Johnnie Canoe, a Native Canadian bartender employed at the Slippery Pole wiped down the polished wood bar until it gleamed, as bartenders are wont to do. This task completed, he leaned against said bar, his hand on his chin. A casual observer could tell that he was obviously pondering some unsolvable mystery due to the classical "Thinker pose as well as the stump of his thumb wiggling energetically, as if to stroke a non-existent moustache with his non-existent thumb.
The unsolvable mystery that Johnnie Canoe was pondering was rather stupid, if you really want to know. Johnnie was attempting to discover HOW exactly one would go about putting knee-socks on a gerbil and, more importantly, WHY one would want to do such a thing in the first place. This was, of course, a pointless train of thought since everyone knows that gerbils have Gerbil Ideas that are not subject to the laws of physics.
The boisterous, good-natured mood of the bar suddenly froze as the cheerful jingle of the pole dancers hung over the doorway announced a new patron.
A tall, black-haired woman with an unfortunate resemblance to a bean pole entered the bar, obviously looking for someone. Her tall black army boots were low-heeled and entirely practical--practical, that is, if you plan on mounting a month-long expedition through the Siberian wilds chasing tigers and all manner of dangerous beasts.
The wearer of the boots, however, had never tromped down mountains and over streams. In fact, it should be added that she likely lacked even a single adventuresome bone in her body.
Ivana Lopitov was actually a cut-rate, low-quality surgeon. Her shoe-polish black hair and her sharp, angular features made people wonder why she hadn't tried a little "somethin' somethin' on herself, but after immigrating from her native Russia, Lopitov set up shop in Quebec's underworld, performing sub-par surgery on unsuspecting ugly people.
Johnnie Canoe had his first encounter with Lopitov when he went to her to get cheap butt implants. He came out of surgery with a fantastic ass, but minus two rather important opposable thumbs. He shivered slightly, remembering her cruel treatment, but mostly recalling the horrible phantom itches he still sometimes experienced in his stubby digits.
Johnnie Hurriedly ducked behind the bar, ignoring the amorous couple getting it on next to the ouzo by his left ear. A frightened yelp followed by a pattering sound and a small Chinese man diving behind the bar caught Johnnie's attention, especially since the man was pacing on all fours like a caged guinea pig, which really wasn't forgivable, considering how he now smelled of urine.
Ivana settled down at a small table at the opposite end of the bar and just sat there, looking somewhat depressed.
Johnnie Canoe and the small Chinese man stopped shuddering and poked their heads above the bar.
She was too far away to notice the two.
Johnnie gave a huge sigh of relief and went back to wiping the bar. He did, after all, have a job to do.
Just then, a huge commotion broke out near The Slippery Pole's washrooms. A small Mexican boy looking rather wet and disgruntled stormed out of the men's bathroom.
"What the HELL was THAT?! he asked, glaring at the bar's customers tittering behind their hands. "Your toilet is like a freaking VORTEX that sucked me down into this horrible room where I was subjected to a body cavity search, of all things! What kind of perverted establishment do you RUN? he yelled.
Johnnie made a mental note to check out the stall later to see what the fuss was about, but right then, he was too busy wiping the bar to do anything about it. Maybe on his next break...
Jeff punched his work card and clocked out, grabbing his knapsack on his way out of his place of work. This exact scene was taking place at thousands of other places around the world but for one small detail: Jeff was an exotic pole dancer in the British Virgin Islands.
This wouldn't normally be anything to phone home about, but Jeff had triumphed over adversity and had even learned to emulate the esteemed English accent tolerably well. He had moved into a new apartment--a seedy one-room deal over a disreputable whorehouse--a few weeks ago. It was in an excellent location, a block and a half away from his place of work.
Jeff was hired at "Bad and Bawdy Boyz" as part of a diversity program instituted by the United Hookers' Front due to his ostentatious limp. The limp was incurred at a previous employment and thus details of this happening are rather hazy and not generally well known. Jeff was always recalcitrant about his experience and limited his explanations to the age-old adage "stilettos and fishnets don't mix."
Even after his incarceration for pandering early on during his stay in the Commonwealth, Jeff had not kept his life squeaky-clean. Another pole dancing accident (completely unrelated to the OTHER pole dancing accident. Jeff was, after all, a hapless fellow, really...) diminished Jeff's chances of living a relatively normal life. (Relative, of course, to the other crippled exotic pole dancers with criminal records currently residing in the British Virgin Islands.) While performing a routine dance in the club, one night during happy hour, Jeff fell off the stage and into a transsexual with three pierced nipples who happened to be a cop.
Deputy Pablo Escobar was a dirty cop attempting to cast blame of an inter-office drug ring on some poor, unsuspecting, upstanding member of society. Typical cop stuff--no biggie.
While Jeff attempted to extricate himself from the 14-carat gold thong of one of his acquaintances, Pablo slipped a measure of cocaine (about 50 years to life's worth in Canada) into Jeff's fishnets. Unbeknownst to Jeff (but knownst to us) a police raid had assembled outside the establishment. In short order, our poor exotic dancer was arrested for possession with intent to sell, cuffed, printed and booked. Jeff was sentenced to life in prison but ended up getting out in eight months for good behaviour and very, very good buttocks.
Jeff decided that the time had come to finally put his past behind him. He moved to Canada shortly after being released and, with the help of a very rich business man that he met and connected with in prison, decided to set up shop in the quaint town of St. Sourira du Lac, a small village a few kilometres outside of Montreal. He was scoping out the international competition in the area with the intention of opening up a new nightclub in with funding from his special friend when he stumbled across a dark side street with the interesting and very French name "la rue Maudite. Jeff considered for a moment before opting to explore a bit. He was infinitely glad that he did decide to look around as soon as he saw a run down, decrepit-looking building.
The Slippery Pole.
He entered and glanced around approvingly. The place didn't look like much, but it had a great atmosphere. Before he left, he met an old acquaintance and took his leave to check out the washrooms. He noticed the OUT OF ORDER sign on one of the stalls and shook his head, disappointed. He didn't notice anything wrong with the toilet, however, so he flushed the toilet, wondering what the matter was.
A trap door swung open in the floor, and before he knew it, Jeff was on the ride of his life. As he travelled down a dark and smelly chute leading into the bowels of the building, Jeff wondered just what he got himself into.
He couldn't know, of course, that an ultra-secret intelligence agency named Section 42 was hidden underneath the bustling club. He did know, however, that he didn't like the sterile white room he ended up landing in with a thud. It was completely empty and very, very quiet.
"Hello? Is anyone there?
Life was not easy for a transsexual police officer with three pierced nipples who happened to own a dick-less dog. It was even harder for a transsexual police officer with three pierced nipples and a dick-less dog and who had recently been fired.
Ex-deputy Pablo Escobar sat at his usual corner table at The Slippery Pole, nursing a glass of Kahlua and trying to get himself pissed-drunk. Ever since he had framed some hooker for drug trafficking a few years ago, things had started to go wrong in a very big way. He was shot in the buttock by a 93-year-old grandmother who attempted to rob a bank, had suffered through a messy divorce, watched his dog get run over and further maimed by a renegade teenager on a moped and had become the victim of an experienced cat-burglar who thought it was a very good joke to pilfer every last possession owned by the very cop who was trying to put him away. (He also thought it was a hoot to dress like a cat in the act--ears, tail and all.) Pablo could do nothing but leave the British Virgin Islands in shame, so he boarded the next flight he could get and ended up in Quebec. (It should be noted that Pablo's luggage was lost by the airline and he had to rely on Canadian fashions to get him through the day.) And, to add insult to injury, all three of his pierced nipples had become infected. He really WAS in Hell.
Pablo then noticed a young man with a rather uneven gait walk up to his table.
"Deputy Escobar. Fancy meeting you here."
Pablo blanched. It was none other than Jeff, the exotic pole dancer whose life he had ruined. He gulped. "Hey...Jeff! So...how's the limp?" he asked, then clamped his mouth shut. Of all the things to say...
Jeff seemed unfazed. "I wouldn't mind so much, you know, but it's in my favorite leg," he said conversationally.
"You mean..."
"Yes," Jeff answered matter-of-factly. "Apparently, even the little blue pill can't take care of that. He sat down in the chair opposite Pablo's. "Well. This is awkward. I suspect you're feeling rather uncomfortable, what with you ruining my life and all."
"I suppose a little guilt is to be expected," replied Pablo cautiously.
"I should say. It's hardly polite to plant cocaine into the fishnet stockings of some poor, random exotic pole dancer. Damned bad form. "Jeff waved over a waiter and ordered a Shirley Temple. "I'm here on business, scoping out the international competition and what not. It's not bad here." He accepted his beverage from the waiter and took a sip, smacking his lips in appreciation. "What brings you out to lovely Quebec?"
"Uhm..." Pablo's mind raced. "My dog. Needs surgery. Reconstruction, re-attachment...hum drum, really."
"I see. Well, I must be off. No hard feelings, eh?"
"Of course." Pablo watched Jeff limp out of the nightclub and settle into a waiting limo.
"Some guys get all the breaks."
Pablo suddenly had an uncommon urge to pee. He imagined it had something to do with the copious amounts of alcohol he had indulged in over the course of the day. He hurried over to the washrooms of The Slippery Pole to do his business.
But lo and behold! All of the stalls were occupied. All, that is, except for the stall with the OUT OF ORDER sign hanging on the door. Pablo was desperate, though, and decided that even though it was usually not a good idea to disregard signs such as those, he would take his chances rather than have an embarrassing accident. He bravely pushed open the door and did his thing, sighing in relief.
When you've got to go, you've got to go.
He zipped up and flushed the toilet, forgetting completely about the OUT OF ORDER sign taped to the door in his joy at alleviating the horrible pressing sensation on his bowels.
The joy was short-lived as a trapdoor opened in the floor and poor Pablo was flushed through it.
"This is just not my day, thought Pablo sadly.
