Big Bob

By : Vermyn Carrion
Views : 637

Big Bob was from Texas. He was six feet four and weighed 350 pounds; hence his name. From the time he first arrived in Bangkok, back in 1982, his favorite bar was the Loose Pussy, run by Al Nagel, a fellow Texan. Al called his bars—he had two of them—the Twin Pussy Bars. Upstairs from the Loose Pussy was its so-called “twin”, the Loose Pussy With Stretchmarks. We called it the Stretch for short.

Big Bob would never go in the Stretch. “Bad enough having a bar called the Loose Pussy without it having stretch marks, too,” he grumbled.

“You should check it out, give it a try, Bob,” Al said. “Got some nice little fillies up there.”

“I went up there once,” Bob replied. “Once is one time too many. Got rats ‘n cockroaches running all over, smells like a cat pissed on the sofa, the lighting’s bad, the peanuts are stale, the beer’s flat, and the girls all looked like they just been sprung from the dog pound.”

“Well, some people appreciate a bit of classy ambience,” Al said huffily. “It’s obvious you ain’t a person of class, Bob.”

“Fuck the ambience,” Bob growled in to his beer.

For well onto eleven years, Bob practically lived at the Loose Pussy, especially on Friday and Saturday nights, during Happy Hour. As soon as you entered, you could see his large frame perched precariously on a bamboo barstool, with his back to the door. He always sat on the same stool, which groaned beneath his weight. Other imbibers used to joke that the cushion had a permanent dent in it from the weight of Bob’s ample bottom. Others said that Al must have had the bamboo reinforced with a special steel alloy to prevent it from collapsing under Bob’s weight.

But the stool came to belong to Bob in a very personal way. One day Al got the idea of endowing barstools, the same way universities endow professorships. For a flat fee of 2000 baht, a regular customer could have his own barstool. A small brass plaque engraved with his name would be screwed into the back. The stool would be reserved for him. Anybody else could sit on it so long as he wasn’t in the bar, but as soon as he showed up, any interloper would have to vacate it.

This was one of Al’s several money-making ideas that didn’t pan out, but Bob liked it, and immediately plonked down 2000 baht for his favorite stool. He was the only one who did. The plaque on his stool read: “Reserved for Mr. Robert Sherrill, BIG BOB. 1948-____“ Bob was really proud of that plaque. “When I die,” he said, “I want you to fill in the date of my death and put my epitaph on it.”

“What’s the epitaph gonna be, Bob?” asked one of the regulars.

“Why am I always surrounded by assholes?” Bob guffawed.

Nobody else thought that was very funny. Bob always did have a peculiar sense of humor. Al offered a special discount rate of 1800 baht to anybody who wanted to buy the adjacent barstool and have “Birds of a feather flock together” inscribed on it, but there were no takers. That’s the way people were in the Loose Pussy. Tightwads. In fact, when the regulars finally got around to organizing a bowling team, they called themselves the Loose Pussy Tightwads.

But all good things have to come to an end in this world, including good beer, cheap pussy, and Happy Hour. Bob kept getting bigger and bigger, and one night his heart gave out on him. He had taken home a lovely young thing from another bar, and in the midst of consummating their relationship he had a massive heart attack and collapsed on top of her. It took a good deal of effort for her to extricate herself from beneath Bob’s elephantine corpse, and when she did, her tits, which had been gorgeously pneumatic, were flat as tortillas. “Dat motherfucker ruin Noi’s tits,” she grumbled. “I gonna sue his estate.”

In a sentimental tribute to Bob’s memory, the gang at the Loose Pussy took up a collection for her. And Al filled in the date of death on the plaque on Bob’s barstool. But out of considerations of good taste, not to mention the additional expense, he did not inscribe Bob’s cherished epitaph thereon.

Life went on at the Loose Pussy, although it was never really the same with Bob gone. Out of respect for his memory, the rest of us avoided sitting on his barstool. Every Happy Hour we would toast Bob’s stool. “Here’s lookin’ at ya, Bob, old hoss,” we’d say. Or “Chokedee, Bob. Hope you’re gettin’ lots of good action in the Great Loose Pussy In The Sky.”

