First Baptist Church of Washington DC Easter 2008

He walked into the employee Christmas party with a pair of balled up ankle socks stuffed into the crotch of his trousers and he was hiding a metal flask filled with Wild Turkey in the inside breast jacket of his sport coat.

There were four carolers at the door dressed up like the Clause family with two little elves. He winked at Mrs. Clause and waved a negation to the coat check guy who was motioning for him to give up his double breasted call to action for the opposite sex.

He walked into that rented ballroom which traditionally serviced low-budget wedding receptions like the guy who owned the place owed him money. The karaoke stage was lit up and a woman was already singing I Will Survive. The bar line was filled up so he unsheathed his flask and took a long slug. He scanned the room for Jodi, the corporate attorney who’d let him slide his hand all the way up her warm thigh under her skirt at the last good will company happy hour. The whiskey burned his mouth and the veins in his eyeballs shaded into deep crimson.

He started walking up to the stage.

By God he’d had it this time. The yellow stage light caught his bone white skin and turned it a scurvy color while it highlighted the dandruff flakes caught between the gelled partitions of his jet black hair. He’d found Jodi and was giving her the same pussy eating grin that had unlocked her knees that night at the Ruckmore.

He was too drunk to apologize to the woman he nearly shoved down as he climbed the stairs to the karaoke stage while the I Will Survive lady was ushered down the other side by her friends who were rewarding her with jello shots and pats on the back. Before coming here, Chuck drank three JBs served neat at the Choke and Puke bar two slots down the same mini-mall which housed the establishment he was about to house on the center stage.

He had not put in his little ticket for a song–he didn’t need one. He was going to rock the mic acapella and nobody was going to give him shit about it. The conversation in the crowd died down as feedback howled through the room when he took the mic in hand. He brought it to his mouth and canted the immortal words of Snoop Doggy Dogg:

Guess who’s back in the muthafuckin’ house wid’ a fat dick for your muthafuckin’ mouth? Hos recanize, nigga’s do to–cause when bitches get scanless and pull the voodoo. What you go’n do? You really don’t know. So I’d advize you not to truss that ho…

That was as far as he got before the karaoke MC cut his microphone and the Vice President of Security for his company had him by the elbow and was ushering him out the door into the parking lot.

The Security guy slammed him up against the brick facade which dug spikey little points into his sport jacket and ate into his skin two layers beneath. “Don’t come back in here, asshole or I will give you a fuckin’ taste you won’t like.” The man walked back inside, leaving Chuck watching his breath steam in the ever darkening and chilly Friday night in Columbus, Ohio.

Whatever mechanism of self pity that most people became tripped up with at moments like this was either badly damaged or lacking altogether in Chuck Funk because he said the words, “Fuck it” out loud and started back down to the Choke and Puke, adjusting the ball of socks in his pants.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Stinky Grinch

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