If life is not easy for a jobless transsexual police officer with three infected pierced nipples and a dickless dog, just think about how much it would suck to be the dickless dog.
Stumpy, a three-legged chihuahua with an attitude problem hobbled his way into a large structure in which his master, Pablo Escobar was in the process of making himself look like an ass. The establishment was called The Slippery Pole, which held absolutely no significance to Stumpy aside from the fact that inside could be found a very, VERY slippery pole. perfect to piss all over.
The whole "lifting the leg" business was a touchy subject with Stumpy.
He growled at a patron who was obviously a bit on the go, completely and blissfully unaware that he couldn't take anything bigger than a large-ish cockroach in a fight. He casually bit the leg of a customer so well into his cups that he would probably think it was a lover-bite (septic? quite possibly) in the morning. A few scratches, bites and many gnawed shoes and torn pants laater, Stumpy made his way to his master's table.
"Ahhh, little Stumpy," Pablo said, slurring his words just a little and scratching Stumpy on the neck, mindful of the leather jacket and studded collar. "You, my dear, have an aggression problem." He giggled.
Stumpy hears and assortment of sounds coming from the large hole in his master's face and cocked his ears.
Nothing.
Humans had to be SOOOO stupid. He gave a sort of grunt and a wuffle and pranced off to find some more stimulating entertainment.
He had never quite forgiven Pablo for the "neutering incident". Pablo, in an effort to save some cash decided to do the "responsible" thing and have a disgraced medical doctor have a go at "fixing" his dog, proving in the process the wise adage, "never let a doctor do a vet's job". (Or was it the other way around? Never mind.)
The alcoholic (and it must be said--at the time, inebriated) Russian doctor, Igor Lopitov, mistook Stumpy's raised leg for an entirely different appendage. In an attempt to rectify his accidental amputation, Lopitov also lopped off Stumpy's OTHER leg, if you get the drift. Re-attachment resulted in sideways urination, thus Stumpy's aversion to seein the proverbial man about his proverbial horse as well as his obvious aggression issues. All subsequent surgeries have failed.
Now, all of this adventure had made Stumpy thirsty. Where was any self-respecting dog to go when he had such a thirst? Why the bathroom of course!
He waited patiently, staking out the door until someone opened it for him and he was treated to a veritable buffet of toilet bowls filled with different brands of water.
There was the murky yellow one that Stumpy decided to stay away from on the one end, followed by a rust-tinted one, a mildewed flavoured one and a brackish pool that he wanted nothing to do with.
Then, he saw it. The mother of all waters. Fresh and cool and infinitely satisfying. It was behind a large door with some meaningless black squiggles on some white thing attached to the door. In his haste to get to the precious elixir, Stumpy jumped up and directly into the bowl. Stumpy, dog though he may be, knew that there was something inherently wrong with sitting in the water that you were about to drink, so he attempted to jump out. He landed on a curious handle that moved as his weight was laid on it. A strange woosh-ing noise was heard and the water started to turn around in circles. He had never seen such a thing, so Stumpy decided he'd be better off with another blend of water.
But it was too late. Stumpy fell into a large hole that had opened up in the floor and he went for the ride of his life down some tube.
It was actually quite fun until he made it to the other end, in which his disgruntled-looking owner was cooling his heels. "Hey, look! said his owner, Pablo. "A wet rat!
Octavius Morales stroked his voluminous moustache and gazed approvingly over the full nightclub from his executive offices. The owner of The Slippery Pole noticed the pole dancers jingling over the door with satisfaction and closed the blinds covering his window with a snap. On to business.
The Greek shipping tycoon had little time to stop and smell the hookers anymore as his worldwide agencies were at a critical stage in operational development. Taking over the world was difficult stuff, and Octavius always liked to be prepared.
He walked over to a sideboard upon which a small scale model of the world was set up with his ships in position out at sea. He grinned menacingly at nothing in particular, adjusted a fleet in the North Atlantic and rubbed his hands together.
Octavius planned to take over the world in small bits. First to go would be the weak countries without armies or backbones. Canada seemed to be a good bet. At first he was worried about the battle helicopters the Canadian government had saved from WWII and of course, the purchase of some old Russian submarines almost gave him a heart attack. When he realized that both the helicopters and the submarines were dropping like flies due to corrosion, mechanical failures and improper maintenance, he breathed a sigh of relief and congratulated himself on a job well done.
Canada would be overrun by the end of the year. Next to go would be Turkey, which, in the greatest practical joke in history, he would rename Chicken. Chile would be next. It wasn't really strategically adventageous for his plans, but he always liked Chile with his Chicken. It's a Greek thing.
Next in his campaign, he would start picking off countries like Columbia. They were ripe for the picking since they had already eliminated most of the competition. Once South America was under his control, he would move on the the little poorer countries in Africa. They wouldn't offer much resistance either was and he doubted anyone would notice a regime change anyway. He'd steer clear of the Middle East for the time being. They were a bit too fanatical for him. Finally he'd attack some defenseless European countries and get them under his belt for when the real fighting started. Russia would fall next--they were too cold and too bitter to put up much of a fight. On and on he'd go until he finally came up agains the world's superpowers and their nuclear arsenals.
Octavius really didn't have a plan for what to do then. He figured he'd make it up as he went along.
Happy that his plans were laid, Octavius decided that a walk through the bar and nightclub would be beneficial to assess his profit projections. He started with the club, and the posh room with the classy atmosphere was balm to his spirit. His mood considerably darkened when the thumb-less bartender Johnnie Canoe accosted him in the seedy bar.
"Sorry to bug you, sir, but we've had a few complaints about the men's bathroom. Apparently some people are being sucked into a vortex-like chasm and being held in some high-tech holding room. Might want to check that out.
Octavius fumed and stalked over to the washroom. He knew that the ultra-secret spy agency, Section 42 had their headquarters directly underneath the club, but didn't see why that had to affect his plumbing. He pushed the door open violently and zeroed-in on the OUT OF ORDER stall directly in front of him.
He examined the fixtures, kicked the porcelain toilet bowl and check to make sure the toilet paper was filled. Everything checked out okay. He flushed the toilet and waited patiently for something to...
"OH SHIT!
The market for disgraced Chinese circus performers has dwindled considerably since its heyday in Imperial China. So Lo Hung had been directly affected by this decline and though he did not miss being shot out of a canon, he couldn't help but feel like his curent occupation as the resident contortionist at The Slippery Pole was somewhat less distinguished, pay raise notwithstanding.
He sat in his modest dressing room and hung up his flaming pink boa, kicking a sall contortionist's box out of the way. This effectively caused him to stub his toe so he yelped a curse and stuck his toe in his mouth. So Lo Hung was, after all, extremely limber.
He hopped over to his make-up chair, still sucking his toe. He sat down with a plop, removed his throbbing toe from his mouth and put his head in his hands.
Hung had had an extremely bad day. He tubled out of bed fifteen minutes late and had to run down the hallway of the tenement he lived in while putting on his pants (which is not advisable), listening to the jeers of the vagrants and slum dwellers speculate about his name and what it meant in terms of his partners' satisfaction. Hung ignored them all and proceeded to fly down the stairs two at a time while lacing his shoes. (This is even less advisable.)
He fianlly made it to work--late--and while practicing his act, got stuck in a contortionist's box, a smaller one someone had substituted for his own as a practical joke. The fireman were called and Hung was extricated from the box by the Jaws of Life. Then, to make matters worse, his psychopathic ex-girlfriend, Ivana Lopitov, showed up at The Slippery Pole. He was so scared that he soiled himself and sailed over the bar to hide, shivering next to the vodka. He wimpered at that point, remembering that it was Ivana's favorite drink.
So Lo Hung and Ivana Lopitov had dated for all of a week, at which point Hung, fearing for his member, had left Ivana rather than breaking up with her the conventional way, hoping she's get the message. She thought it was all a very good joke but seriously vowed to remove Litle Hung anyway.
Which led to Hung's employment at The Slippery Pole. He was rather attached to Little Hung. Anyway, the job wasn't all that glamorous, but Hung kind of liked it. At least there were plenty of places to hide.
But then, the worst thing happened. Hung's secret employment with the covert government agency, Section 42 had been terminated. The job as the office Pizza Transfer Technician had provided him with some well needed chash and a little bit of action on the side (which left him even more confused since the action was a man.)
He sighed in resignation, donned his five-inch platform heels, strapped on a pair of shimmery angel wings and set off for the stage.
The show must go on.
On the way over to the stage, Hung decided that a quick pit stop was in order. The little contortionist found that his act was generally more comfortable if he did it on an empty bladder. Unfortunately, Hung's position within the club was not one that awarded him his own private en-suite bathroom, so he had to make due with the men's bathroom used by the bar's patrons.
As Section 42's former pizza-transfer technician, Hung knew well what happened to those who had the misfortune of flushing the OUT OF ORDER toilet. A Triple-O Violation was called whenever some fool decided that his need to pee outweighed the cautionary sign hung on the door. This of course stood for "Out of Order violation, and turned out to be a generally unpleasant experience for all concerned since a body cavity search was mandatory for all unauthorized visitors.
So Lo Hung did not, however, anticipate the two bullies awaiting him in the washroom.
The two biker-wannabes were hanging out in the washroom until Hung came in to take his pre-performance leak. They were both rather disgruntled since Hung was constantly shooting them down at every opportunity. They just wouldn't take no for an answer.
"We've been waitin' for you baby, said one menacingly.
"Waitin' all night long, said the other.
"Well, said Hung nervously, "Hope you weren't too bored... he said with an awkward laugh.
"No we weren't bored, were we, Sam? said the first.
"Nope, not at all, replied the second.
"We was just thinkin' of ways to make our waitin' worthwhile.
"Lots a ways...
The two bikers picked up Hung by either end of his flaming pink boa and dragged him towards the out of order toilet.
"No no no, not that one. Any one but that one! cried Hung. But it was futile.
The toilet was flushed and Hung tumbled haplessly down the entrance tunnel.
