially masks, provide anonymity, and anonymity frees people from personal responsibility, and so, put a mask on a 275 pound offensive tackle and a couple of gallons of beer in his stomach, and someone who already lacks much in the way of self-restraint, not to mention intelligence, becomes a veritable demon from hell.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Klu Klux Klan members almost always wear those fucking hoods and robes so that those gutless wonders can screw on the courage that none of them actually possess to commit the million atrocities for which they're infamous. And there's a reason that bank robbers, home invaders, and perverts wear ski masks.

Bottom line, the worst place to be on Halloween night is working in a college bar. You put alcohol, and huge crowds of anonymous, immature people together, and it's a recipe for disaster. Still, no Halloween before or since has come close to that one for its sheer fright factor. Considering that particular Halloween also fell on a Saturday home football game, it was a signal from hell that the wicked stars were in their proper demonic alignment.

I had my entire staff in the place that night, almost two dozen people, but we couldn't keep up. I estimate that at one point, there were well over two thousand people in the bar at the same time. Easily two-thirds of that number were in costume, and most of them were drunker than snot. I was scared as hell that the Fire Marshall was going to show up and shut us down -- our capacity was only 1876.

We tried turning people away, but if they couldn't get in the front door, they would sneak around to the stage door or the other side door near the restrooms. People were leaving doors open because it was so damn hot in the place, even though it was freezing outside. And it wasn't like we could have barred the doors; that would have been an even more egregious violation of the fire code.

Anyway, with all the people in costume, it was a wild scene. Some of the costumes were pretty clever. There was a guy that had all sorts of single-serving boxes of Rice Krispies and Frosted Flakes taped to his body with plastic spoons stuck in each one and fake blood pouring out of the wounds, and he had a big, huge Cheerios box on his head with eye holes cut out so he could see and the words "Cereal Killer" replacing the word "Cheerios" in the logo.

Some were pretty dark. There was a couple -- the guy was wearing an East Indian turban, along with a traditional robe drenched in fake blood, and he was carrying a toy revolver -- he was supposed to be a Sikh militant. His girlfriend was dressed as Indira Gandhi, and I have to say, she looked just like her. She was wearing a white robe of her own soaked in fake blood, and she had that shock of gray hair that ran right up the middle of her head, just like the real Indira Gandhi, who had been assassinated only a year before by two Sikh militants who served as her bodyguards. One was named Beant Singh and the other Satwant Singh. Her other bodyguards had responded by shooting Beant dead and wounding Satwant.

Most of the costumes were the usual thing, a lot of them somewhat stupid and unimaginative. Some topical shit, you know, girls outfitted as pop divas, especially Madonna or Tina Turner. Guys dressed as heavy metal rock stars or rappers, or characters from Star Wars. The occasional slutty nurses, slutty maids, or slutty Barbie Dolls made appearances, as well as the traditional assortment of witches, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and ghouls. Even Erin was in costume, ironically, dressed as Debbie Harry from Blondie.

And then there were the mask wearers, the lazy people who didn't want to put a lot of thought into their costumes. The most popular masks that year were Ronald Reagans, Wonder Womans, Michael Jacksons, and even a few Richard Nixon holdovers.

And the whole night weird, crazy things just kept happening. Some of them were to be expected, considering the size of crowd, and shouldn't necessarily have alarmed those of us who were working, at least not at first, but they were still annoying as hell anyway.

For instance, we stopped serving beer in glassware really early in the night, switching to plastic cups about 5:00 p.m., but there were just so many people there, even at that time, since the game had just ended. Anyway, we couldn't bus the tables fast enough, and so a good 300 beer glasses were out there amongst the drunken crowd.

People would just grab somebody else's abandoned, dirty glass when they found one on a table, a chair, or a railing and would fill it back up with their own fresh pitchers. Some people, especially guys, didn't even bother with glasses. Those would only slow them down, so they drank right out of the pitchers.

Anyway, the first few incidents of broken glasses were, I'm certain, purely accidental, but once people started hearing the sound of glasses breaking every few minutes over the din of a thousand exuberant, drunken voices and the crunch of wild, boisterous rock 'n' roll, a few assholes just started throwing them at the walls and laughing like drunken hyenas when the shattered glass flew everywhere. One girl got cut by a flying shard. We ended up tossing the guy that had done it.