It must have been about six weeks after Bob’s death that a French tourist came into the Loose Pussy and sat on Bob’s stool. The rest of us had been kind of guarding it, making sure nobody desecrated it, but this Frenchman took us by surprise. We were arguing about who was going to win the Superbowl, and all of a sudden there was this Frenchman sitting on Bob’s stool and ordering an aperitif.

Instant hostility from all sides. Nobody ordered aperitifs in the Loose Pussy, and we were mostly patriotic Americans and Brits who didn’t care for Froggies and their pansied ways. But before anybody could say anything, we heard Bob’s voice.

“You sittin’ on my stool, son,” it growled.

The Frenchman looked up, startled. “Qu’est-que c’est?” he asked. That’s how we knew he was French. That, and the faggy aperitif he ordered.

“I said, you sittin’ on my stool,” Bob’s voice growled again. And it seemed it was coming from about where Bob’s mouth would have been if he’d been standing right beside the Frenchman.

The Frenchman looked around, nonplussed. “Merde,” he muttered. Then all of a sudden the stool was yanked out from underneath him and he was dumped in a heap on the floor.

“Nobody sits on my stool,” the voice said. “This stool belongs to Big Bob.” The stool resumed its erstwhile position, and as we stared at it, the cushion sort of sighed and went flat, as if someone very large were sitting on it.

None of us knew what to think. We helped the Frenchman up and suggested that he take another seat, but he gulped down his aperitif, paid for it, and fled. And we all sat staring at Bob’s stool, whose cushion now had a very visible dent in it.

“Ain’t none of you tightwads gonna buy ole Bob a drink?” Bob’s voice growled again.

We all fell all over ourselves to order up a Kloster for Bob, and as we watched, the glass rose into the air, tipped forward, and was slowly drained. Everybody at the bar was staring at it; and the girls, who were up on the stage dancing, stopped, pointed at the floating glass of fast-vanishing beer, and started screaming. Most of us couldn’t catch most of what they were saying, but one word kept being repeated: “Phii!”—which means ghost. The girls made a general rush for the changing room, and in about five minutes there wasn’t a girl left in the bar.

We all sat there staring at the empty glass in front of Bob’s stool, and heard him sigh. “Sure tasted good,” he said. “Ain’t no beer in hell. That’s why they call it hell.”

Finally Al Nagel spoke up. “You been in hell, Bob?”

“Sure ‘nuff. Ain’t so bad, once you get used to it.” The voice was disembodied, coming from a point several feet above Bob’s stool.

“What’s it like down there?” Among his several winning traits, Al had a predilection for theology.

“Sorta like the Stretch,” Bob said, and guffawed.

Al ignored that slur on his upstairs establishment. “Well, Bob, if you’re down in hell, what the hell are you doin’ back here?”

“Ah,” Bob said. “If a man has been wronged, see, if his memory is being desecrated, they let him out to set things right, so to speak.”

Then we understood. “So you are back to protect, uh, your stool?”

“That’s right. And also to inquire what happened to my epitaph.”

Al looked pained. “Bob, you know I can’t have something like that written on your stool,” he protested. “I mean, Jesus Christ, this is a fucking high-class establishment I’m running here.”

“You want it to get around town that you’re dishonoring the memory of the dead?” Bob’s voice was stern.

Al threw up his hands. “Okay, okay,” he grumbled. “I’ll have it done as soon as I can.”

“And, in the meantime, I hope somebody’s noticed that old Bob’s glass is empty,” Bob said.

We all hurried to order up another round for Bob.

-----

It took some time for Al to get the epitaph engraved. They had to unscrew the plaque from the stool and send it to a shop, but the shop was busy and couldn’t get around to doing the job for about a week. In the meantime, Bob decided the Loose Pussy was a hell of a lot better than hell, and spent all his time there, sitting on his favorite stool and drinking up a storm.