He did not look forward to the cavity search.
Abdullah Oblongata was unique at The Slippery Pole due to the fact that he wasn't actually gay. He currently frequented the gay nightclub due to the simple fact that it was one of the last places that his wife would think to look for him.
He waited for his date at the bar, fending off the few interested homosexuals by telling them then he was a woman. He didn't really feel bad about cheating on his ife. After all, his wife had only married him for his money. Abdullah didn't care--he'd married her for the sex.
Abdullah owned a large carpet emporium in Montreal and was expanding his business to include offices in Quebec City and Toronto. It was a highly successful business, mostly because there was no real competition and it was imensely profitable since he used the slave labour of children in sweat shops to fabricate the fine tapestries and woven rugs that he sold.
Lately, his frequent business trips opened the door for promiscuity. He appreciated being so far away from his wife and six children, though, and tried to draw the trips out and avoid going home for as long as possible, but eventually, his wife would find out and drag him home with threats of bodily harm. It got so bad that she began paying informants in the high-end restaurants and popular clubs to curtail his taking a date anywhere fun. Thus, The Slippery Pole.
The food was good, the atmosphere relaxed and the music was great. There were a great many of opportunities to people watch, especially since there were a great many colourful characters that he found interesting to watch. The ones that looked hurriedly around the club before ducking discreetly into the bathroom were the best. They didn't usually come out for a long, long while, which always led him to wonder just what was going on in there.
Abdullah never realized that a top-secret government agency was being run in the bowels of the seedy strip club, which is just as well, because then Section 42 operatives would have had to kill him, and they disliked leaving a mess. He ended up casually observing The Slippery Pole's patrons without bothering to spy on any of them. He had a good excuse: he was waiting for a date.
But eventually, the day came when Abdullah had to answer the call of nature at The Slippery Pole. He was a little worried, since he'd seen many people enter the washroom, never to return again. The urgent nagging of his bladder forced him, however, to take his chances.
He furtively made his way towards the washroom, afraid of what lay in wait for him on the other side. He poked his head in and...nothing. Thank goodness!
He mentally remonstrated himself for entertaining such a fanciful notion and made his way to the stalls. Abdullah, who could not read nor write in English, had no idea that there was an OUT OF ORDER sign posted on the stall he decided to enter.
He did his business, whistling all the while and even remembered to flush.
As he fell through the tunnel leading down to the bowels of the Canadian intelligence community, Abdullah vowed that if he got out of this mess in one piece, he would learn his letters pronto.
The denizens of The Slipery Pole were a motley bunch. Composed of mostly down-on-their-luck homosexuals and cross-dressers, The Slippery Pole was still able to attract young, up-and-coming professionals and bored house-husbands. To all, The Slippery Pole was a release from the tensions of day-to-day life.
Ivana Lopitov had no such attraction to the gay nightclub; it was, for her, a way to be close to her patients. It was a place to conduct business meetings comfortably and without notice. Half of The Slippery Pole's patrons had themselves partaken in Lopitov's treatment, or knew someone who had. If they had not met Ivana, they had met one or both of her brothers, Igor and Peter.
Ivana ordered a vodka from the waitress, choosing not to notice the fear with which the bartender, one of her patients, regarded her. She had a feeling that her boyfriend, So Lo Hung, was around as well, but decided he was still playing his game of hard-to-get and she didn't want to ruin it for him.
Ivana was, after all, starved for love.
She grew up in Russia--Moscow, actually--with an indifferent whore for a mother and an under-paid evil genius of a father. Her parents had no time for her when she was a child and as the eldest, she was forced to take care of her two younger brothers.
Hers was a bitter childhood. Biting cold coupled with a heating oil shortage and a general lack of funds conspired to deprive her of creature comforts such as food, warm bath water and a semi-automatic machine gun. Life was hard, but she survived.
She began a career in cosmetic surgery shortly after escaping Russia. She took it up as a hobby because she liked sharp implements and cutting people open. When she found out that she could get payed for it, she applied for certification. She was denied 27 times and by the 28th, the committee told her to leave off and find a new calling. After confiscating an ear from each of them, she set up her illegal practice in the quiet town of St. Sourira du Lac, hoping that she wouldn't get caught. She wasn't and over the next few years built up her practice by lying, cheating, stealing and harvesting body parts on the side, which she sold to independant contractors. All in all, life was looking up.
If only Hung could see what he was missing...
Suddenly, Ivana had an idea. Maybe Hung was hiding from her! She decided that the bathroom was a likely place and pushed open the door, glancing around the filthy room. She didn't see anyone and was about to give up when she noticed a disgusting stench emanating from the first stall. She noticed the OUT OF ORDER sign, but decided that that was no excuse for such a foul smell. As an uncertified doctor, she decided that it was her civic duty to make it go away. She bravely approached and wiggled her fingers in anticipation of the flush.
As she tumbled down the chute, Ivana wondered why she ever bothered doing anything nice since her it always ended up with a resounding flush as her live went down the toilet.
Philippe Lumiere sat at the bar studiously inspecting his drink and wondering what was in his bar mate's drink that was not in his. He poked a few ice cubes with a cocktail umbrella and downed the drink in one gulp. The trip to The Slippery Pole had been an indulgence, a sort of last hurrah for his company, which had just gone belly-up. He stared morosely at the empty glass and started chewing on the ice.
"You know what they say about people who chew ice," the bartender remarked worriedly.
"Yeah, yeah, vitamin deficiency."
"Actually, I was going to say they are sex-starved, but whatever man." The bartender shook his head and went to wipe the far end of the bar.
Philippe owned a once-profitable business in Montreal that dealt with imported candles. His business went bust when his wife found out that he had a habit of dressing up in her clothes when she was gone and sued him for all he had. Her divorce lawyer was one of those high-powered executive types who ate unsuspecting candle importers for breakfast. He really hadn't had a chance, which made the loss immesurably greater.
He was hoping to get a job with Octavius Morales, the shipping tycoon who handled the transport of freight across the Atlantic. The two had forged something resembling a friendship in the six years that Philippe had owned his business, and Philippe hoped that this friendship would be useful when he had to shamelessly beg Morales to give him a job.
Philippe knew that Morales had to have some less-than-legal enterprises. The man was fantastically successful even though the world of transportation shunned sea-travel in favour of faster, less vomit-inducing air planes. The fact that Morales' fleet had become steadily larger was ascribed to the roaring cocaine trade and the increasing need to smuggle drugs.
Philippe put his glass on the bar, paid his tab and pushed back his stool. He marched up the stairs to The Slippery Pole's executive offices and knocked smartly on the door. He really needed this job...
Before the door could open, Philippe's courage deserted him and he ran to the bathroom, feeling nauseous and extremely embarrassed. He barged into the first stall he saw and puked his guts out. It was not a pretty picture. Eventually, he stopped the gagging and heaving long enough to flush the toilet.
His already roiling stomach protested this new gravity-defying fall down the chute to Section 42 and by the time he made it into the small white room he was covered in his own vomit.
"Anybody got a Kleenex? he asked the growing crowd.
Tippa Canoe did not actually work at The Slippery Pole. She worked as a stripper at a lounge down the street called The Witch's Tit. She volunteered to pose as a male cross-dresser because her brother, Johnnie, worked as a bartender at The Slippery Pole and begged her to do the show.
"It's Raining Men" was an all-male review hosted by The Slippery Pole each year. It was a tremendous money-maker for the club and if they could not find a replacement for the missing So Lo Hung, the show would have to be cancelled.
Tippa was only a little offended that her brother thought she was mannish enough to impersonate a man impersonating a woman. She had always looked more like a man than a woman anyway, and she had made peace with the fact long ago. She was mostly flattered that her brother thought her talented enough to play the part.
Ever since she was a little boyish girl, Tippa had dreamed of becoming an actress and moving to Hollywood. She grew especially wanted to be an action star. She wouldn't shrink from raunchy or embarrassing roles like those other snotty actresses, oh no. Tippa was used to having degrading jobs.
As she readied herself for the show, there was a knock at the door.
"Tippa, you're on in five," said Johnny. "By the way, I just want to thank you for being willing to do this. I need the tip money and..."
"No worries, Johnny," she replied. "What kind of sister would I be if I couldn't do a little show for my brother?"
"Yeah, well, good luck." He gave her a thumb-less wave and closed the door, presumably going back to work.
Tippa adjusted her wig, checked her make-up and opened the door.
"Hello, world. Here I come!"
On the way from her borrowed dressing room, Tippa heard a shriek from the men's bathroom. Thinking that this could be her big break as an action hero, she ran full tilt into The Slippery Pole's men's room and right down the open trap-door in the floor leading to Section 42.
As a hardened action-hero-wannabe, Tippa was not overly distressed by the ride to the intelligence office. She was more distressed that her dear brother Johnnie would have to find a new replacement.
Evil vets have the sad task of acting evil. In the case of Igor Lopitov, this was actually quite a stretch.
Igor was actually a peaceful, fun-loving youth growing up in the cold of Moscow. His older sister Ivana took care of him, and he in turn taught his younger brother Peter the ropes. All three Lopitovs had forsaken their Russian heritage to make a new start in Canada, the land of the free and freezing.
When it became apparent that Igor wanted to be a vet, the dilemma of finding enough money to attend school became a problem. The three siblings decided to rob a bank to provide Igor with the opportunity of living his dream.
Igor's first days at vet school went well enough. He maintained consistent (failing) grades and studied when he absolutely had to (but only as a last resort.) He even volunteered to bring in dead animals to dissect. All this, innocuous as it is, got Igor kicked out of the school, his hopes for becoming a vet dashed against the rocks of his teachers' favouritism.
Igor decided to be an uncertified vet, and took the title "evil" to reel in the clients. This worked at first, but Igor found it harder and harder to deal with poor, ugly, seedy and generally disreputable people. He took to drinking and eventually became an alcoholic drinking a bottle of Crown Royal a day and showing up to work pissed-drunk.
