
Sophisticated slumming Crummy is as crummy does. I felt out of place at the fancy bar timidly walked in afraid to walk out without buying a drink. She walked up to me slumming a fancy woman owning all who looked at her. "Buy me a drink she said not asking." "With those uncultured pearls and that diamond bracelet you can buy me one." She laughed and ordered a round putting it on her tab and sat at a small shadowed lace covered table I awkwardly followed two drinks in my hands sat and lit up a camel as she said, "What's a nice guy like you doing in a place like this." "I want to numb my brain, pickle my liver fed up with a crummy job and a crummy life. I didn't know this was a fancy bar." "Crummy is as crummy does as I know I was once and now I'm not. I own this bar this block because I like to make crummy refined." "You peter pan? Tinkerbell? Cinderella? Robin Hood? Mother Theresa? You the fairy godmother on the block?" "All those and not any of them. I pick and chose my targets and you're it tonight. So drink up and light me a cigarette." I reached over, slipped a camel between her lips lit it as she held my shaking hands and did the wrong thing. I looked into her eyes and I drowned. She was behind me pounding my back as I coughed up a gallon of tears. She held my face in her arms and said she was sorry, she forgot to blink. "Why are you crying so much inside?" "Because you touched me and I felt your grief. Its over and done. You must get on." "That's easy to say for someone like you. Lady, I ain't even ever been a has been. At least that would give me something." "Do you drive?" I said "I did, but I don't have a car." "Drive mine. You can drive me home at closing." "I'm not a chauffeur" I said. "I don't want you to be. I want you to drive me home and sleep with me." "And when I wake up?" "You'll be a new man with a purpose in life." I did and I was and next thing I was in the fancy bar buying crummy women with crummy lives a drink. Everything was great until she found a lump on her breast. Loving a woman with two breasts is the same as loving a woman with one real and one false and if you don't think so, you never met a woman like her.. THE SIGN persuasive simply read come in I peered through grimy windows at one barber's chair, a small counter a single bulb hanging I felt my neck's stubble brushed fingers through overgrown hair, rubbed my chin's three day's growth, went in. A bell tinkled. A voice from the side as I turned in the gloom came from a short stocky man pigtails, fat and long hanging down his chest like suspenders. Do you have an appointment? No. I saw the barber pole outside. Sit in that chair, take something to read, I'll be with you shortly. His counter was filled; books, Story's, Writers and Poets magazines I looked back before I sat, at the book he was reading, Nabakov, so I eased toward the counter to get one but Poets and Writers started a brawl over who was more important pushing themselves at me, sometimes violent, flipping pages in a frantic blur voices deep, resonant, some soft, appealing others gruffly arrogant, until I backed away, afraid of a paper cut. Unable to concentrate, the barber shoveled them into a cardboard box as I sat and waited. They get bored laying there. When someone comes in they show off. A week in the box will put them right." He said as went back to read. An hour later he woke me up. Had I dreamed? My legs were stretched out on a cardboard box full of books and magazines that seemed to pull at me. He cut and shaved me as he quoted poetry between humming The Barber of Seville.