The Phat Larry's were playing, and I have to say, that was the only night I ever got mad at those guys. As soon as they heard the first dozen or so glasses shatter, they launched into Nick Lowe's "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass", which unleashed a new round of crystalline destruction. It wasn't a bit funny. We tried, but we couldn't keep up trying to clean up all of the broken glass.

But karma is a bitch, and pretty soon, it was The Larry's themselves who fell victim to the macabre goings on. Someone, it turned out to be Beant Singh and Indira Gandhi, snuck out the stage door with Adam's backup guitar, a nice Fender Strat, which he had leaning up against the wall in its case on the side of the stage, right next to the door.

After Adam noticed it gone and told me about it, I walked outside and found the couple standing right outside that stage door with Beant Singh pretending to play the thing, like he was performing a concert in New Delhi.

When I confronted them, they were all apologetic and told me they were just goofing and were planning to give it back -- that it was just a Halloween prank. I told them if they didn't hand it over immediately, their prank was going to be reported to the police. They gave it back and left. I was glad, because I didn't have time to go through the hassle of filing a police report. Besides, I believed them.

Then, there was the bar area that a bunch of fucking asshole guys had converted into makeshift urinal troughs. It was so crowded that it took an awfully long time to walk from one end of the bar to the other, where the restrooms were located. Once you got there, even the guys had to wait in long lines to use the urinals, so apparently some of them just decided "fuck it", and wound up whipping their dicks out, and while they stood at the bar ordering another round, began pissing on the front of the bar.

We started noticing puddles underneath the bar stools, but there were just so many people that it was impossible to figure out who was doing it. Even though we tried mopping up the disgusting messes, more just kept reappearing all night long.

But things really did get scary sometime after one in the morning, when a group of huge, fucking, drunken, football players began to get into it. I found out later it was all of the offensive linemen, who'd been drinking right in front of the bar for the last few hours. I'd bet my last dollar that they were the phantom pissers too.

It started with an argument, then some punches were thrown, and finally one of them, wearing a mask of Gene Simmons from Kiss, took his beer glass and swung it upside the head of one of his "friends." That guy went down with "a beautiful thud", but an instant later a couple of his buddies were all over Gene Simmons, and within seconds, it was a total melee with different guys taking one side or the other in a whirlwind of kicks and punches.

To her credit, Erin was on the scene almost instantaneously, and she tried to get between the guys to stop it, but they were so drunk they were oblivious to her, and she was so small that I don't think most of them even knew she was there.

I came walking around the corner of the bar from the massive back room just in time to see poor Erin knocked to the ground by a guy that I swear weighed 300 pounds. There were five guys really going at it, and it looked to me like any one of those guys could easily have trampled Erin without even realizing it. All she could do was to cradle her head in her arms, hoping no one would stomp her to death. I'm not exaggerating; she was about three seconds away from really getting hurt, and I went from stressed out to scared to death in a split second.

Anyway, to this day, I still don't know what came over me. I'm not that big a guy. I'm six feet tall, and at the time, I probably weighed about 180. And more than that, I'm essentially a pacifist. But it was just like one of those stories about people who find themselves in traumatic, stressful, "fight or flight" situations. Once your body's natural epinephrine and norepinephrine really kick in, you suddenly possess superhuman strength, and, maybe more importantly, a kind of unreal bravery that belies who you really are.

I think what I did had a lot to do with the fact that it was Erin in the middle of that free-for-all. I don't know whether or not I would have reacted the same way if she wasn't the one in harm's way. For some reason, I felt like I was responsible for her. I could never have forgiven myself if she got hurt.

Whatever it was that made me do it, I just flew into the middle of it all, grabbing Erin by her arms and pulling her just a few feet backward until she was out of the whirling dervish of gargantuan bodies . I help her to her feet, and she retreated to a safe distance.

Once she was out of danger, I dove back into that mass of inhumanity, and grabbing the two biggest assholes by the collars of their coats, I slammed their heads together as hard as I could. I did so with such force that their noses, cushioned slightly by their masks, cracked together so violently that you could hear the sound of cartilage on cartilage despite the decibels of chaos and confusion that reigned supreme. Both of them dropped simultaneously to the floor forming a pile of beer-soaked, blood and sweat stained, semi-conscious, offensive linemen that now numbered three.