Nurse Jones Barhops

by Nurse Jones

The four of us went bar hopping last week, and I wore a dress so tight that Jay had trouble breathing. We had a lot of fun. And you would have been proud of me. I was self-contained, sober, ladylike, and dignified. Except when somebody stepped on my hand.

We had saved up a huge mason jar of rainy-day spare change for just such an occasion. We spent part of it on beer and pool at a redneck bar, and part for cover charge at a gay/lesbian/ transsexual/transvestite bar. We wasted the rest.

The redneck bar was kind of nice in a nostalgic sort of way. It's like every bar I ever went to back home in Indiana. But I bore easily when playing pool and I tend to be single-minded when I drink margaritas; I'm afraid I agitated until I made everybody leave for the gay bar, which I had never had the courage to go to before.

But we stirred up the good ol' boys before we left. Yeeeha.

I HAVE to get a cowboy hat.

So anyway, I wore my tight dress. In fact, Anita and I *both* wore these almost-identical very tight and very tiny black knit dresses; she's so tall and I'm so short we looked like a pair of mutant backup singers for a very low-budget rock group.

The thing is, we planned a little joke on Tom. When we got to the door I told Jay to pretend he wasn't with us and we went in, one on either side of Tom, like we were both "his girls". We cuddled up to him and stayed stuck to him like glue wherever he went. I think one or the other of us was blowing in his ear almost continuously. While Jay got the beer Tom sat at a table and we climbed onto his lap, one on each knee, and started kissing him, both at once, sort of like we were competing for his attention. Tom's so sweet when he turns red.

I think the boys at the pool tables got a little distracted. There was a fierce clicking and clacking of balls. If I knew more about pool I'm sure I'd have been impressed.

We sort of worked around from kissing both sides of Tom to kissing the front of Tom -- both on the lips at once. Tom said that was a first for him. Me too.

Neets and I ended up kissing each other right in front of Tom's nose. Not a big sloppy passionate kiss, but not exactly a chaste one, either. We lingered, kind of. Then Neets reaches down and grabs Tom's crotch. She can be so crude, sometimes.

"Just checking," she said.

"Well...?" I said.

"Check for yourself."

"Neeeets...." How embarrassing. I looked at Tom and he rolled his eyes at the ceiling, shook his head in resignation and turned even redder. So what the heck. I did. (He was, BTW.) He's so cute when he blushes. I don't believe I did that. It's all Neets' fault, I want you to know.

There was a brief but satisfying suspension of ball-clicking over at the pool table.

I could almost hear their minds ticking over while they digested the idea that we might not exactly be your normal everyday foursome. Which of course we are. Absolutely. No, really.

Why is it that there is this stereotype of lesbian couples (which we are not) that requires one to be butch and play the male role? Is there some rule that says the universe should be symmetric? Jay says actually there is: a law in physics, something called parity, but what does he know. Parity is an option in software installation. Even *I* know that.

Anyway, neither of us is in the least bit butch. We're not really lesbians, either, just um, bi, (Why does it give me a thrill to say that out loud? I'm more sophisticated than that. No, really I am.) And we're really just experimenting with being bi, so maybe we don't matter, paritywise.

Even so, if people think you're gay they have to figure out which one of you is the butch one, like it was some kind of rule. You can see them trying to guess which one it is, too. The little wheels turn.

Heh. Once at a party an older woman even asked us which of us it was. We both looked her right in the eye and with two perfectly straight faces pointed at each other and said in unison, "She is."

Perfect timing. She thought we had planned it. We had.

You would think they would assume that Neets was the butch one, since she is taller and has a kind of strong-boned face, but my hair was a bit mannish while it was growing back out, so I guess I can forgive the woman for her lack of a sense of parity.

Anyway, the boys at the pool table thought about parity for a few seconds and then there was a fierce resumtion of clacking. My my, how those balls can rocket around the table....

And then Tom and I slow-danced to an ancient Elvis tune on the jukebox, but Anita wanted to cut in so he went and played pool with Jay. Neets and I took turns leading though, just so they wouldn't get any funny ideas about us, paritywise.

Well, we wouldn't want them to get the wrong impression. After all, it's the Law. Sez Jay. I can see I'm going to have to read up on this parity stuff. Some day. Right after I figure out this cooking business. What a drag.

