One Night at the Pub

This story is somewhat vulgar and completely without taste.

So it is a Wednesday night and I'm feel'n alright, not normally do i go out looking for adventure during the middle of the week, but the night before I crashed, like a little bitch, at 6:30, from jet lag and exhaustion. So I have heard of this pub that everyone holds in high regard at work and around my hotel (which is also a pub). It is a place called the Wheatchester or Weatherfieldchester or Wefenchester, either way it starts with a W and ends with a chester. I decide I'll find this place, have a few pints and a sandwich. So I go downstairs to ask Deborah, my 50 year old balding friend of a bartender, where this wonderful pub is. Well Deborah was not there, but some guy was sitting at the bar, with a pretty awesome comb-over, i wait for Debby to swing around the edge and come and greet me, before that can happen I hear, "American, are you?" I look over and comb-over is staring at me.

I, with a pleasant tone pronounce, "Yes, from Texas, no arrogance, but with the slightest bit of pride.

"Oh, where George Bush is from...eh" I hear from below my belt. Still staring at the dude who looks like Al Pacino in Dick Tracey, I realize that this guy's not the one speaking. I drop my head and look at the floor to spy a fucking midget. Now, I have seen midgets and dwarfs and short people before, but this guy is like 3 feet tall, i mean he absolutely could not see over the bar stool. If you have ever been to a Ripley's Believe it or Not, or seen the show with Dean Cain, I am fucking getting my money's worth with this little guy. I do everything to not act completely floored or start shock-vomiting; after all i almost tripped over him on my way up to the bar. I take a second, and with the nicest voice possible I state,

"Yeah, where GW is from." Praying that this conversation is over, I tilt my head back up and try to see Deborah, but she has left from behind the bar, no doubt to offer her shitty service to someone else. To my utter delight the ankle-biter exclaims,

"George Bush is a bloody pussy!"

Okay, imagery and the fact that a 3 foot tall man would call the American leader a bleeding vagina aside; these were not the first things i thought of. Judging by his vocal intonation, this little fuck, is Irish! And not subtly, i mean off the Lucky Charms box Irish. The accent just kills me inside, with every ounce of will and strength I hold back my tears of enjoyment. Not only have i come over to England to work for a year, but i am actually meeting a real live Leprechaun. The jokes running through my head are overwhelming, i feel like an ADD kid at the circus, but I am actually at a freak show. I realize, after about 15 seconds, this tiny man wants me to respond, he flashes a sinister smile, like he's proud of his worldly political commentary and thinks i am gonna agree with him.

Since, the news i watch is primarily from Sportscenter or if I leave network TV on while falling asleep and i wake up to news at 5 in the morning, I don't have the care, nor the arsenal to get into any political debate, even if it is one that starts with a midge Not to mention the door that is open here: do I stick up for my country, do I ask him why? So in true sidestep fashion, I hit him with, "Shakespeare couldn't have said it better, you should be working on your next sonnet?" Comb-over chuckles. But i can tell that Notre Dame doesn't find it that amusing. This story could have really gone anywhere; pots of gold, lolly pop guilds, midget gangs with switch-blades, a chocolate dance number, a class in wooden toy making, a punch in the shin. No telling where it would go, but it pretty much ended when Deborah walked over and grabbed a glass, "What 'ell it be, Tom?"

I hold my hand out and say, "Maybe later, Deb, can you tell me how to get to the Whorsechester (Sauce, I think)? I am meeting some friends." I am not meeting anyone, but i dont want her to think that I am blowing her and her father's 18th century pub off.

She say's, "Do you mean the Wheatsherf," Deborah is nice to me, not particularly kind to others, but she has been nice to me. Most of her teeth are dead and I ask her to repeat everything she says at least three times. I straighten out where exactly I want to go, she repeats the name, but i still haven't got it. The directions she gives me literally end with, "take a right through a cut-through, after a group of bungalows, it doesn't look like a pathway, and its surrounded by a cluster of trees." Great, i should have no problem finding a fucking group of trees in this rural village, seeing as how it is 6pm and black outside. As a side note, i came to find out this mythical "cut-through" is known by the locals as "Dog Shit Alley", which is pretty wonderful, but i guess it could have been "Homosexual Gang Rape Trail" or "Mame Path."

So I am off, it is a little wet outside, but manageable. I stay mindful that the traffic is switched up and since there are very few sidewalks on the back roads, I find myself darting into several types of ground-cover each time a car comes steamrolling around the corner. Traffic and my navigational ineptness aside, I make my way up to a lively sounding place called The Wheatsherf...

...4 hours later...

You know how when you have a loved one that is so drunk, you check their breathe while they sleep to make sure they haven't died. Well, i wish one of you had been with me.

Up until that point I had been drinking Stella or Grolsch, both lagers, with higher than normal alcohol percentages, so far one or two after work and then I would go to sleep. But the Wheatsherf only serves one type of beer: Harvey's Bitter. It might as well have been warm diarrhea and cough syrup, it had the consistency of oil-based furniture polish, but to give it that extra something, it was gritty. Like brushing my teeth with salty tooth paste and then drinking a glass of extra pulp orange juice, my face tightens up with each swallow. Getting worse with each gulp, I am sitting at the bar, playing my own private Fear Factor, and losing. I suck it up and finish the glass, I slide down from my stool and am about to dismiss myself, when a woman, I briefly met, the night before, at my hotel, shouts "American Tommy," from the side door entrance. Her name is Sally, she is an accountant; she dresses pretty slutty, especially since she is in her mid forties. Any valid excuse rushes from my head why I can't stay: there is a Leprechaun waiting on me, this beer tastes like dog food, I have to go home and cry...I had nothing.

Sally has definitely been rode hard and put up wet. The only thing more obscene than Sally is the pair of thigh-high black, shiny leather boots she is wearing. I have never heard a woman use the phrase, "That bloody cunt can lick my pierced asshole, with a smile." I mean she was vivid. I feel like, I am driving the car in Taxi Cab Confessions or filming some fucked up documentary on small town cheap prostitutes..."Well, Tommy, maybe ten or twelve a night, almost never anal," She'd say.... As the profanity and twisted stories flow out of Sally's filthy mouth, so did the luke warm Bitter from this bar.

I head to the bathroom and on my return, I find a slimmer, more facially attractive version of the woman I had left only 3 minutes before. I realize at this point, It is time to go. After another 10 minutes and finishing up my last pint, I bravely excuse myself from Sally and her tales of sexual misdemeanors and devastating personal loss. She offers me a ride home, but doesnt specify whose. Probably slurring my words, I tell her I'm cool and saunter out the door

Remember the cut through, between some trees...yeah I didn't.

It is like 1 in the morning in a small village, where the pubs close at 11pm. I have been walking around for at least 3 1/2 hours, you would think that after 4 hours of tripping over curbs in the drizzle, that I would begin have the faintest recollection of sobriety; well lets just say after each blink, I am in a new person's back yard or garden. At this point, I would more likely marry a girl wtih corn-rows than find this fucking "cut-through." Confidently walking into anything that resembles a pathway, I have managed to wander on to a full sized soccer field. I start walking the tree- lined parameter to try to find another opening or way out. I can only find that this large vacant green nirvana has no goal set-up and is circumferenced by a 6 foot fence. Yes, i am on a sheep farm. Once the realization hits me, I pretty much turn and run back toward the small opening I came in. I did not actually see a lamb or goat, but my instincts took over and I knew this wasn't a soccer field, instincts and the pile of animal shit I almost swam in.

I got back to a road, and found the only main road i could recognize and walked like a mile back to work, so that I could retrace back to the hotel. All I drink now is Harvey's Bitter.