I reached out and picked up my neighbour’s glass from the bar, full of some exotic looking cocktail. Before he even noticed that it had moved, the glass was tilted above his head and the sticky drink was no longer inside it. I could see each individual drop as they splashed off his thinning hair and carried on down to his shoulders, making beautiful colours and rainbows in the red and blue lights from the bar.
The dark thing inside my head wanted to smash the empty glass after the liquid, making more pretty colours, but I managed to hold it back as the sights and sounds of the room flooded back into the real world that I inhabited. The old fart’s shoulders hunched up in the time-honoured “this is what happens when I’m wet” gesture, and his companion shrieked aloud at the sight. This was even funnier than whatever they’d been talking about before, and I had to agree with her. It certainly brightened my day considerably, and even brought a smile to my face as I turned to the barman and waved my half-empty beer at him. No debates about whether I’m an optimist or a pessimist, please – half the beer was missing, whichever way you looked at it.
But the previously friendly barman wasn’t moving. The much-needed refill wasn’t winging its merry way towards me. Instead, the few other old folks propping up the bar all seemed to be looking in my direction, with eyes wide and mouths closed. Which is the way it should be 24/7, if you ask me. I decided to glance round and make sure that there wasn’t something else interrupting their otherwise empty lives, but as so often happens in these situations, I immediately regretted having done so.
The old fart (not the dead one, the other one – now easily distinguishable because of the goop dripping from his head) was pointing a gun at me. Being well versed in the multitudinous varieties and technicalities of arms and ammunition, I recognized it instantly as a Big Gun. The kind that makes things explode, as opposed to the kind that just drills a neat hole through them. Chrome plated. Red grip on the handle. And this identification wasn’t at all easy to make, as the thing was shaking up and down, back and forth, and quite obviously wasn’t at all happy where it was. I toyed with the idea of reaching out and taking it away from him, but then I just couldn’t be bothered. So I tried to be nice.
“Fuck off.”
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m as macho as the next guy. But this wasn’t bravado speaking. At that moment, I honestly didn’t give a fuck whether or not he pulled the trigger. It had been a long weekend. I was tired. Hot. Thirsty. Coming down from some kind of recreational synthetic. Combined with the aftereffects of an adrenaline rush. And I was in no mood to start apologising or begging in front of anybody.
“You bastard!” He started to tremble all over, his eyes growing bigger by the second. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Possible replies stumbled over one another in my head as they rushed to get out first. But overriding them all came the lyrics to a song by little Ronnie James Dio.
“Well it’s a matter of mind. You know you can be free forever. So the next time someone points a gun at you…
Say Shoot Shoot. You don’t care. Shoot Shoot.”
OK, it loses something in the translation into a non-musical format, but believe me when I tell you that you don’t want me to sing it to you. Suffice to say, this was running through my mind, with the backing musicians doing their backing musical bits, while I stood there with a gun pointed at my head. When things can’t possibly get any worse, and you’ve got nothing to lose, what’s a boy to do?
I drained the last half of the beer in my hand.
“Look sunshine. Either shoot me, or fuck off. You’re starting to annoy me.” At which point I turned my back on him and spun the empty bottle on the bar, hoping that it would be replaced before I was rendered incapable of enjoying any more.
Again, this wasn’t just pure nonchalance. It had occurred to me that he’d probably be less likely to shoot me in the back, and more likely to explode if I kept staring into his face. I could also see his reflection in the mirrors behind the bar, and I was preparing myself to slip off the barstool and onto the floor if he made any sudden moves.
The impasse lasted a couple more minutes, then one of the other barflies reached for his drink, the ice cubes chimed in the glass as he raised it to his mouth, and the spell was broken. A collective breath was taken, then the hum of conversation in the bar started to build up once again. All this time, the old fart was still pointing the Big Gun at the back of my head. And I was starting to think that he might have gone beyond the point of no return, where it became easier just to go with the flow than to take a step back. But then grandma stepped up to the plate.
“Come on, love. Leave him. He’s not worth it.”
I took a deep breath, just in case.
“Really, my sweet. Come have another drink.”
In the mirrors, I saw the tension drain out of him as his arm dropped to his side, his head dropping onto his chest. His big moment had come and gone, and he’d blown it. I reached for the empty beer bottle in front of me. I’d be fucked if I was going to let the old fart walk out of there after that. I mean, I had a reputation to maintain. A reputation that, all by itself, had kept me alive on more occasions than I could remember.
But before I had a chance to turn round, the bouncer had performed a perfect rugby tackle on the old fart, hitting him from behind and taking him down to the tiles. The gun slid off against the far wall, and the teddy boy was on top of him, pounding away. Then it was over, and the little man got to his feet, taking his shades from a jacket pocket while slicking back his hair with the other hand. He grabbed the former gunman by the shirt collar, picked up the weapon from where it lay against the wall, and started to remove them from the scene of the crime.
“Sorry about that,” he grunted as he heaved away at the body that was bigger than he was. “George! A free beer for the peacekeeper, here.”
And who was George to argue? The beer appeared, and it definitely seemed colder and more refreshing than the previous one.
Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning
Till next time. Cheers.
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