So there I was, in this roadside tavern that was like every seedy cantina in every movie ever made to the power of Danny Trejo, but absent that most necessary aspect: the hot ladies. I shrugged and tramped over to the handsome fellow tending bar and waved a grasper in a manner I hoped would be interpreted as both friendly and heterosexual."Hello, friend," I said to his glowering, multiply-punched face, and I kicked my vocal register up a friendlier notch or three. "Nice place you got here, Charlo."
"The name's Hector," he said, in the least pleasant way it's possible to give a stranger your name. "And I don't like robots in my place."
A quick receptor scan of the place spotted a total of five androids, one of whom was wearing a t-shirt that read, "Robots Drink Free at Hector's Roadhouse Every Tuesday!"
"Goddamn, Charlo, I do believe it's Tuesday, and I am parched!"
"My name ain't fuckin' Charlo, and what's the day to you, grease-muncher?"
A sudden hush fell over the joint. The room was on edge. A scorpion smoking a cigar nudged an armadillo, who nudged a potted plant, who nudged an intelligent vacuum cleaner, and this process went on around the place, each nudger nudging an even more exotic and improbable nudgee until every eyeball, antenna and sensory pod was pointing in my direction. I sensed that it was time for me to blind the onlookers with the shine of my titanium balls or risk, at worst, not receiving a free beer. "Well, Charlo, I call all barkeeps that so that it cuts down on the amount of dumb motherfuckers' names I have to burden my positronic matrix with. Maybe you should mind your own fuckin' business and pour me a drink on the house before I smash my cock on the bar and cut you with it."
The silence that ensued was quiet enough to hear a pin drop, and in fact Bustin McChops, the Rodeo Clown Who Demonstrates Literary Cliches, at that moment dropped one and it was like an avalanche of cinder blocks crushing a bear made out of an Erector Set. (Man, I hadn't seen Bustin in ages! Everybody was in this place!) Slowly, Hector's face didn't change one bit from his usual pre-violent sneer, but I could sense that the crisis was over. He grabbed a glass, filled it from a tap that read, "Beer, You Fuckin' Pussy," and he slapped it down with no ceremony. "On the house, robot."
"Thanks." I leaned against the bar, traded some looks with the populace, and took a long drink. The beer was surprisingly good, like one of those fancy microbrewed bottles of hobo piss. It hit the spot. Everybody was good and relaxed, so I decided to ask the question nagging at the back of my skull: "Hey, what's the deal with the lack of pussy in this place?"
The tension ramped immediately back up to the boiling point. Bustin McChops pulled out a knife and attempted to cut the tension to demonstrate how thick it was, but only managed to nick a private eye in the shoulder-blade and start a mild bar-scuffle. It ended when the P.I. shot twelve men in the face.
Hector glared at me and ate a shot-glass.
"Was it something I said?"
A slender, prim man in a bowler hat stepped out of the crowd and cleared his throat. "Ahem," he said. He actually pronounced the word. "All of the, er, 'pussy', as you call it, around these parts is, er...spoken for."
I scoffed. "Spoken for? By who?"
There was a crash of lightning in the dry-as-hell desert outside the front door, and a dark figure in leather and hate came striding in as his theme music swelled and fifteen men fell to the ground clutching their dicks because they didn't deserve to have them in his presence. The stranger turned his sunglasses to me. "By me," he declared.
("I'll never have an orgasm again," whimpered a man in the fetal position, who then pissed himself.)
"Well, hello there," I said to the stranger. "I loved you in Captain Ron." I finished my beer and stood up straight. I would have flexed my muscles if I'd had any. "I don't suppose you have any vaginas you're not using?"
He took two steps in my direction. He rubbed his hand along the leathery bulge of his crotch, and so help me, I was jealous of that hand. "As a matter of fact, I don't," he said, then spit on the floor. "What do you think about that?"
"I think I love you, Kurt Russell, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to fight you to the death. No offense."
"None taken, BLOGTRONIC," Kurt said with a smile. "We've got a lot of history to settle...it might as well end here."
Bustin McChops bounced out of the crowd in his chaps and grease-paint. "To Be Continued!" he shouted.