But Al was not a happy man. All his girls had run off. They swore they wouldn’t dance in a bar that had a resident phii. And business in general dropped off sharply. Even the regulars stopped frequenting the place. “It ain’t as if we’ve got something against Bob,” they’d say. “But shit, it’s downright weird seeing a glass of beer rise into the air without any visible means of support and then tip forward and drain dry like that. Besides, we’re always buying rounds for Bob, and he never reciprocates. You’d think he’d lay out a little coin and buy a round now and then.”

But theological considerations mitigated their resentment. “Shit, they got no money down in hell,” one regular allowed. “That’s why it’s hell, I guess. No beer, no money, no pussy. How’s old Bob gonna buy us a round if he ain’t got no money?” And everybody agreed this was a factor worth considering. Even so, being the tightwads they were, the regulars stayed away.

But Al figured that once he got that plaque installed, Bob would go back to hell and business would return to normal. And when the plaque was finally installed, Bob was mighty pleased. He even said he’d buy a round if he had the money. On the evening of the grand dedication of the new plaque, everybody showed up for old times’ sake and bought Bob round after round. Like Al, they figured after that he’d go to hell and things would settle back to normal.

Guess again. Bob disappeared for a few days, but then he showed up again. We were all gathered round the bar talking about the recent elections, when suddenly there was a sigh from the cushion on Bob’s stool and a voice boomed out, “Ain’t none of you tightwads gonna buy ole Bob a round?”

We all looked at each other, and the atmosphere of the bar suddenly became less jovial. “Er, you back, Bob?” Al inquired cautiously.

“Fuckin’ A,” Bob’s voice boomed. “You know what? They forgot about me, back in hell. Some sort of computer screw-up. I guess. ‘No Mr. Sherrill, we have no record of your previous stay,’ they said. ‘No record even of your death. We suggest you go back to earth and carry on as before.’

“’Carry on as before!’ I says. ‘How’m I gonna carry on as before without a fuckin’ body, ‘eh? You tell me that, Mr. Smart-ass Devil,’ I says. Tell you what, ole Bob don’t take no shit from no devils.

“Well, that sort of pissed ‘em off. ‘I am not a devil, sir, I am an imp,’ the little red ratass snaps back at me. ‘And I have enough problems with an overloaded database and a computer that keeps malfunctioning, trying to keep track of all the millions of souls in hell with a primitive program like the WordStar Four and a hard disk that keeps crashing on me, without having to suffer the insults of the dead. You people seem to think this is some sort of ersatz hotel we’re running down here. Well, it isn’t. I respectfully suggest that you return to earth and, in the words of the Buddha, whom we do not ordinarily quote because this is a good Christian hell we’re running here, that you work out your salvation with diligence.’ And with that he buries his nose in his viewscreen.

“So here I am guys,” Bob concluded. “Ole Bob has slipped the fiendish bonds of hell and is now free to grace the Loose Pussy with his magnificent presence for all eternity. Are you lucky, or what?”

This announcement was greeted with something less than universal ecstasy. The girls were up there dancing, but casting looks our way with increasing suspicion as they saw us talking to Bob’s empty stool. And when Al finally bought Bob a round and his glass rose into the air again, it was the same business all over again—chaos on the stage, screaming, a general rush for the dressing room. And before you could snap your fingers, the girls were all gone.

And they weren’t the only ones. The regulars kept glancing at each other sort of shifty-like, but also feeling a bit guilty, and one by one they drifted away.

“Well, my boy’s playing in the Little League tomorrow, I gotta run him out to the school, better be getting home to bed.”

“Well, I better mosey on home, the wife’ll be getting pissed.”

Excuses like that.

Pretty soon there wasn’t anybody left in the bar but Bob and Al.

And once more Al was not a happy man. He could see Bob wasn’t going to be much good for business. But being the man of action he was, he figured he’d better let Bob know about it right away. Take the bull by the horns, so to speak.