After a while we joined Tom and Jay at the table, but I'm not really a pool fan. You have to get into the strangest positions to hit the balls and I had trouble staying completely in my dress at both ends. Plus you have to learn to control all your equipment.

I mean really: the cue stick is bad enough, but there's this bridge thingy and then people are always at you to be careful to not tear the tablecloth. Plus the table is too big and the holes are too small and Jay fussed over me like an old woman every time I put my beer *anywhere* on the green parts. They were all so *nervous* when it was my turn to play.

All except this old guy that wore a tractor hat and sat on a stool at the end of the bar by our table. He was nursing a beer like maybe his wife only allowed him one a night. He seemed to be overjoyed whenever our turn came (Neets and I were a team), and when either one of us managed to get a ball somewhere near a hole he grinned and nodded. He reminded me of Mr. Hansen back home who was struck by lightning: he wore a tractor hat too, and smiled a lot like this old guy. After the accident, that is. Poor Mr. Hansen. The bars wouldn't serve him afterward, either, at least not more than once. The only job he could get was bagging groceries.

Indiana is a great state.

Anyway, this old guy would say a number now and then and after a while I figured out that he wasn't crazy, he was just telling Anita and me which balls to aim at. Except it always seemed like we had to scootch up on the table or lean way across it to reach the ones he wanted us to aim for.

I called it pooling my assets, ha ha. I'm such a card. Anyway, all this was difficult in the dress I was wearing. He sure smiled a lot, though. He must really like pool.

It's really a stupid game. Like golf. And couldn't they use a little initiative when they decorate their balls? I mean really: stripes and solids are about as imaginative as men's suits. Haven't they heard of polka dots? Checks? And what about plaid and hot pink? At least in golf you get to dress up.

Plus I can never get the cue to stay on my left hand. It would be a lot easier if they'd let me use the bridge all the time. It's really a dumb thing to do, getting balls in holes. I don't know *what* men see in the game, but they're *always* wanting to teach you how to play.

And then Anita was laughing at me behind my back because she had put a big talcum powder handprint on my rear end and I didn't know it. The bitch. We fooled around so much it took us forever to get the balls in the holes and these spectators kept putting quarters on the edge of the table, they were so impatient for us to finish.

In the end we gave up and let them have the table but by then nobody seemed to want it any more. You'd never know from all the quarters they'd lined up. Plus they applauded when we finally quit, and I don't think any of us even won the game. Go figure.

Jay says he thinks maybe they were all hoping Anita and I would win. Southerners are nice like that. They always favor the underdog, ever since the Civil War. Sorry: the War of Northern Aggression.

I love the South.

But I still don't understand all those quarters, or what was so special about our table that they all had to play on it. I asked Jay, and he said it was the only table that hadn't had beer spilled on it by some *woman*, but I could tell from the way he looked at Tom that he was kidding.

As we were leaving the guy in the tractor hat thanked us and told us we had made a happy man very old.

Now really, we didn't hog the table for *that* long.

I kind of enjoyed putting the blue chalk on the end of the cue stick, though. Jay said I was really lewd when I did that. That's because I wiggled sympathetically at one end while I twisted the chalk at the other. He says he preferred the way I rubbed the talcum powder; he would, he's such a pervert.

So anyway, I wanted to go to queer nite at the gay/lesbian/ transsexual/transvestite/homeopathic bar, but the drinks are SO expensive. Plus there's a cover charge. So I persuaded Jay The Cheapskate just to stop in for an estimate.

We ended up staying until the police arrived.

This is going to sound REALLY weird to the folks on the left coast, but 4 days a week, this bar is a typical southern redneck bar, full of latent heterosexuals trying to score by impressing each other with how unimpressed they are with each other.

Um... did I get that right?

Anyway: two nights a week, this bar specializes in a select clientele and has something they call "Gay Night". Which means that all the Rambo extras leave and it turns into a cast party for a Fellini film.

What's so weird about that, you say. There are plenty of gay/lesbian/homeopathic/transmission-specialist bars everywhere, you say. Well, maybe it's just me, but I'm used to bars being committed to one philosophy or the other. This town is too small to support a full-time gay bar, though, so there is this perfectly amicable time sharing system between the rednecks and the other weirdos. I mean, according to all the rules *I've* ever seen, these two types should not get along at all well with each other. But they manage.

I think it has something to do with parity.

