The guys in the bar are full of stories. They come in dirty after a day’s work laying concrete, fixing roads, building houses, logging, etc. They are dirty and tired and they can drink more than I thought was possible without getting drunk.
Back in the day I would have had meaningless sex with a few of them. Some of them are pretty cute… they’re big, dirty men. Bulls. You can smell their testosterone before you even open the door to the bar. And you can hear the rattle of the dice cups and their raucous laughter peeling forth from across the street.
First you hear Ernie holler out as if he’s talking to a room full of the deaf, “Hey! How’s that old big son of a bitch hangin’?”
Bobby replies, “Man, it’s so long that I bruised the tip of it on the urinal cake just now. You know I’ve only got four inches, but some women don’t like ’em that wide. Hey, Lulu! I’m dirty. I need a bath.”
“One of my fantasies involves a large claw foot tub filled with mounds of white bubbles, a sponge, and a rubber ducky, you know?” I say smiling.
All the guys laugh because they know I might be serious. The jokes continue. Someone loses a dice game and has to buy the bar a round.
Frank comes in, but he isn’t happy because some of the guys have gone off on a fishing trip without him. He feels hurt and is close to tears. These guys are really sensitive beneath all the bluster. I try to console him, but a fight almost breaks out as he accuses someone of not being a true friend. Just like junior high I say to myself. I love these guys.
Frank and Jimmy are bullshitting. “Hey! You know why it’s better to fuck a goat than a cow? (No why?) Because with a cow you have to get down off the bucket and then walk all the way around to the front to get a kiss. And by the time you get back, she’s knocked the bucket over and you have to start all over again…. But with a goat, you can just turn her head around while you’re givin’ it to her and get yourself a kiss at the same time. Sheep are good that way too, but sheep are stupid…they don’t even remember your name the next time.”
Ha! Ha! Ha! Everyone laughs and I say, “Oh, Frank, your stories are so funny!”
“Who says it was a story?” More laughter.
There are problems sometimes when someone gets too drunk and boisterous, or gay guys mistakenly wander in from the gay resort across the street. “Hey! Why don’t you homos go back across the street where you belong and leave us alone!”
It’s a problem for me because I welcome everyone into my bar even though it has had a history of being a redneck place. I want everyone to get along. Farmers, cowhands, loggers, hippies, rednecks, gays, lesbians, and little old ladies are all welcome at the ‘Appy Room.
What is funny is that these guys could all get along if they would just calm down about their phobias. Men are men. They’re horny and outlandish and brash and hormonal. I’ve seen a group of gay guys act exactly the same way as a group of straight guys. They’re just going after different bait. One group is chasing women and one group is chasing men, but their behavior is identical.
My straight male bartender is groped one evening by a horny Bear… Bears are large over weight gay men with beards-… as he is standing out at the entrance handing out menus to passersby. “Now you know what it’s like to be a woman,” I tell him.
Sometimes I think the rednecks act gayer than the gays. They’re always giving each other wet willies and sticking their tongues in each others ears and even Frenching each other, slapping asses, hugging each other really strongly with heartfelt emotion.
Once when two of the regulars went into the men’s room to take a whiz. I pounded on the door, “No sex in the bathroom!” I screamed. They began making all sorts of ooing and ahhing sounds, “Oh Bobby!” “Oh Frank!” “Oh Jimmy!”
“Why is it,” asks Bobby, “that I’ve eaten a hundred pussies, but I’ve only sucked one dick and now I’m considered queer? It just doesn’t seem right to me.”
It’s been so frustrating that within one week I’ve heard three different stories about the ‘Appy Room… “Do you know that someone asked me if this was a lesbian bar? And a couple of days later someone else told me they heard this was a redneck bar? And then someone else said that no, it was a gay bar! Do you know you guys are gaining a reputation as a redneck-gay-lesbian bar?”
“Shhh, we don’t want anyone to know,” Frank says.
I love this bar!
(First published 8/15/11)