“Tell you what, Bob, ole scout,” he said to Bob as that worthy eminence was chugging down his fourth free glass of the evening. “I gotta level with you. I don’t want to hurt your feelings or nothing, and you know we been buddies for a long time … “

Bob uttered a belch. “Eleven years,” he said. “Going on twelve.”

Al nodded. “Going on twelve,” he agreed. “But, Bob, the fact is ole hoss, people don’t like drinking in a bar haunted by some ghost. You know? Look, my girls’ve all run off. They’re not going to come back so long as they think there’s a phi here. And even the regulars—it makes ‘em nervous to be talking to a ghost. Word’s gonna get around fast that there’s a ghost in here. You’re gonna put me out of business, Bob.”

Silence from Bob.

“You still there, Bob?” Al asked anxiously. “It ain’t as if I want to hurt your feelings or nothing.”

Still silence from Bob.

“Tell you what, Bob, why don’t you move upstairs to the Stretch? We never did have much business up there anyway. You can have the Stretch all to yourself.”

Finally Bob spoke, and his voice was full of hurt. “You know how I feel about the Stretch, Al,” he said. “No way I’m gonna move up to that sleazy dump. You’re telling me I’m not wanted, ain’t you? You’re telling me ole Bob is no longer wanted in the Loose Pussy. That’s eleven years of friendship turned to shit in an instant with the cruel words you’ve just spoken.”

“What am I supposed to do? You want me to go back to hell and suffer the torments of the damned? They’ll never let me into heaven, and I don’t want to go there anyway. Too many boring people up there. And the world outside is a cheerless place for a man that ain’t got no body. Nothin’ to do out there anyway but roam around and haunt people’s asses. The Loose Pussy is the only place I ever wanted to be, and now you want to kick me out.” Bob was sniffling now, and Al was afraid he was going to start crying.

“Listen, Bob, I know this is a rough hand you been dealt,” Al tried to console him. “But I hafta think of my business.”

“I could do live shows,” Bob suggested. “Be a big hit, I can guarantee you. Nobody in Bangkok ever did no live show with a ghost in it.”

“Bob, none of my girls would be caught dead doing a live show with a ghost,” Al said, shaking his head. “They don’t even want to be in the same bar as one.”

“I could work up a great poltergeist act,” Bob said. “You know, throwing things in the air. Bananas, soda bottles, condoms, you name it. Shit, I could learn to juggle. I could juggle condoms. Think of how much business you’d get with a ghost that juggled condoms. All these condoms flying around in the air with no visible means of support. I mean, shit, Al, the place would be packed out every night.”

Al shook his head. “Bob, it just ain’t gonna work,” he said. “You don’t seem to get the message. Folks in Bangkok don’t care how entertaining a ghost might be, they just don’t want to be around ‘em. You gotta face facts, Bob. You’ve been a good friend for many years, but I gotta tell you the truth. Nobody wants you when you’re dead.”

Old Bob started to snuffle right about then, and it looked as if they were at an impasse. But just then a customer came into the bar. He was only about four feet high, and he was all bundled up in a heavy-duty cold-weather outfit as if it was 90 below out: hat, coat, muffler, the works. His hat was pulled down over his eyes and he was wearing shades, as if he didn’t want anybody to see him. He had a read face.

This character went up to Bob’s stool just as if he could see him, and said, “Ah, Mr. Sherrill. I’ve come to take you home.”

“Well, fuck me blue,” said old Bob. “Ain’t you the snarky little dude that runs the computer down in hell?”

“No,” the little guy said. “I am merely a functionary of that snarky little dude. He’s an imp. I’m only an sub-imp. A foot soldier in the legions of Lucifer, as it were. I’ve been sent here to take you back to hell. There has been an error. The computer has now been fixed, but the news of your escape has reached the pointed ears of His Wickedness himself, and I must tell you, Mr. Sherrill, without resorting to euphemism, the His Wickedness is mightily pissed off.”

“His Wickedness being—“? Al inquired. Al had a natural curiosity about matters theological, as I think I mentioned before.

“The Lord Satan himself,” the little red-faced dude whispered reverently.