The medical malpractice suits began piling up, and Igor was adrift in a sea of bills, complaints and lawsuits. Eventually he was forced to give up his practice and resort to house calls to derelicts and criminals. He ended up living in his car for almost a year before it was towed for parking in a parking space for expectant mothers.
All this led to Igor's penchant for drowning his sorrows at The Slippery Pole. He was now a regular and could be found at the table directly beside the door.
He decided that he really needed to freshen up after all that drinking and made his way to the bathroom. He washed his hands at the sink and glanced at his reflection in the broken mirror.
It was then that he saw the OUT OF ORDER sign hanging on the door of the stall behind him. Igor was always curious and couldn't resist finding out what was the matter. He flushed the toilet, expecting a cyclone to come shooting out of the bowl.
It did no such thing. Instead, Igor fell through the floor and began his impromptu descent into Section 42.
He moaned quietly. "I didn't get to bring my drink with me.
The Quebecois Mafia consisted of two or three dozen men dressed in suits that haunted the Italian diners and restaurants speaking heavily accented English, smoking cigars and drinking ridiculous amounts of coffee. Louigi Pistachio had organized the whole front and was admittedly very proud of it.
He was also a bit of a nut job.
The Quebecois Mafia started as an escape from the boredom of a small-town existence. Louigi was wealthy, though not through any work of his own. Louigi had family money, from their multi-billion dollar vineyards and their famous label wine. Louigi himself had no idea how to run a vineyard, which was why he hired others to do it for him while he raked in the dough. He didn't mind leaving the business in the capable hands of his business managers--he knew that they were too afraid of getting their legs bashed in by one of his hit men to even think about bamboozling him out of his cash.
Pistachio spent most of his days in the restaurant aptly named "Italiano", but his nights were always spent at his favourite night club--The Slippery Pole.
The Slippery Pole was famous for its unsavoury characters and rip-roaring night life, so Pistachio reserved himself a prime seat from which to observe all the action.
He first discovered the club when the owner, Octavius Morales, invited him over to discuss the smuggling trade. Louigi fell in love with the place at once, and Morales, seeing his associate's appreciation for a good nightclub, offered him a prime seat in return for a little funding of his "taking over the world" thing. Louigi was only too happy to oblige--the world needed to be shaken up anyhow, and what's a couple million dollars among friends?
Louigi always sat at the same table at The Slippery Pole, so imagine his surprise one night to find someone else sitting there!
"Get out of my table you impostors! That seat is reserved for Louigi Pistachio, Mafioso extraordinaire!" Louigi always spoke about himself in the third person. It was an obnoxious self-centered jackass thing. "So get up!"
A girl glared at him, flipped him the bird and motioned for her young companion to get up. The young boy, a gothic Mexican or something gave Louigi his best "fuck off and die" look before going off to sit at another table.
"The nerve of some people!" huffed Louigi, to no one in particular.
After sitting and watching the show for awhile, Louigi decided that it was time to call it a night. He told his posse to wait for him while he went to take car of some business.
He had previously arranged for one of his well-known adversaries to meet him in the men's room. He planned to take the man out and leave the mess for someone else to clean up. He spotted his victim standing near the out of order stall. Louigi rolled up his sleeves and pushed the man into the toilet bowl face-first, the man spun around and bolted out of the bathroom a mere second before Louigi flushed the toilet.
Before he knew it, Louigi was on his way to an underground building filled with federal agents. Had he known of the existence of Section 42, he would have been a bit more concerned about his outstanding warrants.
The Slippery Pole was a lovely establishment that catered to a diverse crowd of social misfits. Peter Lopitov was simply there for the business.
Peter Lopitov, a prominent sex therapist, haunted gay nightclubs, bars and bistros waiting for a transsexual to break down and lose his/her identity. Peter would swoop in, ready to save the day and treat his new client. He didn't really care about the people, really, which was actually a blessing in disguise--he could over-bill his clients without feeling a shred of remorse.
No, Peter did his job because he wanted to lord it over his siblings.
Peter was the only real doctor in the family, his older sister Ivana having struck out in cosmetic surgery certification and his big brother Igor having flunked out of vet school. He was immeasurably proud of his position as the sole legitimate Lopitov of the bunch, but he couldn't help but feel like this "good citizen" thing was a load of crap. He had to work hard for his money only to get an insane amount taken away in taxes while his siblings lounged about, treating a patient now and then and keeping all the profits without forking any over. Then again, Ivana was stuck on some Chinese dude who never called and Igor was living in a car.
Peter noticed a large woman (whom he supposed was a transsexual since he/she was built like a walk-in freezer) smack a flamboyantly dressed older man with her fake gem-encrusted purse.
"I did all this for you, you no good, two-timing swine!" he/she waggled a finger menacingly.
"Come on, baby, I was just trying to have some fun," the man said in a wheedling tone of voice.
"I had a wife and children before you came along, you sick bastard. You lured me away from my job as a civil litigator because you said I showed promise as a cross-dresser, but as soon as I get my job application turned down by those idiots in drag you suddenly go and grope another man!"
"It's because you never pay any attention to me!" the man explained. "I think you're still in love with that hoochie wife of yours."
"'Hoochie'? She was a freaking legal secretary, and I...I...do kind of miss her...
Peter took that as his cue. "Excuse me sir. Ma'am. Uhm, I couldn't help but overhear your little predicament. Perhaps I might be of service..."
The confused transsexual stalked off to the bathroom to cry. Peter followed at a stately pace, ready to pick up the pieces.
The he/she was waiting for him in the bathroom. "Stop stalking me, you freak!
"I'm not stalking you, I'm simply here to offer my services. Peter whipped out his business card in one suave move, but, unfortunately for him, he misjudged the distance between him and the he/she and accidentally groped his/her breast.
"You pervert! he/she shouted.
Peter was unceremoniously pushed away and was propelled into a stall, his elbow landing at just the right height to flush the toilet. As Peter slumped to the floor, a trap door opened and he fell right through it and into the holding room of Section 42.
"I knew I should have been a chiropractor.
Ruby Clarke and Mabel Hall, two bent old ladies with walkers, ponderously made their way to a small booth in front of the stage at the Slippery Pole. Ruby and Mabel had been best friends for over sixty years and had frequented The Slippery Pole for over forty.
It should probably be noted that The Slippery Pole was a relatively new establishment. Before Octavius Morales decided to open the gay nightclub, the building had been called The Rusty Wicket and had housed a Chippendale club that produced an all male review every Saturday at eight p.m. sharp. Ruby and Mabel had never missed a Saturday.
The change in the club was not remarked on by the friends; half because they didn't remember noticing anything for long enough to make a stink, and half because they really didn't care what was going on. Both ladies were blind as bats and couldn't tell the difference between the all male review and the transsexual pole dances.
Their children, all respectable sixty-somethings, were mortified that their mothers would carry on in such an undignified fashion, and in a gay nightclub, no less. Their grandchildren smiled indulgently and even gave them a ride home a few times when they refused to take a cab. They maintained that they feared rapists and murderers and cabbies that had their way with old ladies before chopping them up and storing their internal organs in Ziploc baggies. The grandchildren chalked it up too watching daytime T.V. and let the ladies continue on with their irrational phobias.
Tonight, Ruby and Mabel were sipping tonic water, resting their dentures on the table on The Slippery Pole's monogrammed napkins. They had finished throwing loonies at the dancers about an hour before, but not before putting out one dancer's eye and choking another one when a loonie fell into his open mouth. They were completely unabashed although they did apologise as the dancers were rolled into a waiting ambulance on stretchers.
Ruby, who had an overactive bladder, decided that she had to mount another expedition to the restroom. "Come on, Mabel, I've got to freshen up."
"My hip's acting up again," replied Mabel. "Can't you hold it?"
"No."
"Then go by yourself," said Mabel waspishly.
"You know I can't." She glanced around furtively. "Rapists."
Mabel just turned away and glared moodily at the scantily clad homosexuals on the stage.
"Fine. But if I disappear, it's your fault." With that, Ruby stalked off to the restroom, as much as an old woman with a walker CAN stalk, that is. She made it to the washroom area, and in her haste accidentally stepped into the men's washroom. She pushed open the nearest stall door, completely missing the OUT OF ORDER sign hung on the outside of it. She finished her business, careful to wipe down the seat a wet nap she pulled from her purse and to lay a layer of toilet paper on top, just in case. She flushed the toilet and...
"Oh,dear."
Woosh.
Ruby's trip down the chute to Section 42 was a painful experience that did not bode well for her bones, plagued as they were by osteoperosis. Ruby broke her arm, three fingers, a leg and a hip.
Mabel, feeling bad about letting her friend go to the bathroom all alone, decided to join her. She carefully made her way there and slipped and fell on the wet floor, crashed into the toilet, flushed it accidentally and followed Ruby down the chute. She landed on top of Ruby, causing her to break a toe.
"I'm sorry dear, but I did tell you so...
Ndyngwe Bakenja brushed out his colourful dashiki before sitting down at the bar at the Slippery Pole. He checked to make sure his matching hat was still securely fastened to his head and, having made sure everything was just so, he finally relaxed. He looked around, curious to see how these people, so diverse in culture, could live and work together.
Ndyngwe, an African peace activist, was visiting the city for a UN conference on world peace. As part of the African delegation, Ndyngwe was assigned a car and a driver so that he could tour the environs whenever he wanted. He immediately asked the driver to take him to the most run down areas of town to see how people were getting along there.
Ndyngwe marvelled at the tolerance he had seen the people display when provoked. He hadn't witnessed any killings or other petty crimes while he was there--a refreshing change from his hometown where no one even bothered to carry a wallet because it would get stolen in less than five minutes.
After a few minutes of people-watching, Ndyngwe decided that the entire world could use the cameraderie and acceptance of The Slippery Pole as an example to intolerant people everywhere. He set about declaring the nightclub a historical monument that very day. He expects it to be put on the registry for historic homes and buildings by the end of the month, at which point he will invite camera crews, media personalities, visiting dignitaries and local ruffians to bask in the heady companionship that The Slippery Pole had to offer.
