where everybody knows your (fake) name

Last night I went out to the place I go. Luckily I had my fake ID in tow.

"You sure you're Dayton Butout?" Jeff asks me. Jeff is the "bouncer" as it were. The place doesn’t need a bouncer, and Jeff knows me since I come here all the time. But we do this little dance anyway. If I'd showed up a half hour earlier I could have waltzed in unfettered, but I was stuck at home cleaning up after a dishwasher foaming at the mouth like you never seen.

Turns out you have to use the special dishwasher powder and not regular dish soap in those things. Now I know.

Jeff flips my ID around in his hand pedanticaly, "You don't look much like your picture."

"I'm wearing a mask," I retort.

He asks to see what I look like under the mask, so I let him. He squinches his face to look at my fake ID again. "What's your middle name?"

I tell him the middle name on my ID and he lets me come in. I am met by the acrid smell of beer mops and dim light. This place, I must add, is not your typical “bar” in the common sense of the word. It’s more of a refuge for geeks who like to harbor the illusion that they are cool by going out, but still remaining sheltered from the cruel gilt-edged world they spend so many hours making fun of from their video game chat consoles. They sit in a semi-circle nipping at beers paler than Princess Toadstool, sharing gossip and generally wasting the worlds time. Saggy stomached, smoker faced, broody thirty somethings who are not just geeks. They're ostentasious nerds. Admittedly, the distinction may ring of moot points.

“...and then Elton John calls up and says 'Be nice to John Mayer. He's afraid of you.'"

“I need a story that has a ’and then Elton John says..’ in it.”

“You need a giant snap-on slurpee machine!"

"We all do. Hello Masky." The bald guy calls me Masky. "Long time no see."

I am about to say something to justify my long absence but...

"Sons of eighteen bitches! I thought you were dead!

"Nope, I’m not,” I say, “I’m still very much ali---"

“Take a seat Masky, we have important papers to peruse." The bald guy pulls out some papers from his leather briefcase and hands one of them to me across the bar. I order my usual as the bald guy scootches in close to read with me over my shoulder. His smile anxious. His BO staggering.

“What is all this?" I ask. The bald man reaches in with a snort and whips the papers out from under my face, leaving a vacancy filled with my beer.

He pulls his glasses out from where they are strung around his neck, “Kids these days,” grumble grumble, “once you see this you’ll be all like ‘Oh, hello my Alley. I see something that is right up you.’"

I laugh. The bald man puts his glasses on and sorts the papers. It really wasn’t all that funny but I indulge him. In fact, it was

“Dumb.” Says the bartender. We all look at him. He is the worlds most antisocial bartender. He rarely says anything, not even to ask what people want to drink. He’s more likely to stare them down until they tell him, or, in my case, just know what they want.

The bald man’s eyes peer over his glasses rims. "What’s dumb? My glasses? I have sensitive eyes. I would be more Wild Thing punk rock here, but lets face it, butts."

"You're more emo than cheesecake," someone says, and the staring contest is dropped. The bartender smiles and sullies away and the bald man brings the paper he thinks will most interest me to the top of the pile.

“Oh, I'm sure you've heard of the great Monkey Robot Rivalry?”

“No, I must confess I have not.”

“Well then choose sides my young padawan. You must take a side before the impending Ragnarok of judgement between our cybernetic replacements and their primative feces-flinging forebears.”

I am baffled. “A war between Monkeys and Robots?”

“As far as theoretical confrontations go, it’s damn near a certainty.”

This is all news to me. The other slackers chime in good-heartedly, “It’s pretty close too. You’d better know where you stand.”

“You want me to pick who I’d fight for, or who I’m rooting to win.”

“Oh, it’s a given that robots will win, the question is whi—“

“WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH! Woah. It’s a given that robots will win?” PoX ask.

“Well yeah. They’re friggin’ robots. What are the monkey’s gunna go, fling poo at them?”

“You might think monkeys are all cute and harmless but they just use that to lure you in before they rip your face off!”

“Um, I never found poo flinging very ‘cute and harmless,” I say.

“That’s because its monkey poo, and it’s usually flung at you. But, if you chose to side with the monkeys then in the coming war they’ll crawl on your shoulders and you’ll have a personal mounted poo-canon!”

“Robots have lasers!”

“What good are lasers when you can climb trees!”

“What good is tree climbing skill when you have electric sawblades for hands?”

“How many robots do you know who have sawblades for hands! Honestly?”

“Why can’t they? What’s to stop the Robotic militia from infiltrating the Monkey Command with a cyborgorilla spy?”

The bartender motions for me to lean in close. “You can see why its such a hot issue.”

“I knew about the Ninja Pirate debate, but this is all news to me.”

“Oh we’ve been working out the kinks for weeks now,” the bald man says in rich regal tones as if he’s dictating a history lecture. “We’ve even managed to work in most of the DC and Marvel universes.”

“If Superman grew a mullet would it be a Supermullet or the mullet of steel?”

Both answers rang out at once. You can see why these guys don’t get out much. PoX scraped his barstool up alongside my own and pulled out a Silver Dragon Scale bound sketchbook with several doodlings of Monkey’s with lightsabers.

“This Battle raged in the Star Wars galaxy a long time ago, obviously, and so I’ve done some sketches of the Kasshyyk front.”

“The wookies side with the monkeys I assume.”

“Um, duh.”

“And Luke?”

“Well the battle tears he and Leia apart, since Leia is partial to the monkeys while Luke is lured in by R2 and 3PO. Haven’t quite figured out who wins that one since Leia and Han Solo’s children also become Jedis after the Yuuzhan Vong threat 37 ABY. I’m working on some FanFics to journal the events of the war in a first person narrative. It’s pretty heady stuff. I’ll show you what I have if you like?”

G.R. takes a hearty swig of his beer. “I’d like to read chewbacca's blog.”

“It’s not a blog it’s a war log.”

“Ok, but imagine Chewbacca does have a blog out there.

“You should do a search for it,” I suggest.

“Haha, yeah. To find it you just have to google ‘RRRR’”

“No NO NO! It’s more like ‘GrrOOoooowwwwwooww!’”

“Ack! Horrible. Minus 15 Mans. That is not Chewie at all.”

Meanwhile, across the bar, three guys are still discussing the technicalities of the Robot Monkey battle…

“If Optimus Prime is the Robot Union's Lincoln, couldn’t Donkey Kong be the Monkey Confederacy version of Jefferson Davis?”

“I would think Davis would be Dr. Zaius. Donkey Kong is more like a William Tecumseh Sherman.”

“Good call. Your super extensive insight in these matters is tres balls. Two kudos. You are a gentleman and a scholar."

"Thank you Charlie, buy me another beer?"

“Sure thing. But you’ve got the next round.”

And that’s about how it goes. I had a good night. Despite their solar-repellent tendencies, those guys can be pretty fun at times. But I must confess last night I had dreams of Monkeys Versus Robots and it scared the living monkey poo out of me.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
-DMM