"Loser Lager"

 

A bartender came over, a thin, haggard man of indeterminate age, wearing a stained red vest and a black bowtie.

"What do you want?"

"Hello," said Addison.

"Hello," said the man. "Now what do you want?"

"How are you?" said Addison.

"How does it look like I am?"

"Somewhat harried, I should say."

"I am harried, because I got a full bar full of losers to deal with, and now I got you two, too. Now what the fuck do you want?"

"Could we have two beers?"

"This is a bar, isn't it?"

"Ha ha, yes, indeed," said Addison. "Well, then, may we have two beers please in the largest receptacles you have?"

"You may, but would it be too much to ask what kind of beer you want? And don't say cold, because I have heard that a million times if I've heard it once, and it hasn't been witty since a thousand years before the first time I heard it."

"Very well," said Addison, "do you have a bock beer?"

"No, we do not have a bock beer. We don't carry that fancy shit."

"I should hardly call bock fancy shit," said Addison.

"Look, pal, I'll tell you what we got and make it easy for you. We got Rheingold beer. We got Ballantine ale. And we got our own house lager."

"Oh, a house lager? What's it called?"

"We call it Loser Lager."

"Okay, make it two Loser Lagers then," said Addison, "in the largest –"

"Receptacles we have, I heard you the first time."

"Yes, thank you," said Addison.

The bartender went away.

"Nice guy," said Addison, taking out his Chesterfields.

Milford took out his Husky Boys.

"I shouldn't really have a beer," he said.

"Dear God, man, after all we've been through, why in heaven's name not?" said Addison.

"Addison, cast your memory back into the distant past of a week or so ago. Where did we first meet?"

"Well, let's see," said Addison, accepting a light from Milford's Ronson, "oh, I remember, it was at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the basement at Old St. Pat's!"

"Yes," said Milford, now lighting his own cigarette. He exhaled, wearily, or at least seemingly wearily. "Alcoholics Anonymous. I am an alcoholic. And that's why I shouldn't be having a beer. Not to mention that in the course of this night I have smoked marijuana and hashish and eaten the supposedly sacred mushrooms of the American Indians. And then this Negro fellow Jelly Roll gave me a couple of hand-rolled cigarettes composed of a mixture of Bull Durham tobacco, Acapulco gold and Panama red, jimson weed, John the Conqueroo, ayahuasca, and laudanum."

"But at least you didn't have alcohol," Addison pointed out.

"No, I did," said Milford. "I have had grog laced with rum for one thing."

"Oh, that sounds good."

"Not if you're an alcoholic."

"You're too hard on yourself, old man."

"I've also had whiskey, wine, and beer, and now that I think of it, I had some sarsaparilla infused with ambrosia, the supposedly legendary food of the ancient Greek gods."

"Oh, how was that?" 

"It was okay, Addison, but you're not taking my point, which is that I shouldn't be drinking any alcohol or taking any drugs at all –"

"Here's your beers," said a voice, and the bartender was there, laying down two very large mugs filled with sparkling golden liquid with creamy foaming heads.

"Ah, splendid," said Addison. "Here, let me get this," and he made a vague slow gesture with his right hand in the general direction of his pocket.

"That's okay, I've got it," said Milford, and he pulled out his old Boy Scout wallet. "How much?" he asked the bartender.

"Two imperial pints of the house lager at two bits each."

"So, fifty cents?"

"I see you were paying attention in arithmetic class."

"Heh heh," said Milford, with false mirth. "Okay, great." He took out a dollar bill and laid it on the counter, which was unwiped and sticky. "Keep the change."

"Thanks," said the bartender, and he scooped up the bill, and turned away, muttering something.

"Did you hear that?" said Milford to Addison.

"No, what?" said Addison.

"He called us cunts."

"Maybe you misheard him."

"No, I distinctly heard him say cunts, and that was after I left him a fifty cent tip for a fifty cent round." 

"How dare he," said Addison, but with no great force, and, picking up his large mug, he put it to his lips and drank, and when he put the mug down half a minute later it was only half full, or half empty, depending on how you looked at it. He sighed deeply, emitting the single long exclamation, "Ah…"

For his part Milford took a single good gulp, and he had to admit that the brew tasted good, and even better was the feeling it produced in his corporeal host and the tortured spirit that resided or was trapped within it.

"Hang it all!" said Addison, out of the blue. "We may well be douchebags, I grant you that. But. There is one thing that we are not. Do you know what that is, dear fellow?"

"I can think of innumerable things we are not," said Milford. "Like talented, amusing, tolerable in anything more than the smallest of doses, and those doses occurring no more than once in a season, and I speak of the seasons of the earthly calendar, not that eternal season of tedium in which we essentially exist –"

"Yes, of course, but I make reference to one thing in particular that we are not. And do you want to know what that is?"

"Okay," said Milford and put his hand to his mouth in a halfway successful effort to stifle a combination of a yawn and a sigh, and he forced a belch just to be polite. "Sorry," he said, "a touch of gas, from the beer."

"That one thing which we are not," said Addison, "and which we shall never be –"

Even as bored as he was getting, Milford could tell that Addison was pausing for effect, and so to hurry him along he said, "Yes?"

"We are not cunts," said Addison. 

"No?" said Milford.

"No, sir. We are not cunts. This is the hill on which I will gladly expire, defending my position until my last bullet is spent, at which point I shall fix my bayonet and let them come for me."

"And who is it that would come for you?" said Addison, proving that two can play the annoying douchebag game.

"I shall tell you who will come for me," said Addison. "The cunts, that's who. Because if it's anything a cunt hates and would destroy, it's a man who is not a cunt. And again I say, we may be losers, we may be failures, and, yes, we might well be douchebags, but we are not cunts."

"Excuse me," butted in a fat old man sitting to Addison's left. Addison and Milford both adjusted their heads so they could look at him. His face was red and round like a pomegranate, he sported an enormous white moustache, he had thick glasses with wire frames, and he wore a foggy blue beret. "I could not help but overhearing you just now. And I want only to say, I admire your sand, young man."

"You do?" said Addison.

"I do indeed, sir. And may I say, let no man call you a cunt."

"Really?" said Addison.

"Nor your young friend there," said the fat man.

"Wow, that's really nice of you to say, sir," said Addison.

"I speak only the truth, my friend. I may not know much, but I know a cunt when I see one, and you two fellows may indeed be losers, possibly douchebags, and, maybe – I say maybe – chronic onanists of the first order, but, no, sirs, cunts you are not."

"Well, thank you, sir," said Addison.

"Not at all," said the fat old man.

 "And may I ask how you can tell?"

"How can I tell that you are not cunts?"

"Yes," said Addison.

"The species known as Cunnus sapiens," said the man, "is recognizable at once to the trained eye, nose and ear by a sense, both physical and moral, of overwhelming revulsion. But I look at you two lads and feel no such revulsion. Indeed I see versions of my own younger self, when I was full of beans, not to mention piss and vinegar. As opposed to your garden variety cunt who is full of nothing less nor more than shit."

"Gee," said Addison, and he turned to Milford. "Did you hear that, buddy? Turns out we're really not cunts. That's something, isn't it?"

Milford was on the verge of bringing up again what the bartender had muttered as he walked away, but he held his tongue, lest he should sound like a cunt.

{Kindly go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}