Bertha did a bump. She ashed her cigarette. Seeing that that he was still on the floor of the bathroom, facing east, Bertha she did a big fat line.

The pile of blow was decimated since when they started after the disco but it was still huge, enough to last Bertha plenty long. Bertha was not good at keeping track of time when high and so did not realize that it was three nights from when they started. The binge. Thinking about how much shit was caked in her nostrils already made her want to come down. Bertha shook her head and did another bump. He had introduced himself as LeRoy but after their second night without sleep she found out his real name wasn't what he had said.

Bertha had no way of knowing how long he's been in there, on the floor. She was looking for another pack of matches on the desk when she found the contract relinquishing his share of the rights to more songs than she could count. The way that he yelled when he caught her looking at that paper was not unlike the sound he made when she did her dip on the dancefloor (which he claimed almost broke his hip) which was not unlike that song she had heard before at the last discos: GOTCHA! The paper was out of her hands before she could read much except for the names Joe Tex and Joseph Arrington, Jr. and Yusuf something. She never found out what the paper was about, exactly. Looking at him on the tile floor she forgot all about the paper. He was still. She looked back at the pile and extinguished her cigarette.

Bertha did a bump.

Three nights ago I was at a disco..."

In 1972, after riding high on the success of his hit "I Gotcha" prolific Southern Soul singer-songwriter Joe Tex (the stage name of Joseph Arrington, Jr.) decided to retire from the music business. He changed his name to Yusuf Hazziez and toured as a spiritual lecturer.

"and this big fat woman bumped me on the floor"

The ascetic lifestyle apparently didn't entirely appeal to Tex (who once famously had a feud with James Brown that ended up with Brown taking shots at Tex in a nightclub) and he returned to making music in 1975. In 1977, he released "Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)"

"She wanted to bump some more, but I told her no"

The song is the crudely comedic lament of a man who attempted to do "the bump" -- a 70s dance in which participants bumped their hips in time on every other beat of the music, often against their partners-- with a vigorous and robust woman of size whose enthusiasm for the dance caused him injury.

Somebody take her! I don't want her.
She done hurt my hip, she done knocked me down.

The song was a surprise hit, reaching #12 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was a popular disco song, and for years afterwards trotted out by quirky DJs who played it at weddings, family reunions, and graduation parties for slightly tipsy great aunts and great uncles to mortify the younger generations by enthusiastically revisiting the fad dances of their youth. It was Tex's last R&B top ten hit, and a strange coda to a career that included Southern Soul classics like "Hold What You've Got" and "A Sweet Woman Like You."