Ndyngwe was accused of being many things, but unimaginative was never one of them.
He decided that he was actually quite thirsty hailed over the bartender to get him a drink. The bartender was a native-looking fellow who happened to be missing both thumbs. Ndyngwe, startled at such a physical abnormality, refused to be served by such an atrocity. It should be mentioned that his place on the African delegation was strictly honourary. Ndyngwe ordered a cofee from the waitress sporting a full range of appendages (oh, yes, a FULL range) and feeling rather adventurous, decided to make it an Irish coffee.
His order came and he took a sip. He quite loved the taste. He downed the whole glass and ordered another. And another. And another. By the sixth coffee, Ndyngwe was rather glad that he had chosen to enter the place instead of some hokey bar named Hooters. Plus, the blonde man at the end of the bar looked WAY more appealing than he did five coffees ago.
He staggered off the barstool and over to the nearest pole.
"Good ev'ning, oh good people of Canada! I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for a wonderful time."
A fat blubbery man sat in the front row. He grinned, displaying an assortment of rotten, broken teeth. "Any time, sugar."
"Thank you cookie."
With that, the rather drunk African stumbled out what he thought was the front door, but which was, in fact, the door to the restroom. He opened the door to the first stall and noticed that it was slightly malodorous as well as churning and bubbling in a troubling manner. He chalked it up to residual stink and bad intestines before flushing the toilet.
Ndyngwe's trip throught the slime-encrusted tunnels that led to Section 42 was not exactly pleasant, nor was it particularly dignified, especially for a visiting dignitary. Suffice it to say that he arrived, finally, in a room holding a number of rather harassed-looking people.
Juan Galindez received his first set of plastic explosives when he was eight years old. He really had a bang with it and he told his parents that his present was the bomb. Other small children in their rundown neighbourhood in Cuba liked this curious new lingo that they overheard from one of their friends and passed it on through letters to their American counterparts, Miss Johnson's class in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin. The phrase became popular for awhile and the rest is history. In fact, the phrase is history, and now anyone commenting that something is "the bomb" is likely to be looked at with a mixture of pity and disgust and/or kicked off the plane.
Cuban explosives experts were in high demand and Juan was starting to feel a little burnt out, what with all the detonations, explosions, arsons and other such incidents. He was really just looking for some down time, and what better place than The Slippery Pole to offer such a thing?
Juan entered the nightclub only to be jostled by a cross-dresser and a man dressed as a clown rushing toward the door without heeding the numerous patrons they left splayed across the dance floor. "Where's the fire?" he yelled. He didn't receive an answer--didn't expect one--and muttered "Idiots" under his breath. He made his way toward the bar and ordered his usual--scotch on the rocks. The bartender did his best to serve the drink without sloshing, which really was difficult considering he had no thumbs.
Juan took the drink and headed off to find a table. He didn't feel like making conversation with the hordes of drooling men he left at the bar. Juan knew the effect he had on most men and found it alternately singularly entertaining and utterly vexing depending on his mood. He winked at a short sandy-haired portly fellow who promptly swooned. Juan was in the mood for a little fun and so he decided that he'd try to beat his own record for the number of men he caused to faint at a look. Hey, for a straight guy in a gay nightclub, he wasn't doing so bad. His previous record was six, although he conceded that the one had been famously drunk and had passed out due to alcohol poisoning. Whatever. Five.
He tried The Look on his nearest victim, a skinny red-head who looked rather preoccupied. Nothing. Next was a short, pale Mexican boy who looked to be no older than twelve. He was pouting too much to care. Juan told himself he didn't mind. The boy looked to be on the verge of tears and if there was one thing Juan hated it was a weepy kid. He determined his next victim wasn't a man at all, but a teenage girl who looked rather scornful, sitting at a quiet table near the washrooms.
He shot her The Look.
Nothing.
He waggled his eyebrows.
Nothing.
He stroked his smooth-shaven chin.
Still nothing.
He casually flexed a muscle. Two muscles. Three.
STILL nothing.
The girl got up and sauntered over to where he was standing. "If you're trying to hit on me, you're not doing a very good job."
In a panic, Juan tried The Look again. It could be deadly at close range, but he had to redeem himself.
"Do you have something in your eye?" the girl asked, snorting. "You look like you should have used Preparation H." She snickered at him some more as she moved back over to her table only to be joined by the red-head and the Mexican kid. The pointing and laughing was more than he could endure.
He stalked quickly toward the bathrooms and entered, throwing open the stall in anger. He kicked the toilet a few times and threw toilet paper all over the stall. Finally calm, he flushed the toilet.
"Son of a--"
Juan landed in a large room holding about a dozen others. A little bent old lady crept up beside him. "I have been instructed to tell you that you will be billed for all the damages incurred upon the OUT OF ORDER stall." She took him by the arm. "Now sit down, dearie, that vein in your head is liable to pop at any minute..."
Over years of bloody demonstrations and deadly protests, the Irish Republican Army has become known for its skilled bombers and highly trained rebel fighters. The reputation of this motley assortment of soldiers is nothing compared to that of the most elite force that the IRA had to offer--their assassins.
Patty O'Connell, a staunch supporter of The Cause, stopped by The Slippery Pole every now and again after dispatching some unfortunate soul that someone somewhere thought was a threat to The Cause. He was not bothered by this callous waste of human life, he just disliked cleaning up the mess.
The read-headed Irishman sat at the bar, a glass of whiskey in one hand, a female transsexual in the other and a mutinous expression on his face. The look on his face conveyed his mood as a supremely pissed-off individual. He had just spent the better part of two hours bleaching, lysol-ing, dusting and de-fingerprinting a house in the upper west-side of the city. The rich area of town.
Patty despised this housewifely aspect of his job and felt like an over-worked, under-paid housekeeper most of the time. If he wanted to do that for a living, he could find a job as a maid at any hotel in town, and the hours would be a damn sight better than the killer ones he was pulling now.
He took another sip of his drink and set it down on a conveniently placed coaster after catching the glare of the thumb-less bartender vigorously wiping the bar. He sent the hooker on his/her way and absently removed his gun from the pocket of his anonymous black trench coat.
He trench coat had gotten him into quite a few arguments with his boss, who maintained that the black colour and bulky shape not only make him look like the government and therefore very suspicious, but it did nothing to flatter his dynamite physique. So his boss said.
Patty removed the silencer from his gun and placed it carefully on a napkin. He removed the bullets from the cartridge and the one left in the chamber and dropped these on the bar. He proceeded to take the thing apart and, with the kit he pulled out of his other pocket, began to oil it.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" asked the bartender, alarmed.
"Just cleaning me gun," replied Patty. "After all, proper gun maintenance is a necessity in my line of work." He leaned closer. "When you rush, THAT'S when accidents happen."
The bartender was having none of it. "Get that thing out of my bar before I throw you out." He looked apologetic for a moment and gestured around the bar. "It's bad for business and your scaring the customers away." He continued in a conversational tone, "Now, me, I don't care if you have a handgun or a goddam cannon on your front lawn, but really, these people have delicate constitutions and I'm counting on their tips to pay off the ridiculously priced sports car that I bought on a whim and now can't afford. So why don't you put that thing away and we'll go back to you being pissed and me cleaning bar, okay?"
Patty was a trifle abashed. "Sorry," he said in his thick Irish accent, "Nervous habit."
"Some habit," replied the bartender as he walked away.
Pattie half-heartedly took all of the evidence from the crime scene to the bathroom. He found that the best way to get rid of unwanted evidence is to flush it down a public toilet. He found an out of order one, perfect for the job, since no one was likely to use, clean or search it, should anything be revealed about his job. He happily flushed the evidence and before he knew it, found himself in a large white room, which was getting quite crowded.
"Now these people know how to keep a room clean! said Pattie in satisfaction.
Phil McCracken was a short, fat balding man with a snow white fringe of hair around his ears and a neat little moustache on his face. He was not attractive by any stretch of the imagination, but he had a woman on each arm, one practically glued to his leg and another hanging around his neck. One would surmise that since he wasn't much to look at but had ladies fawning over him, he would have a beautiful, romantic personality. In that case, one would be wrong. Phil was enormously self-centered, hugely inappropriate, boorishly rude and, fortunately for him, fantastically rich.
Phil was not only rich however, because even the promise of money would not be enough to make any self-respecting young woman--and many more that are neither--throw themselves on such a poor human specimen. If they wanted that, they would go for an eighty-year millionaire investment banker who wanted someone to keep him company until he died and left his pretty little trophy wife all his money. No, Phil was not only fantastically rich, he was powerful and he was TITLED.
It's not every day that The Slippery Pole is graced with the presence of a real life, honest-to-goodness Scottish laird, and being the rundown establishment that it was, no one really cared.
This suited Phil's purposes just fine. An upstanding member of Scottish society, especially one in a position of influence, couldn't just go out and commit tasteless indiscretions in his own backyard. He had to hop on his privet jet, fly to another country, jump in his armoured limo, drive around for a bit to lose any pursuers and then find a shady place in which to hang out where no one was likely to recognise him.
The unlikelihood that he would be recognized was why he brought his female entourage with him. He couldn't pick up chicks if they didn't know how fabulously wealthy, powerful and TITLED he was.
Phil straightened his tartan beret and fiddle with the end of the kilt he wore. His hairy legs poked out from underneath them, showcasing his dimpled knees until his hideous grey socks hid the rest of his calves. He signalled to the waitress and ordered a drink for himself and some water for his girls. He demanded a sippy straw and a little cocktail umbrella as well. The waitress, used to such strange orders never batted an eyelash but disappeared to get the order.
"Here y'are. One scotch on the rocks and four waters." She lifted an eyebrow at his entourage, clinging to him like extra appendages. "Anything else?"
"Well, bonnie lass, that depends on what you have in mind."
