GAY TIMES AT THE OXY

As is my wont, I spent a few hours on Saturday evening at a bar in downtown San Francisco where smoking of legal substances (tobacco) is still permitted. Most of the customers were cigar smokers, or at least cigar smoking while there, and I might have been the only pipesmoker on the premises. Cigar smokers are a giddy lot, to be sure. There were also one or two non-smokers and cigarette addicts, but they did not make much impact. Other than the young lady from next door, who had either been startled while taking a leak or fiercely jumped out at with a boo.
Neither of which possibility actually explains her presence.
Her startler, or boo-outjumper, was also there.
Not looking guilty in the slightest.
The evil mister Wong.


So there I was, surrounded by the cigar smokers and tattooed people, trying to maintain my fragile sanity when meatballs wrapped in bacon made an appearance.....


I should clarify that the meatballs did not show up until quite a bit later, when "A" decided that after a Padron 1926 Anniversario and a shot of singlemalt big enough to fell a mule he needed some refreshment.
After which he lit up another cigar.

Various songs where sung. Which was decisively put an end to by spirited renditions of both the Lumberjack song and the Philosophers song from Monty Python. As well as an impromptu recitation of the Cheeseshop sketch and the Argument clinic from the same source.
Parrots were also mentioned.

The Norwegian Blue, which has lovely plumage.


And Manuel, from Barcelona.

"No, not your hamster! How could I knock a nail in with your hamster? Well, I could try, no, it won't... No, I'll go get it; you come here and tidy. You know - tidy?!?"
"Listen, don't mention the war. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right."
"Hors d'oeuvres, vich must all times be obeyed vitout kvestion!"
"Don't TOUCH me! I don't know where you've been!"
"Trespassers will be tied up with piano wire."


The owner of a local restaurant showed up and regaled us with twerking and tales of porkchops past.


After smoking two bowls of Virginia and having a whiskey, I caught the cablecar home. The jollification was still at full tilt when I left, though the crowd had changed a bit. The tattooed people had left already.
One of these days I shall demand that one of them strip to the waist.
I wish to see the brilliant palm tree and the coconuts.
The colours, I have been told, are fabulous.
More than six hours of pain.
Rippling flesh.


I had eaten lunch very late, so I wasn't hungry before I went. But after I had returned to my neighborhood I purchased a frozen boneless rib sandwich from the local late-night grocery store. This product is actually hard to describe in neutral terms: no bone, compacted meat product of allegedly porky origin and no reason to assume otherwise, bread of a bland taste and soft yet crumbly texture, a suggestion of a sauce of indeterminate quality and composition. Actually, it ALL tasted dead. Dead. Even with the animal protein component fried and drenched in hot sauce and ketchup, it tasted dead. It also felt dead in the mouth. Once every three or four months I buy one of those dead things, and the result is always the same. No, I have never gotten food poisoning. It just tastes dead.

It is an extremely uninspiring comestible. I would have vastly preferred something with bacon -- which NEVER tastes dead, because of all the lovely nitrates and nitrites plus smoke flavour -- or even a pack of frozen pork hot links. If it had been hot links, I could have sliced up one or two and had them on toast with the aforementioned hot sauce and ketchup, quite likely with a fried egg on top. There's just something about pork hot links. Possibly it's nitrates, nitrites, and smoke flavour.

The extrud-O Ribs did not affect me adversely this morning.
Probably because I am a clean-living man.
Sober and temperate.


The next time I buy one of those I'll call it 'Eve' and try something else.




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