The ballad of the drunken porn star

One night a few years back, my friends and I were at a bar in Minneapolis when a curious thing happened. Greg, a suave and gentlemanly figure who I have been privileged to know for over a decade, got up from our table and headed off to use the men’s room. While he was attending to his business, an older man came staggering in and helped himself to the other urinal. He was a grizzled dude, reeking of cheap tropical concoctions, and his odor was notable even over the general bar-lavatory miasma. “Aaaaaaaaah!” he groaned as he let forth a torrent of boozy man-water.

Greg, by this time, was already on his way to the sinks. To imagine this scene appropriately, picture him as Jude Law. He’s charming, handsome, dapper, and dainty. He does not speak with a British accent however, which is lucky for me because otherwise ladies would always be all over him and I’d never be able to get his opinion on the latest Flaming Lips CD. But, nevertheless, for the purposes of this scene, he will be Jude Law. The urinating drunk, on the other hand, is Tom Waits playing Renfield in that Francis Ford Coppola Dracula movie from awhile back. You know, the one where he’s locked up in a dungeon, covered in drool, and bellowing “MASTER! MAAAAASTER!”. That’s sort of what the peeing guy is like, except without the glasses.

So now that you’ve got those two in your head, envision Greg dutifully and thoroughly washing, all the while hoping that the old drunk won’t try to talk to him. Unfortunately, in the men’s room of any bar in any state in the union, the old drunk will always talk to you. This is no exception. “Lemme tell you, kid,” he growls as he squirts the leavings of his fifth Hawaiian Sunset onto the stained porcelain, “I ain’t doin’ too well out there...”

“Oh,” Greg says, a model of decorum and civility. He wouldn’t dream of cutting his hand-washing short to escape the ramblings of a stranger in the lavatory. That would be unsanitary and, while Greg is a great many things, unsanitary is not one of them.

“With the ladies is what I’m talking about. THE LADIES!” the drunk clarifies and Greg gives his best sympathetic head nod and tongue cluck. Stifling a belch, the drunk asks “You know what I need?”

Greg would prefer to leave the question hanging, but simple courtesy demands that he not do this. “What’s that?” he inquires, flicking his hands dry in the basin, since the communal towel supplied by the bar for this purpose is a festering nest of dried boogers and herpes.

With disturbing earnestness, the drunk declares, “I need a kid like you to spread the word about my ten inch cock. Think you can help me?”

“Ummmmm...” was all Greg could say. Deciding that his hands were adequately cleaned and dried, he hurries out of the bathroom and back to our table, where he tells all of us what had just transpired.

Of course, given the hour and the number of drinks already consumed, this thrilled us to no end. “Did you see it?” someone asked, and Greg emphatically denied it. “Who is it? Who? WHO?” someone else wondered and Greg pointed him out. We tried to be smooth about checking him out, but circumstances precluded this. We all looked over at once and all broke out laughing at once. It was perhaps cruel of us, but Greg was, in fact, holding up his end of the bargain. He was getting the word out.

Once we had gotten our fill of him, we turned our discussion to the question of whether or not he did, in fact, have a ten inch penis. Most of us concurred that he did not, although some abstained from speculating on this matter. From there we moved on to the most crucial issue his statement had raised: whether “spreading the word” about his allegedly massive member would do him any good. Were there any women out there who would take that bait? Personally, I hoped not. That would require a woman to think something along these lines: “Well, he’s pretty overweight, kind of wrinkly, too short for me, drunk as hell, incoherent, drooling on himself, and he smells like a pile of three month old sausage laying in a puddle of cat vomit. But–hey–he claims to have a ten inch penis! Saddle up, Herbie!” And the operative word there is “claims”. Because there was really no evidence either way.

Unfortunately for the poor guy, I don’t think it really works like that. I wouldn’t want to meet the lady who could be swayed so easily. Of course, if such tactics really do work, maybe I’ve been trying too hard all these years. Maybe I ought to give up all these attempts at wit and personal hygiene and from here on out just coast on an impressive, improbable measurement. Or maybe not.