The Old Ice Pick Through The Hand Trick.

I’m sure they were only trying to do their best. But what in god’s name were my parents thinking. By the time I was 18 I had seen more of the sick and depraved than some men twice my age could ever hope to see. I can sit comfortably at the age of 27 knowing, that I’ve stood within the gates of Sodom and Gomorrah smacking and sodomizing vile flesh and taste testing the broad range of perversions that IS the totality of experience. It was some time in my 12th year that I boldly declared to my parents that I was to be a musician. I’m sure they were somewhat dismayed at the idea of their little boy moving into a vocation that had precious few opportunities for financial solvency. However it was far to late in the game to back down off of the “You can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it.” trip. It wasn’t long before I was spending four or more nights a week at a local music venue. And despite everyone’s best efforts to shield me from the dark underbelly of world of live music, like a dog I managed to stuff my nose anywhere it smelled bad. And boy did the Cattle Club ever smell bad. To this day when I get a whiff of the sickening smell of sour beer and stale cigarette smoke I feel like I’m home. This lifestyle almost immediately became a detriment to my schooling. I found no reason to go to bed at a reasonable hour so I could wake up and go to school the next day when there were so many drugs to do and so many beers to drink. Perhaps this isn’t quite the proper mindset for a fourteen-year-old but given the opportunity I wouldn’t change a thing.

There are occasions, which have permanently etched themselves into my consciousness; Bare breasts and acid trips, fist fights and blowjobs, being hit on by grown gay men and oversexed straight women, breaking and entering and brush fires. In four short years I garnered a lifetime of experience. Some days I wonder what exactly my parent where thinking when I came home at four in the morning reeking of booze. What did they say to each other when I walked in the door obviously frying my ass off on acid? All I can say is that I’m truly fortunate that my parents raised me in the fashion they did. A child of lesser intelligence and a poorer grasp of what the world was really about would have ended up in jail and or spending the rest of their empty lives in a drug induced haze. As it is my teenage debauchery was just a faze which I grew out of much in the same fashion another child of my age may have grown out of playing with toys (something I’ve never grown out of). These days I rarely ever drink and the last time I took acid I was 20 and I spent the entire night in the fetal position on the floor. Many of the kids I knew who were pulling down straight A’s are now drunks or crack addicts. I suppose the moral of the story is to get your kids on drugs as soon as possible so they can get that shit out of their system.

I would be hard pressed to convey my favorite story of my Cattle Club years. But if you held my feet to the fire I could say that one of the most entertaining is a great little yarn involving the greatest bartender I’ve ever known, an ice pick and massive quantities of booze.

I've sat down at a an incalculable number of bars all over the world and been served by at least as many bartenders none of which have come close to holding a candle to my absolute favorite drink slinger. Keith was an amazing bartender. Two Parts philosopher, one part councilor, four parts preacher and three parts John Wayne. Adorned with an Abe Lincoln beard and thinning hair Keith dressed in a kind of hobo sheik that would never have worked on anyone else and almost didn’t work on him. I would often wonder if his closet was full of freshly washed plain black shirts riddled with holes and cut off black denim shorts or did he just wake up wearing the same clothes he wore all week neglecting the approval of a mirror as he walked out the door. Did he sleep wearing the same black All Stars with the sole desperately clinging on at the heel or did he buy new pairs and liberate the oppressed sole from the rest of the shoe so that his right foot could “breath”? Keith was a religious drinker. I don’t mean this in sense that he drank at the same time everyday or something benign like that. He viewed being an alcoholic as a religion. He would often make references to “the alcohol gods” as if he had velvet paintings over his bed and prayer candles emblazoned with their images. If upon pouring a drink a drop or two would hit the bar he would mumble some sort of incomprehensible prayer to himself and trace the sign of the cross over his chest. I have seen few Christians or Catholics with the kind of devotion that Keith held for the alcohol gods. And much like any good Christian if pressed you would be made aware how gravely serious he was about his beliefs. One night well after closing time Mac and I sat at the bar with our manager Jon drinking ourselves silly. At some point our conversation turned to those poor souls who could recite beer label credos from memory. Keith was quick to point out that he had spent some time in the navy where he had gained the ability to recite the Budweiser label in its entirety without error. I found this to be truly stunning. Not that he could recite the Budweiser credo that actually seemed perfectly characteristic. It was the fact that Keith had spent time in the Navy. It seemed almost implausible. As far as knew they didn’t have bars OR bartenders on naval ships. Jon scooped up a Budweiser and insisted that Keith prove himself to us. Keith tipped back his head in a state of rapture and spoke,

"This is the famous Budweiser beer. We know of no brand produced by any other brewer which costs so much to age and brew”.

Jon winced and turned the label to Keith. You could almost see his heart sink. Any committed alcoholic worth his weight in hops knows that it’s “brew” then “age” and not the other way around as Keith had stated. You could see that he was shamed and heart broken.

“I must pay penance”, he mumbled toward his shoes.

Being the malicious son of a bitch that he was Jon was more than happy to help and he would make sure that paying this penance was not easy because as anyone who has spent the night on a filthy bathroom floor knows the alcohol gods are vengeful and unforgiving. Jon stepped behind the bar, retrieved the largest glass he could find and proceeded to fill it with everything. I don’t mean that he mixed a few different beers in one glass. I mean that he put EVERY liquid that was behind that bar into a glass. Beer, mixers, hard alcohol, dishwater and more. Keith took the glass dropped to one knee, whispered a prayer to himself and drank the whole glass at once. Up until that point I had never seen Keith with so much as a buzz and now it was painfully obvious that not only was he buzzed but unequivocally drunk. Everything seemed to be just fine until I heard him say,

“You guys wanna see put an ice pick through my hand?”

Okay, this is not the kind of question that should be answer lightly. On one hand if you answer yes you could conceivably be held guilty of aiding an individual who is unquestionably inebriated in making a decision which could lead to injury or worse. On the other hand, when will someone ever offer this kind of performance for free again?

“Yes…Yes I DO want to see you put an ice pick through your hand.”

For all of us in attendance that night it seemed like an innocuous enough task. Sure! You just jam that fucker through your palm…Right? Well, apparently we were all wrong. With the point of the pick pressed into to the flash of his palm Keith proceeded to slam the handle into the top of the bar in an attempt to drive the metal rod through his hand. He didn’t seem to have much trouble getting it through the palm of his hand. It was the flesh on the top of his hand, which was proving to be more resistant to puncture. Because of this the pick coming through the opposite side of his hand was creating a kind of flesh tent on the top of his hand. Unwilling to relent Keith continued to twist and push the handle of the ice pick occasionally swearing and turning his head to me with a look that expressed absolute disbelief that the flesh of his hand was putting up such a fight. Eventually, fed up with his vain attempt he grabbed a lime knife looked up at me and chuckled,

“Why didn’t I think of this sooner?!”

Jeez I don’t know. Everybody knows that when you’re trying to mutilate yourself with an ice pick you should always cut a slit in the top of you hand first. They teach you THAT shit in grade school. In seconds it was over and Keith spent the rest of the night with that ice pick sticking right through his hand as if it was the coolest body modification a middle aged hipster could ask for. After a few more hours it was obvious that we should leave before someone could offer to drive something metal through his scrotum. As we were walking out the door I turned around and saw Keith hunched over the bar furiously scribbling onto a cocktail napkin. Contrary to my better judgment I asked,

“What are you doing?”

Without looking up he replied,

“No big deal. I just figured out infinity that’s all”.

“Oh” I said,

“Is that all?”