There is an amateur stripping contest. And no, I did NOT, and I know what you are thinking so stop. I'm not like that. Besides it is won every time by this transsexual with the most spectacular boobs I have ever seen. (And boy, have I ever seen. Everyone saw.) There is no way I could compete with someone that beautiful. She has had the entire treatment and she's very proud of it. Them.

And It.

Whatever.

And they say she has brains as well. As beauties.

Talk about a self made man. When I found out the way she had changed her whole outlook on life I was floored. I would never have known she wasn't just your everyday perfect barbie doll. You could have heard my tiny little mind ticking over.

Plus I was amazed that this city would tolerate her stripping once a week. I mean the police will arrest entire video stores for an x-rated movie, so you wouldn't *expect* them to turn a blind eye. But the conservative mind is a wonderful thing. I think basically they classify him as a female impersonator but they let it slide because he's technically a woman.

Did I get that right?

So here is this one gay/lebanese/homeopathic/transylvanian bar where she can go every week to eat, drink, and be Mary, and the most rabid southern redneck cops you could imagine don't do a thing. At least not yet, but this is an election year and tiny little minds are ticking over everywhere.

Boy are they.

Tiny, I mean.

And of course, the place is full of other assorted strange people. Lots of cross dressing. Half of the best looking women are men and vice versa. I'm getting pretty good at telling the difference, but I lost a bet on one and had to buy a round of beers. We would never have known if it weren't for Neets: she was the only one with the courage to go up to her and ask what she was, and it turned out she wasn't.

It's a pretty raucous crowd. A lot of very casual "grabassing" (Jay's word) goes on. I think the basic idea is to make a pass at everything and let biology sort itself out. Rules about parity don't seem to help much in this situation.

We had to sit near the back, away from the stage, but by standing on my chair I could see across the room to where the contest was going on. That was quite a scene. The spotlights were zooming around, someone was dancing on a table, and there were occasional airborne articles of clothing from the audience. They threw more back at the contestants than the contestants were actually stripping off. A plastic baggie full of dry rice landed on our table from out of nowhere. (I know what you are going to ask, and I have no idea, but I do have a theory. It involves parity... sort of.) The noise was incredible. And to think that the night before it had been a 100% redneck bar. I'm telling you, looking out across that landscape made me proud to be an American.

And talk about your fruited plains.

I was completely amazed to discover that the teller at our bank is gay. Or something. What is it when a woman has a thing for a transsexual? And she seems so conservative behind her window at the bank. But there she was, in the front row, going gaga over the transsexual, whose elastic was under a lot of strain as it was, but the teller kept tucking money under it anyway. Everyone cheered when she tucked her head under it.

I could have gone to that bank for years and never known she was such a flirt.

Part-time gay/libertarian/holographic transylvanians or not, there's nothing like this in Indiana.

That was when I fell off my chair (it had become *very* unstable by that time) and Jay caught me, but my glasses fell off (I'm half blind without them, but I *had* to put them on to make sure it was really our bank teller flirting with the transsexual dancer).

Anyway, somebody stepped on my hand while I was looking for them and when I finally emerged from under the table Tom and Jay were in the men's (hah!) room, and in their place was an absolutely mountainous woman with a pierced eyebrow who had come over to introduce herself. She must have been 6'4" if she was an ounce, and she clinked and squeaked from all the hardware and leather. She was *so* tall. Probably worth the climb if you like that sort of thing, but to me she was just scary. She had a friend, too, who was merely enormous by comparison.

Nadine and Ramona. They looked like a pair of TV wrestlers (maybe I should specify thet TV stands for "television" here). Neets and I had been sitting kind of close to each other all evening so I guess they suspected there might be an opportunity, paritywise, and they had waited until Tom and Jay left to find out if we would be interested.

The chair creaked when she sat down. I think. It might have been her clothing. She had a crewcut, BTW.

I was nervous and embarrassed and pretended not to understand that they were gay despite some pretty heavy-handed inuendos. Talk about a futile attempt to ignore the obvious. Now I know how George Bush deals with the national debt. Of course Neets let me do all the talking, the coward. Finally the woman just got tired of fencing with me and announced that they had come over to our table because they were *lesbians* and I ask her, "So how *are* things in Beiruit?" and she gets disgusted and leaves.

Phew. I thought I handled that one pretty well.