Phil never even saw the punch coming. The waitress knocked him to the floor in one fell swoop with her large manly hand. In a decidedly deeper, manly voice she said, "Keep those hands to yourself, mister, or I'll show you what I have in mind for YOU."
Phil, embarrassed at having been rejected by an ugly waitress who probably earned no more than minimum wage stalked off to the bathroom to clean the blood off his face. He saw the waitress a few feet ahead of him down the hall, so he sped up and grabbed her, propelling her into the men's room and trapping her in the out of order stall.
With a queer glint in her eye, the woman dodged him and flushed the toilet.
The last thing Phil saw as he was sucked down the too-tight chute was her ugly, smiling face watching him as he screamed.
His downward motion was finally suspended as he got to the end of the chute. He was stuck in the trap that opened into the holding room. His furiously kicking legs provided no small amount of amusement for those already in the holding room, but eventually, they pulled him down and watched him turn interesting shades of red as he cursed the waitress who got him into that mess.
A horticulturalist's job is never done, but Peter Moss--Pete to his friends--was getting damn tired of working. It had been a hard day of planting and watering and Pete just wanted a nice cold beverage to wind down after all that work. In addition to all that, Pete was supposed to give a lecture at the local university about planning a greenhouse in less than an hour.
He popped into The Slippery Pole on the way home from an arbourist's convention to wet his whistle and catch his breath before his presentation began. The non-descript rather run-down bar entrance seemed more to his taste than the posh, ultra-hip club doors. Plus, he didn't dress for the discriminating eyes of the bouncers and didn't relish the thought of standing in the long line snaking around the street corner only to be unceremoniously turned away by a hulk in drag.
In contrast to club, the bar was relatively empty. A few obvious regulars nursed their drinks in solitude, their grubby appearance entirely at odds with the club, but absolutely suitable for this dilapidated portion of the establishment. It was clear to Pete where the proceeds all went.
Pete meandered on down to an empty table that had a relatively good view of the bar's private stage and remembered how fun the night was.
He had watched a little Chinese man dressed in a hot pink feather boa cram himself into a ridiculously tiny box. The little man closed the lid, and a few moments later, popped out of the box with a flourish. Pete had clapped politely and watched as the man squished himself into another, tinier box. This time, the man got stuck and the bartender calmly called the fire department. Pete had ordered a martini from the waitress and studied a few of the strange characters in the bar.
Then, a red-haired man with an Irish accent sat at the bar and glumly downed his drink. A moment later a young man entered the bar and shouted "DAD!" in an overjoyed tone of voice. The man looked even more depressed if possible and half-heartedly waved the young man over. Pete had heard the bartender take the man's order--a cosmopolitan--and listened to the Irishman's muffled curse and his muttered comment, "You really WERE named after the little mermaid."
Pete had quickly lost interest in this conversation when the firemen arrived and expertly pried the contortionist out of the box with the Jaws of Life. They did it rather efficiently and with a laugh and a wave exited the bar in less than ten minutes. They had obviously responded to this kind of distress call many times before.
Pete had watched a drunk African give his heart-felt thanks to the crowd, an ugly Scottish dude enter the club with an entourage of four fabulously beautiful women, a foreign-looking man crash and burn with a young woman, an old lady hobble off to the bathroom with a scowl, furtively looking around at every suspicious character and finally decided that he fit right in. The Slippery Pole had only been an occasional haunt for him when he found himself unable to get to his usual bar, The Witch's Tit. He didn't mind the shady atmosphere so much and he found the drinks to be fantastic. Mixed by a master.
Presently, he wandered over to the bar and sat down, thinking he'd start up a conversation with the bartender. The man made his way over and with a friendly smile, asked what he was drinking. "I'll have another cosmo," he said.
"Good for you," said the bartender. "It's nice to see a man with enough self-esteem to order whatever he wants." He leaned over the bar. "You won't believe how many guys come over here and order vodka straight up or a scotch or something only to spit it out when they taste it." He went back to making the drink. "Fou-fou drinks are tasty if not manly."
"Right," replied Pete. "So, uh, worked here long?"
"Yep, fresh out of high school. So what do you do?" asked the bartender.
"Horticulturalist."
"Ah. Say, do you think you could take a look at my tree?"
Pete squinted, trying to determine if this was some sort of a weird gay come on or if it was a genuine question.
The bartender seemed to notice his predicament and pulled a bonsai tree out from under the bar. "Poor thing's been sick for weeks. Won't stand up straight, won't grow at all. I'm worried it's permanently damaged."
A young boy with a tragic haircut walked by at that exact moment. "Are there ANY people around here who aren't disgusting perverts?!"
"He meant the tree!" Pete called after the boy. "The TREE!!!"
He chased the boy to the men's room, but when he got there, the little twerp was nowhere to be found. He sighed and decided to take a leak while he was there. He walked right into the first stall, not even noticing the OUT OF ORDER sign. He flushed and made the accidental trip. He arrived in Section 42's holding room and glanced around.
"This day just keeps getting better and better, he said to no one in particular.
A large man with a voluminous moustache just glared at him an a dog that looked rather like a half-drowned rat casually gnawed his ankle.
For a disgraced ex-Tibetan monk, or lama as they're called in their homeland, Dinga Ling sure knew how to hold his liquor. Well, at least he tried, and mostly, he did an admirable job of it, but once in a while, he would forget himself, order a few too many and start acting like an idiot.
"He-e-ey, I'm a giant!" he said, brandishing a travel-size bottle of vodka.
"Okay, Dinga, I think it's time to call it a night," the bartender suggested kindly. "You need to lay off the sauce, little man."
"I," retorted Dinga Ling between hiccups "Am not little. I am vertically challenged." He said this with almost regal dignity.
"Yes, well still, you've had enough."
"You can never have too much of a good thing."
"Remind me again why alcohol is considered a good thing," the bartender replied mildly.
The monk crumpled to the floor in a miserable heap. Ever since he had been kicked out of his monastery a few months ago, life had gone downhill.
Dinga Ling had been a promising "lama" at the Yew So Fah King Dum monastery in Tibet. The vows he had to take had proven to be his downfall. The vow of poverty wasn't bad, he reflected. He didn't need much and he never had much, so he didn't miss what he never had. The vow of silence was tougher, but he managed to keep quiet when he had to, and at least he was never caught chatting it up with a flower or anything. The vow that he had a problem with, however, was the vow of chastity. Dinga saw every new arrival as fresh meat and had a bitch of a time keeping himself zipped.
He finally gave in to his base temptations only to be discovered by the head of the monastery in full swing, so to speak. He was kicked out of the monastery faster than he could say "Yew So Fah King Dum". As they say, a horny monk is nobody's friend.
To alleviate the pain of getting kicked out of a place full of the most patient, understanding people in the world, Dinga sought comfort in the bottom of a bottle. He haunted bars and nightclubs and drank until he passed out and got thrown out. The Slippery Pole had become his favourite recently due to good prices and a tolerant staff.
Many times when wandering the dangerous streets of St. Sourira du Lac, Dinga had been teased and pelted with rocks because of his scarlet robes and bald head--hold-overs from his monastic past.
"You know, Mr. Bartender," said Dinga. "I do believe you're right. I have had too much to drink."
"Good for you, Mr. Monk."
Dinga Ling left the bar, feeling uplifted and completely wasted, and headed over to the washrooms. He did his business, but he was too drunk to notice that the stall he occupied was out of order. He smiled, feeling renewed.
"Today will be the first day of the rest of my life, he vowed.
Flush.
Dinga began his descent. "I'm in a lot of trouble.
The job opportunities for Afghani women with engineering degrees from their home country are limited. For this reason, Fatima Abd-Al-Quadir was currently employed as a waitress at The Slippery Pole. In her spare time, she made afghans to make a little extra cash on the side.
Fatima sat in the staff room, really just a small room with a table, a ratty old couch and a vending machine tacked on to a bathroom. She massaged her aching feet and lay down, dreading going back out there when her five-minute break was done.
She sat up and re-adjusted her veil, making sure everything was in place before putting her shoes back on. She exited the lounge and grabbed her serving tray, ready to face the ravening mob and take more orders.
"Look alive, Fatima, more customers pouring in every minute," said Johnnie Canoe, the bartender, over the din of the music playing through the old speakers on the stage. One of the dancers had just taken the stage. Fatima nodded her head and resolutely made her way toward a table of rowdy men a few metres away.
"May I take your orders, gentlemen?" she asked politely.
"Say," said one of the men. "You're not that waitress with the full range of appendages, are you?"
"No, I have just the one range."
"Thank God," replied the man, shuddering. "Had a bad experience with that woman. One night together and she acts like we're married."
"This is a gay nightclub. God has no place here," replied Fatima, affronted.
"Riiight," said the man, confused. "Um...sorry?"
Fatima stalked off.
"Hey, what about our drinks?!" shouted the man
She ignored them and moved on to another table. She resolved to send over the waitress with the full range of appendages at the next opportunity.
Finally, after carting drinks to increasingly wasted patrons, it was closing time and Fatima could finally go home. She stowed her apron and serving tray and headed out.
She decided a trip to the bathroom was in order before she started home. It was a long walk.
The janitor was in the ladies room, so she decided that it wouldn't be a problem if she snuck into the men's room. The other stalls were occupied, all but the very first, with an OUT OF ORDER sign posted on the door. She hadn't heard of any stalls being out of order and figured that it was a joke that some drunken idiot had played on his drunken idiot friends. She pushed open the door, did her thing and flushed.
"Oh no."
Her ride down the tube was uneventful and her landing in the holding room wasn't so bad. She just wished she had thought to bring her afghan making equipment with her. She had a feeling that this would take awhile.
The Slippery Pole boasted a full range of exotic pole dancers, from skinny males to all manner of transsexuals to plus size women. Wo Fat Chin had been the extent of the plus size woman troupe for over two years.
