One Dollar: A Story

This starts with 100 pennies represented buy a crisp, green bill with a picture of George Washington. George and I ventured to my favorite club on Red River in downtown Austin. Being a barfly, I mean regular, gives me privileges not known to the common barhopper. Crazy J greeted me at the door with a k hole smile, stamped me, kissed me on the cheek, and asked me if I planned on jumping the fence anytime soon. "Only for you baby, only for you...."

I love walking into the joint when Bisset's behind the bar, dark, fuck me eyes and a rockabilly look covered with tattoos. She always greets me with a dark smile and a whiskey and coke. Bisset informs me it's a drum and bass night. With that in mind, George and I know we'll be upstairs when the DJs start spinning. I prefer Slim's DJs, no drum and bass, mostly intelligent, ambience mixed with hip hop beats. So I shoot the shit with Bisset for half an hour. We saw each other for a while, but bartender hours don't mix with 9 to 5s. No hard feelings, it's still fun because will still exchange our old looks. She picks up my tab and refuses my offer the get her back Friday. "You're way too good to me......","Only for you baby, only for you........"

A couple of turkey dinners later I stumble upstairs. Titus and C-Dawg are playing pool. The resident snowmen acknowledge me with a teener front. Titus dropped by my place last week at 3AM on a weeknight ginked to shit. As pissed as I was, I gave him an ounce of schwag to cool his nerves and get him the fuck out. What goes around comes around, but the payback isn't laid back. It sprayed back into my brain to a wired, wound frenzy. Slim sets me up with a mandarin vodka and Red Bull. Upstairs is always on the house, it's like that with Slim. I offer George to the tip jar, but Slim doesn't want it. When Titus rolls he thanks me for his trouble last week. "Only for you baby, only for you......."

The DJ starts in with a jungle transe over Eminem's Stan's beat. The room fills slowly with queens, fag hags, b-boys, b-girls, and others. As I come out of the bathroom, some asshole I don't know asks me for an eighth. I'll never push coke, and I'll never understand dipshits that ask people they don't know for drugs. In all honesty, cops don't even do that. They do but in a much slicker fashion. My friend Suede can tell you about that one if you'll accept the charges from the correctional facility. Anyway, I tell the jerk to fuck off. Blue Dolphin circulates like central AC on drum and bass nights and the effects on the crowd were noticeable. Everyone was cool, except their eyes rolled back to their brains. Stacey, a friend of mine , got upstairs and kissed me. When she told me she has to use the restroom, I joined her. She pulls up her dress and urinates while I cut a couple rails for us next to her on the sink. As she flushed, she grabbed me from behind. I swear all strippers wear the exact same perfume, after she hugged me, I knew I would smell like it too. We broke the rails, and I started to kiss her. Starting soft on the lips, I gently applied a little pressure to her lower back. This made her bite the inside of my lip causing a little blood to trickle. Almost like a sharks, the blood turned the soft touches of our lips to tasting each other's nectar. Our fun stopped, this wasn't the time or place or right person, and we both knew it. She gave me a twenty for the trouble. I gave her a third of what I had. "I thought beautiful women like you didn't pay for drugs?","Only for you baby, only for you........"

I spent the next two hours dancing and playing pool. I used Stacey's twenty to buy a pack of Camel Lights and put a ten in Slim's tip jar when he wasn't looking. The thick thumps of the JBLs and overall drug induced electricity kept a cool grin on George and me. Back at the bar, a big little baby sat next to me and ordered a kryptonite. After telling her, "You know, I am unstoppable techno dancing machine" we exchanged names. I told her she needed to help me make bad financial decisions or go to Magnolia and grub. She chose the latter, so we rolled south. I ordered an English muffin and water, her: coffee and some fruit. We smoked a couple of cigs after we ate and exchanged digits. The total came to roughly five bucks. I was going to part with ole George before the night ended. On our way out to drop her off at home, the waitress said," You tipped three dollars for 5 bucks and thirty minutes?","Only for you baby, only for you......."

This was several years ago, and I remember it only because it was one of those things. It was a cool autumn morning as I walked up to the little outdoor coffee stand to get a hot cocoa. My best friend's younger sister worked there so we'd get a chance to say hello while she frooshed the milk with the milk-froosher thing.

"How are you?" I'd say.

"I'm good." she'd say over the noise of the shiny Italian machine. "You?"

"Can't complain."

"How's my brother?" she'd ask, not looking at me.

"You should call him." I'd say (yet again).

"He doesn't want to talk to me..." she'd say.

(My friend, her brother, would sometimes say the same thing about her.)

Anyway, as the frooshing continued I took a crumpled dollar from the front pocket of my jeans and tried to smooth it out — you know, make it more presentable — on the little "here's-your-drink" counter. As I did, I noticed that I had laid the dollar in some rings of water on the counter.

"Damn", I thought "first it was only crumpled, but now it's crumpled and wet."

I picked the bill up off of the counter and lay it against my left pant leg, trying to smooth the wetness off.

"You'll never be able to dry it." a voice stated from behind me.

"Huh?" I said, turning around to see the man behind me, evidently grabbing a coffee on his way to work

"The American Dollar is forever soaked with the blood of others." he finished.

"Oh... kay..." I thought to myself, and turned noiselessly back to the counter.

Note: I know, this isn't really a "story" as the node title would suggest, but it is one of those "only-took-a-couple-of-seconds" things that you (I) still remember years later so I felt like sharing it. Besides, I've been doing a lot of "not-noding" as of late — that is, thinking of something and wanting to node it, but then stopping myself saying "no, that's not good enough" — so I figured "aww, to hell with it... submit it". That said, I did figure that adding to this write up was better than creating a new node for such a parsley of text.