Sunday 17 April 2005

Ribaldry

I stole this word from the silent movie version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame".
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The men at the bar spewed ribaldry like vomit, making crude and degrading remarks about every woman who had the misfortune of being dragged into the joint. I hid in a corner booth, trying to blend into the Formica and vinyl, and listening to every word.

I couldn't pull out my notebook and jot down the good stuff. If anyone smelled that a writer had entered their domain, I'd be thrown out on the street. Or worse. It was the worse that scared me. Sure I wanted realistic dialogue and I was willing to endure plenty of discomfort to experience it first-hand, but I didn't want a permanent record carved into my psyche. Therapy's just too damned expensive.

The guy in the fourth seat along the bar was the worst of the bunch. He referred to women as parts of their anatomy, mostly those involved in the act of reproduction or the lead-up to it. I don't think he could spell thought, let alone appreciate one. He drank double scotches, neat, and he didn't care how many minutes the alcohol had fermented, so long as it looked orange-brown.

His pal, the scum in the third seat, gave me the willies. He had to be over six-and-a-half feet tall, and his shoulders hunched over as if he thought he could hide his monstrous mass. His hair, what was left of it, grew in clumps and hung in stringy cascades of slime. He had no qualms about picking his nose and leaving the remnants under the bar. The first time he did it, I made a mental note to never sit at that end of the bar. The eighth time, I decided to never set foot in this dive again.

One night was enough. I had plenty of material. The trick now was finding the best time to exit so that no one followed me. My car was parked ten blocks away and I didn't want to fend off any of these losers in a dark alley.

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