The Beautiful Kind

It was a hot, bright spring afternoon in Alton, IL, and we decided to have a cheap, cold beer. So we looked for the seediest hole in the wall we could find. We entered the dark cave of a biker bar called The Pub Room, right on Broadway. It reeked of strip club.

At the bar we ordered Stags, and were amazed at the bartender’s costume. She was a plain, pale chubby woman, and she wore a barely there, flammable Christmas green negligee. Her breasts spilled sloppily out of it, and the matching g-string also failed to stand up to the challenge of being considered “clothing” (to dress or cover). The spaghetti straps kept falling off her rounded shoulders, so between serving drinks she spent a lot of time nudging them back up and smoking cigarettes, which made me very nervous. I didn’t want to see her go up in flames, and I didn’t want to have to use my beer to put the fire out.

The bar offered snacks like Slim Jims and pork rinds, as well as a pizza menu that looked something like this:

PIZZA
Sausage - $6
Pepporini - $6
Supreme - $6
Deluxe - $6
Meat Luvas - $6

I finally couldn’t help myself and asked what the difference between “Supreme” and “Deluxe” was. She lumbered over to the freezer and yanked one out and stood there in her lingerie, squinting, examining the ingredients. Finally after a couple moments of turning the pizza this way and that, she looked up and announced, “Green peppers.”

And then she flashed a departing patron and stuck her tongue out, which in Biker language means, “See you later - Do come back!”