Exotic dancing was never something that Wo Fat Chin had considered as a girl. She had always been a chubby child. Her teenage years saw her blimp out to roughly the size of a refrigerator. She was morbidly obese by the age of fifteen, weighing in at six hundred pounds. For a city-girl in china, this was mortifying.
She made her way to Canada when she was 21 and couldn't take the pressure of being a fat Chinese girl anymore. She went to Montreal, found a job and bought a home in St. Sourira du Lac. A job at The Slippery Pole. At first, the skimpy costumes and suggestive poses were a source of great embarassment to Wo Fat Chin, but she gradually became more comfortable in her many layers of flabby skin when she realized that people actually liked her body.
Some people were just into fat.
She climbed on stage for her signature number, Baby One More Time in her school girl outfit amidst catcalls and the approving roar of the little crowd. Two years of this and she had finally become a star.
She performed with all the concentration and sincerity she could muster. A few jiggles, followed by a sweep of her wide behind and a come-hither look ended the set. She curtsied as much as she was able and stepped down from the stage only to be mobbed by star-struck well-wishers.
"Could I have your autograph?"
"Could I have your autograph on my body?"
"Will you go out with me?"
"Will you marry me?"
"Will you have my children?"
She laughed at her adoring fans, signed a few autographs in books, on napkins and on body parts and gently refused vows of undying love and offers of marriage.
She went over to the bar and asked the bartender for a glass of water.
"Of course, darling. And don't forget to eat up. We need you in top form for the next show," he said.
"My pleasure, Johnnie. My pleasure."
What Wo Fat Chin didn't tell Johnnie was that she was actually trying to lose weight. She had become a closet bulimic lately, and had taken to upchucking in the men's bathroom after each show. She used a different stall every time so as to make the janitor less suspicious.
This time, she came to the out of order stall. She decided it was worth the risk of toilet water in the face if her dirty little secret was kept safe. She took care of her business, and feeling hungry again, flushed the toilet.
Wo Fat Chin was very glad that she had taken up this new "diet. It meant that she didn't get stuck in the chute that lead her to Section 42, although it was a tight fit.
For as long as Clarence Smith could remember, he had wanted to be an investment banker. It wasn't as if he was enamoured of the thrill and the fame afforded to investment bankers, he just always loved office supplies and people in offices always got office supplies, so he decided that a desk job was for him. How much more of a typical desk job could one find?
Clarence found that he didn't like investment banking over much. He wasn't particularly good at it and he really didn't like people. In fact, Clarence was usually quite depressed. The only thing that could cheer him up was a new shipment of pens or a box of paper clips.
When Clarence was especially blue, he hid out in the supply closet among skids of paper, boxes of pens and pencils and rows of staplers. He organized papers by size, colour and frequency of use. Pens and pencils were sorted alphabetically by colour and brand. Staplers were lined up in order of length and number of staples left in them. His whole office was sorted in much the same way.
It should be obvious by now that Clarence has O.C.D. Obsessive compulsive disorder.
It is unfortunate that this horrible affliction should be thrown upon the shoulders of such a depressed and generally unhappy man. Clarence dealt with it as he could, and usually got by with a minimum of suicidal thoughts. Those never got him far anyway, since he was deathly afraid of leaving a mess.
When O.C.D. really started to bother Clarence, the only thing he could do was visit the one place that made him feel at home. The Slippery Pole.
It is rather ironic that the one place in which an obsessive compulsive neat-freak feels safe is a disgusting dive such as the bar at The Slippery Pole. One could only surmise that The Slippery pole was so horrible that even Clarence's gifts of organization and cleaning could not make the bar even half decent, so he didn't even feel compelled to try. Whatever the reason, Clarence had become increasingly dependant on his time at The Slippery Pole to get through his gruelling work week.
Clarence entered the bar only to feel an increasing sense of peace. He made his way over to the bartender to strike up a conversation and drown a few of his work-related sorrows in beer.
"Hey, Johnnie! What's new?" he asked.
"Not much around here, Clarence," replied the bartender. "How's life treating you?"
"Not so well, I'm afraid."
"Sorry to hear that. My life sucks too, in case you're wondering," said Johnnie, sliding Clarence his usual beer. "Hey, don't you have a birthday around now?"
"Last Tuesday," said Clarence. "My coworkers threw me a surprise party. They lit candles and sang Happy Birthday as I walked in the front door."
"And how'd that go?" asked the bartender.
"I screamed, yelled fire and smashed the cake into my boss' face."
"Well, that's an improvement on last year."
"Anything is an improvement on last year. I swear that corner office still smolders."
Suddenly, a group of people made their way toward Clarence, singing Happy Birthday and holding a birthday cake.
"AHHHH! FIRE! cried Clarence.
Always the quick-thinker, Clarence grabbed the cake, flaming candles and all, and raced to the bathroom. He dumped the cake into the first toilet he saw and flushed.
He ended up in the holding room of Section 42 a sopping mess of cake and toilet water. This did not matter to the huge woman wearing a thong who made her way over to Clarence and licked the cake off of him as if she hadn't eaten in a week. The others in the holding room looked rather relieved. They believed that if she didn't eat soon, she would move on to one of them...
It is a fact universally acknowledged that parents often do their utmost to make their children's lives a living hell. Such is the case for Harry Dick. If ever there were two parents so utterly ignorant of childhood taunts and hurtful nicknames, they were Harry's parents. There was no need to give Harry a nickname in grade school, since his own name was so horribly tragic that he was ever the butt of his classmates' cruel jokes.
At a young age, Harry had had to endure every possible derivation of "hairy" and "dick" until he finally snapped. He went on a rampage and killed seven classmates with his bare hands before the police managed to pull him off. He was seventeen at the time and ended up being sentenced to ten years in prison.
By the time he got out, he had put up with even more taunts and insults and vowed to change his name as soon as he was released.
The first stop he made after his release was The Slippery Pole. He was wandering La Rue Maudite when he discovered that he was really thirsty and decided to check the place out.
He loved it.
He discovered that the name Harry Dick was considered an honour in the establishment and after a day of being hailed as a phenomenon decided to keep his name and proudly announce it to all that would listen. All, that is, at The Slippery Pole.
He was heartily accepted into the tight bunch of misfits at the bar and even enjoyed a few drinks on the house now and again. He was there so frequently, in fact, that he often donned an apron, grabbed a serving tray and rolled up his sleeves when the waitresses found themselves in the weeds. He learned how to mix some of the more popular drinks from Johnnie Canoe and even how to perform a few choice pole dances thanks to some of the exotic dancers. Even some of the customers taught him a little of what they knew about their own businesses.
Harry was always curious. He constant teasing at school ensured that he rarely had the opportunity to learn all there was to offer. His incarceration also precluded the luxury of further education. In time, Harry became proud owner of a wealth of knowledge including the nuances of shipping, law enforcement, carpet selling, candle importing, cosmetic surgery, afghan-making and all about dentures.
Harry became known as an encyclopedia of ideas and customers and employees alike went to Harry when faced with some obscure point of trivia.
Johnnie Canoe was glad to see Harry, since he had the most pressing problem weighing on his mind. "Why in the hell would you want to put knee-socks on a gerbil?"
"Haven't a clue. Although I suspect it has to do with flouting the laws of physics and asserting man's dominance over all of animal-kind.
This gave Johnnie something new to think about.
While he was doing that, he decided to take care of another problem that he had noticed over the course of the night. "Hey, Harry, you mind taking a look at the men's room. I've lost a lot of paying customers in there tonight.
"No problem, Johnnie, answered Harry, and he went on his way.
Harry's stay in jail had taught him some rather useful plumbing tricks, so when he heard a strange rumbling coming from the out of order toilet, Harry decided to finally try his hand at fixing it.
The first rule of thumb for any plumber is always, "Flush before fixing. It was a hygiene thing. Harry reached for the handle, ignoring the niggling voice inside his head telling him this might not be such a good idea.
He fell through the trap door in the floor and decided that next time, he'd leave the plumbing to the professionals.
It is a trying thing to have a name longer than you are, but when Moonbeam Skysong Wildflower was a child, she somehow got through it quite admirably. It wasn't actually all that difficult since all of her friends had equally long and ponderous names. Growing up in a commune had its perquisites, like anyplace else, if only that the children found that they all had strange enough names to find solace in each other.
Commune life was generally enjoyable. Founded by a bunch of hippie war protesters, the Grass-Smoking Meadow Commune offered life among your peers and a damn good selection of the world's finest marijuana.
Moonbeam admitted to dabbling in drugs when she was younger, but only because her parents were always encouraging her to "smoke this, smoke that, smoke HER." Her dislike for the whole affair was the reason that she finally left the commune in the first place and lit for parts unknown. That and the communal toilet thing was getting to be a trial.
Her refuge, The Slippery Pole, had been the driving force behind her new career--telemarketing. Growing up in a free-love sort of atmosphere made her exceptionally patient. YOU try waiting in line to use the communal piss-pot at three in the morning on a cold winter's day. She discovered her love for interrupting people's dinners for ridiculous matters when she was just a child and single-handedly managed to ruin almost every dinner party she came across. It almost became a game with her.
Her first job as a telemarketer was for a lawn care company. She regularly called her customers in the winter at dinner time. It was especially amusing when her disgruntled victims informed her that their lawns were currently located under a foot and a half of snow and would she please call back later, perhaps in the spring and preferably after dinnertime?
Moonbeam took all of this in good humour and never felt discouraged, even after being yelled at for a full ten minutes by an angry businessman. She was too easily distracted by her own dreams of fluffy clouds, blue skies, bright flowers and frolicking bunnies.
Eventually, her employment with the telemarketers was terminated due to improper use of company time to daydream and she took up being a full-time denizen of The Slippery Pole.
Now, she was almost missing her down-home roots and dreaming of using the shared toilet once again.
That gave her an idea. Surely the men's room was just as dirty and smelly as the old chamber pot at home. She made her way over, and when she found that there was an out of order toilet, she was practically in heaven. She used the facilities in a state of bliss, but when she went to flush, she was rudely reminded of why it was always best to hold it in public.