“Well, we sure wouldn’t want to disappoint the Lord Satan himself,” Al said. “Bob, it was nice havin’ you with us, even if it was only for a short time. See ya around, old hoss.” And he reached out to shake Bob’s hand, except that Bob didn’t have a hand.

“You are nothing but a fuckin’ hypocrite, Al,” Bob growled.

While this exchange was taking place, the little red-faced character had been sizing up the layout of the Loose Pussy. “This is an extremely disgusting establishment,” he sniffed. He whipped out a notebook and started scribbling. “Yes, this sort of place would be just the thing.”

“Just the thing for what, Mr. Sub-imp?” Al inquired.

“We’ve been receiving lots of militant feminists lately,” the sub-imp answered, “and we haven’t quite figured out what to do with them.”

“You could try stuffing peckers into their mouths,” Bob suggested.

“Shut up, Bob, let the man talk,” Al said. You could see there was a glimmer of an idea starting to percolate in Al’s head.

“Now, this--a place like this would be just about right,” the sub-imp said. He finished scribbling and put the notebook back into his pocket. “Just picture it! We create an entire new region of hell. We put all the feminists into an exact replica of a Bangkok bar, with a gang of fat, bald-headed, beer-sodden old degenerates groping gorgeous young girls, disco music thumping, men getting drunk and throwing up on the floor, voluptuous naked girls prancing about on the stage, men shoving hundred-baht notes into their panties—it would drive the average militant feminist right out of her so-called mind.”

“Where you gonna get the fat, bald-headed, dirty old degenerates, Mr. Sub-imp?” Al inquired.

“Ah. This could be a problem. But no! Where is my brain? We have plenty of them right down in hell!” the sub-imp said. And he whipped out his notebook and jotted down a few more notes.

“I venture to say, Mr. Sub-imp, that Mr. Sherrill, here, would be just the man to help you set up this new region of hell you’ve got in mind,” Al suggested. “He can help you design it, plan it, even staff it.”

“For a modest fee, I would even be willing to serve as one of the fat, bald-headed old degenerates myself,” Bob offered. “Except that I ain’t bald.”

“You’ll do, Mr. Sherrill, you’ll do,” the sub-imp said.

You could tell he was getting really excited with this new idea. “His Wickedness will be very pleased with your willingness to cooperate in this venture. He might even be willing to reduce your sentence.” He scribbled down a few more notes.

“If you set this place up according to my specifications, that won’t be necessary,” Bob said. “I will happily serve out my full term.”

“You are a generous man, Mr. Sherrill,” the sub-imp said. “I’m surprised they didn’t send you to heaven.”

“Heaven would be hell for a man like Big Bob,” Al remarked.

“The first thing you gotta do is give this new region a name,” Bob said. “I recommend calling it The Loose Pussy With Stretchmarks.”

Al glared at Old Bob, but the sub-imp was delighted. “Yes, yes, that’s just the thing. Great Satan! That will give those feminists conniption fits!” And he jotted that down in his notebook.

“And then I have some pretty high standards so far as the staffing is concerned,” Bob said sternly. “Gotta run a tight ship. Don’t want no skags or dogs running around up on stage. Every girl’s gotta be a knockout, with huge tits, and they got to pass a personal interview with ole Bob. I’m talking about a performance-oriented, hands-on interview here.”

“Excellent, Mr. Sherrill!” the sub-imp exclaimed. “I can see that with your urbaneness, sophistication, and expertise, you are just the man for the job. His Wickedness will be tickled pink.”

So everything worked out all right after all. Bob went back to hell, and at this moment he’s probably sitting in an exact replica of the Loose Pussy, drinking up a storm and pinching the titties of lovely young wenches. Al got all his customers back, and Bob finally got the plaque on his stool inscribed the way he wanted it.

And to this day, nobody ever sits on Bob’s stool. Every night, we all drink a toast to Bob’s memory, in hope that when we die and go to hell, we’ll be sent to keep him company in the Great Loose Pussy Down Below.

Vermyn Carrion

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