By the time the boys came back Neets and I had concealed a number of margaritas about our persons and decided to head for the ladies' (hah!) room. But Neets just *had* to get cute. The thing was, we followed a young, um, ... person in feminine attire into a restroom, so it seemed perfectly natural that it would be the ladies' room, and Neets is tall enough that her back covered up the sign that said "men" when she leaned against the door to keep it open for me while I breezed in past her like I always do and she pulled it shut and held it so I couldn't get out.

Ha ha very funny. Anyway, the first thing I noticed was all the graffiti. There were tile walls and the management provided washable magic markers on strings -- maybe in the hopes of controlling what they couldn't stop.

When I realized Neets wasn't behind me and why, I took a closer look at the place and right away I knew where I was. Almost right away. As soon as I saw the row of drinking fountains.

Thank God I wasn't thirsty.

Well, how was *I* to know? I've never *been* in a men's room before. I was *NOT* too drunk to know the difference, despite what Neets says. By the way: did you know the worm in the bottom of the tequilla bottle is *plastic*? I asked the bartender. Is nothing sacred? I was *so* disappointed. Disillusioned. Really, it's enough to make you give up talking to bartenders.

Anyway, Neets pushed me into the men's room and held the door.

She has a very primitive sense of humor, our Neets. As though it made a difference which restroom I was in on that night of the week.

Actually it wasn't as embarrassing as you would have thought, being in a men's room. I made a *lot* of new friends.

Mostly transvestites, and all very interesting people. Facinating, really. It's just that they all had so much to drink I couldn't remember their names.

The young kid I followed in was amazingly convincing. You just wouldn't have thought it possible for male anatomy to be in a dress that revealing and still pass as female. He was going to school at the local university. Probably spending his junior year abroad...

8)

And Neets says *I'm* the one with the primitive sense of humor...

On almost any other night of the week I would have known something was up right away, but there was only one person in there (besides me) that was dressed the way you would expect normal people to, and he was in a stall when I came in -- probably for his own peace of mind.

I wish I had had the courage to give a few of them some pointers on femininity. Of course, you can't expect them to be on their best behaviour in the men's room. I mean, at least in there you ought to be able to be yourself. (Er...)

Which shows what I know. It turns out the transvestites were in the men's room as a joke. Normally (whatever that is) they used the ladies room. They said. Normally.

In fact, (besides me) there was another real biological woman in there, and in the area of dress and deportment she needed more pointers than the transvestites. She was practically the only one that looked like she *belonged* in the men's room. Come to think of it, as much as I *love* giving advice, she probably would have had very little use for pointers from yours truly.

Well, at least *I* had a pee, and Neets was still outside bursting. You can get a bladder infection that way, you know.

I doubt there are any men's rooms like that in Indiana.

Then I noticed that the tampon machine was actually a *condom* vending machine and would you believe there wasn't a *single* person in there with change for a dollar? And I *really* wanted to come out of there with a raspberry-flavored exotic french tickler condom in the designer color of my choice. I don't even *like* raspberry, but it was either that or cherry. I bet in California I could have gotten trail mix...

But nobody had change, so I was out of luck. I guess everyone had switched purses that day or something. I had to be content with writing some graffiti on the condom machine. "This gum tastes *awful*!" Ha ha. I'm such a card.

Anyway, yet another transvestite came out of a stall and he somehow gotten it into his head that I had made an honest parity error and really believed I was in the ladies room. I think he was expecting me to run screaming from the room once I figured out where I actually was. So he said he was going to show me something that would shock me and started to hike up his dress. I said, Wait, wait! Let me put on my glasses! And I started fishing around in my purse and everybody started laughing so loudly that Neets (bless her) must have gotten a little worried and stuck her head in the door to check on me.

Oho. You shouldn't be in here, I said. You're a woman, fer crissakes. How embarrassing. Can't I take you *anywhere*?

So everyone waves at her and invites her in but she gets embarrassed and drags me back out. She' so rude to people sometimes. Just when things were getting interesting. Really, I was perfectly safe. I think maybe I have something in common with transvestites. Jay says it's an obsession with makeup, but what does he know. He's just mad because he thinks it's MY fault we're always late, what with me taking so much time to put on my face and all.

Now really, I don't take *that* long, and besides, it wouldn't be sporting to start out on time. Where's the fun in that? Where's his spirit of competition if he won't even give the poor movie a chance to start without us?