She whipped down the chute to Section 42 like a bat out of hell, and sincerely regretted ever missing her crappy old life.
Many find it strange to say that Germans have the best sausages in the world. For some reason, people always seemed to misinterpret this statement.
Frank Furter, owner of Germany's largest sausage manufacturer had grown used to the raised eyebrows and muffled snickers directed his way after such a declaration. He didn't care--he knew how true it was. In more ways than one, in fact.
The Slippery Pole had become a haven for Frank. His native Germany wasn't nearly so accepting of his homosexuality. In Canada--especially in Quebec--his sausage jokes were met with enthusiasm if not anticipation. The Slippery Pole offered decent food, good people, great beer (German varieties imported whenever the truck made it there without breaking down) and unprecedented entertainment. Quebec wasn't exactly Amsterdam, but it had become home for Frank. His world headquarters were moved from Berlin to Montreal and his most trusted executives were Canadians. This met with general disapproval with his original executives, but he fired them all anyway citing their grumbling as a reason for their termination.
Frank made sure that he made it to The Slippery Pole every week, bearing sausages for all. Free samples always ensured better business, he found, and resolved that his friends at the bar would never have to pay full price for a sausage ever again. This statement again met with a few laughs and some chortles here and there.
The Quebecois were famous for their "double entendres" after all.
The pole dancers over the door jingled as he entered the bar. "I have brought ze sausages! Let us enjoy zem!" The bar patrons cheered and mobbed him, grabbing sausages faster than he could hand them out. "Be patient! Everyvan vill get van! You can be sure of zat!"
When everyone was munching contentedly on a sausage, Frank made his way over to the bar to talk to the affable bartender, Johnnie Canoe.
"How's business, Frank?" inquired the bartender
"Ze usual. You?" Frank smiled insincerely, his chubby dimpled cheeks swelling endearingly.
"Can't complain."
They passed a few minutes in idle chatter, each inquiring after the other's family and health, neither caring about the answer one way or another. Typical conversation in a gay nightclub among polite, civilized people.
Frank carried away his drink and adjusted his jaunty Oktoberfest hat over his blonde hair before sitting down at a booth close to the stage. Two old ladies appeared to be having a disagreement in the booth to his left, but he ignored them in favour of the spectacular live entertainment.
"Zis is ze life. Famous for sausage. How many people could brag about zat?"
A few inquiring glances were shot his way, so he waggled his eyebrows suggestively. He had not shame.
"Well zen, I must go see a butcher about a sausage, if you know what I mean... Frank said his goodbyes and headed off to the lavatory, smiling genially. He pushed open the door to find a woman being sucked down the toilet in the stall clearly marked OUT OF ORDER. He clucked his tongue and looked at the mass of toilet paper left in the bowl. The Quebecois--such barbarians. Completely disregarding the unfortunate state of the last person to flush that particular toilet, Frank pressed the small lever located prominently on the toilet and was immediately sucked down the chute to Canada's foremost intelligence agency.
He really shouldn't have been surprised at his unlikely fate, but Frank wasn't the sharpest butcher's knife in the slaughterhouse.
He landed on his butt between an old woman distractedly rubbing her hip and a fat Scottish man with a rather tragic countenance. Frank decided that the only thing to do in the situation he found himself in was the make the best of things.
"Sausage, anyone?
Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Donald Trump. All of their wealth combined was nothing compared to the absolutely, incalculable wealth business tycoon Moe Gull had amassed in a mere ten years of work. That most of his enterprises were illegitimate was of no consequence. After all, money is money, whether it is made by selling a good product at a fair price or by blackmailing Mafiosos or smuggling priceless cultural treasures out of the Middle East and anonymously selling them at ridiculous prices to modern-day looters at the British Museum and the Louvre. Moe was making a tidy sum with his more legitimate enterprises of course, but nothing could compare to the staggering amounts of money brought in through less honest means.
With all this money, Moe could afford to buy his way into even the most exclusive nightclubs and bars in the world. It was rumoured that he could talk his way into an impromptu dinner at the White House. When he wanted to dine at the Parliament buildings, he just bought them outright. Doors were opening for Moe like never before.
Why he chose to spend many of his nights at The Slippery Pole was a complete and utter mystery.
Moe Gull always made an entrance when he popped into The Slippery Pole. He once skydived in through the roof from his private jet. (He paid for the damages four hours after the incident, but not until after they had finally managed to cut him down from where his parachute caught on the ceiling fans.) A few weeks later he drove an eighteen-wheeler with his face painted on the side through the front entrance of the nightclub. After the glass was cleaned up, he wrote another cheque. After that, he landed on the roof in his helicopter (which ended up in the middle of the stage after the roof collapsed), burned down a wall with his fully operational prototype jetpack and destroyed the shabby flooring with his Kawasaki motorcycle. By that time he just gave Johnnie Canoe, the bartender, a blank cheque-book and told him to use them to cover the damages.
The denizens of The Slippery Pole usually looked forward to his appearances. It livened up the place and made the adrenaline flow. Life or death situations will do that to a person.
On that particular night, Moe was feeling rather out of sorts. He had stopped at a seedy motel on his way into St. Sourira du Lac after a particularly gruelling business trip and ordered some bad sushi at a restaurant down the street. He'd been puking periodically for the last hundred kilometres. By the time he got to the Slippery Pole, he wasn't in the mood to make a big entrance. It turned out that actually walking through the bar entrance caused enough of a stir as it was.
Moe made his miserable way to the bar where Johnnie Canoe was wiggling his butt emphatically to the Britney Spears music blasting through the loudspeakers. He winked coyly at the drunken man at the end of the bar who suggestively asked the thumb-less bartender to "Hit me baby one more time!
Johnnie noticed Moe weaving unsteadily and grasping a barstool for dear life. "You'd better take a seat, Moe, he advised. He pushed a glass of water in front of the nauseous tycoon and worriedly watched as Moe gulped it down. "You been to the doctor's lately?
Moe gasped after downing the contents of the glass. He mumbled what Johnnie thought sounded rather like "bad sushi and "funeral tomorrow before racing off to the bathrooms.
Moe reached the bathroom just in time. He happily hurled the contents of his stomach, sweating profusely. He felt a raging headache coming on and he leaned his head against the toilet, waiting for the nausea to abate.
What Moe didn't know was that his headache was just beginning. When he rested his head against the toilet, he happened to accidentally press the lever to flush. As he tumbled down the passageway to Section 42, Moe wondered just how much worse his nausea could get.
He fell amid a pile of people munching on sausages. That was enough to get Moe retching once again.
A smallish woman wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and sporting a necklace with an oversized peace-sign pendant dangling on the end was the first to comment on Moe's uncomfortable huddle in the middle of a puddle of his own vomit.
"Clean up on aisle three.
Sister Cathy Dral was a nun on a mission.
The denizens of The Slippery Pole were used to such occurrences, and therefore had no qualms with accepting the holy woman into their ranks. In fact, they usually welcomed the periodic invasion of their sanctuary as a desperately needed change of pace. For many, it was a sure-fire excuse to get out of going to Sunday services.
From the first Baptist minister who had bustled in to preach his hellfire and brimstone sermons, The Slippery Pole's patrons had made a point of listening patiently to whatever the intruder had to say before unceremoniously tossing him out. The Baptist minister didn't like that much and after uttering a few choice words that any self-respecting man of the cloth should NEVER say, he stalked off and made his way to his shiny Cadillac. The minister was followed by an Anglican bishop, a Jewish rabbi, a Muslim cleric and a Catholic priest, who were all thrown out on their collective ears shortly thereafter. The televangelists thought about mounting an expedition to The Slippery Pole, but decided it wouldn't be lucrative enough since the patrons were mostly down-on-their luck reprobates.
Sister Cathy Dral was only the latest in a string of Catholic nuns to visit the bar in an attempt to convert its patrons to the way of the Lord so that they'd at least have a shot at redemption. Their nuns' new strategy was to wear the bar's clients down, slowly but surely, one by one. So far they had made little headway, but Sister Cathy Dral refused to be deterred. Tonight, however, she had decided on a change in tactics.
Her new plan was to abduct one of The Slippery Pole's regular customers and convert the miserable excuse for a human being--by force, if need be. Her orders cane directly from the Mother Superior, who, in a meeting with her subordinates (which bore an uncommon resemblance to a council of war), had authorized the use of any and all necessary force.
She decided on the way that the best course of action would be to pick off one of the little sick ones. She noticed a small bookish man sitting at a table sipping an alcoholic beverage. She clucked her tongue disapprovingly and decided to wait until the inevitable call of nature forced him to take care of a little business in the men's room. Sister Cathy Dral had absolutely no qualms about following the man into the restroom--for a woman so devoted to her religion--who had taken a vow of chastity, no less--she was quite unabashed at performing what she deemed the less desirable parts of the mission.
She waited and waited, assured that her long black habit did nothing to give the fact that she was going incognito. She glanced about furtively, looking very much like a paranoid nun about to abduct and convert a smallish man drinking himself into a stupor. Finally, her chance came.
The man stood abruptly, weaving as he attempted to make his way towards the men's room. He tripped a little on the way, and so drunk was he that he never noticed the severe-looking nun stalking him menacingly in the shadows. He pushed open the door to the bathroom and stumbled in.
The nun wasted no time in subduing the faltering man. She took him down with a solid football tackle and wrapped her rosary around his neck. The man gurgled and thrashed about, but he was no match for the Sister's superior strength and her quickly lost consciousness.
A young man with unfortunate-looking red hair popped his head into the restroom, but upon seeing an austere-looking nun standing over an unconscious man, decided to come back later.
Sister Cathy realized with a start that her rosary was now evidence and that she must get rid of it in a hurry. She tossed it into the nearest toilet bowl and quickly gave it a flush. The next thing she knew, she was travelling down the chute to Section 42 at a pace that no reasonable nun had any business going. Sister Cathy, however, was not reasonable. This did not seem fair.