So anyway, there were a lot of very interesting people in the men's room, people that would have been a lot of fun to know, but Neets seemed to be in a hurry. At least she looked very uncomfortable. Of course *she* still had to pee. She was seriously bursting. Ha. She deserved it. Turns out the tag-team wrestlers were in the ladies' room and she was afraid to go in. I don't blame her; they were scary. But I don't know why she wouldn't go into the mens' room where it was safe.

And why did I feel so safe around the transvestites that I didn't even think about it? I dunno. I just did. Funny, that...

After that the party moved out of the bar and onto the roof of a neighboring building and two of the transvestites started throwing water balloons down at perfect strangers and screeching that they were prosthetic devices from outer space; people were crossing to the other side of the street.

Then three of them organized a chorus line to do 'Singing in the Rain' while another pissed off the roof in a very unladylike fashion. Sheesh.

Men.

Neets was giving them all a stern lecture on feminine deportment and was about to demonstrate how a properly brought up lady would do it (she really needed to go) when Jay decided to shepherd us all back down to the parking lot just because he heard sirens. He can be a real spoilsport sometimes. I was having such a lot of fun; you *never* find bars like that in Indiana.

All the way down to the parking lot Tom was trying to organize us to do "Singing in the Rain" in three part harmony but I can't sing even when my mouth *isn't* numb. Jay was very patient with us, especially considering that Tom wanted me to drive because he had this theory that I was too drunk to sing.

Fortunately, Jay actually *prefers* being the designated driver, imagine. Plus he likes to go to bed around 10 o'clock. I think he's getting old. Maybe I am too; two in the morning once a week is about my absolute limit. In fact really, if I'm not in bed by ten or eleven, I figure I might as well go to sleep.

Anyway, out in the parking lot at 2 am I nearly fell off the hood of our ancient rusty pickup (I was doing a very bad Marlene Dietrich imitation, trying to sing a somewhat impressionistic rendition of "See What The Boys In the Back Room Will Have," which, since I don't know the rest of the song, consisted of repeating the first line over and over in a deep sexy german accent until I fell off the hood of the truck). Meanwhile, Neets had a quiet but extended pee in the bushes. Jay saw me slipping ff the hood and caught me and carried me around to the door (I was having a little trouble with the uneven pavement anyway.) He's such a gentleman. It's nice to have a designated walker.

But I hopped right out of the seat again. Jay said that getting us all into the truck was like putting toothpaste back in the tube. Somehow I had gotten it into my head that we should ride the bus home. There is no bus route out where we live, so God knows where that idea came from, but Neets and I went out to the street to flag down a bus by showing a lot of leg to the driver. Well, it works in the movies; I can't imagine why he wouldn't stop for us. Maybe it was the water balloon that hit his windshield. Or maybe the sirens. Or maybe he was from Indiana.

Anyway, when Jay was navigating out of the parking lot, he pulled our rusty pickup up next to another rusty pickup and (get this) there was Wednesday-nite clientele in there with Friday-nite clientele doing parity experiments. Well, I mean, really. Talk about impropriety. I was shocked. *Shocked.* In fact I was so stunned I rolled down the window and whanged on the door and shouted to get their attention.

So he rolls down his window, and sure enough, I was right: a redneck and a transvestite. A very *big* redneck in a tractor hat and with lipstick smeared all over his face who wanted to know what the fuck did I want. Of course I'm so bashful and tongue- tied I couldn't think of a single word to say. Really, I just wanted to verify that they really were who they were. Which they were. But I couldn't tell *them* that. So for lack of anything original to say I ask him does he have any Grey Poupon.

Whereupon his companion, who I guess hadn't heard that one before, gets hysterical laughing and pointing at us and pounding on the dashboard and bouncing off the seat, which kind of spoiled the mood for poor Jethro, who was not temperamentally equipped to share in his companion's mirthful gaiety. Fortunately his truck door seemed to be stuck and while he was slamming his shoulder against it so he could come over and discuss french mustard with us, Jay decided not to wait for an opening in the traffic and we were outa there.

I guess I get poor old Jay in trouble now and then. It's the devil in me. Or the margaritas in me.

But imagine. A redneck and a transvestite. Now I ask you: where would you ever find anything like that in Indiana?

We got home at a little after two o'clock but for some reason I wasn't very sleepy, so when we were getting ready for bed I put a dollar under Jay's elastic and looked at him bug-eyed and he cracked up and one thing led to another and before we knew it ... well... after that it was pretty much like Indiana.

I guess there's symmetry to be found here, somewhere.

Nurse Jones,
parity animal.