from the archives.....family fun time

Some years ago when I still hung out with strippers and our local “family” crowd, I got invited to go see a very special form of entertainment. You see I used to frequent this bar in what is known now as the River Market area, but back then it was referred to as the River Quay area. If memory serves me correctly, the bar was family owned and served, and any night of the week you’d might see a famous Mob cat sitting around the bar or if the timing was wrong kicking the balls out of whomever offended em.

You had Mob guys, strippers, pimps and various mislead members of the public hanging out there. You never heard a last name used and you never asked. You either went by a nickname or just the first name. The only time you used a last name was when you happened to greet one of the Family guys, and that’s if they let you. Hey, it was their place and you went by their rules. Even today I have problems asking people for their last names. And back then that area was run like a fiefdom and unless you were one of the Knights or a cop, you toed the line.

I dated one of the dancers that worked there so I stayed quiet and kept to my end of the bar. The one area there that was fair game was the pool table. As long as you had skills the table was wide open. Well one night I was playing pool with this cat about my age. He beat me and I beat him and he cussed me and I cussed him back. This went on for some hours till I lost some money and ended up throwing my pool cue at his head. My girl who had been watching us play freaked and ran up to me and asked me what the fuck I was doing.

She was paler then usual and shaking like a leaf. It turned out that the cat that I’d been playing pool with and throwing shit at was the grandson of this “so fuckin serious Mob guy”. Suddenly I pictured myself catching hot lead with my teeth. But the guy turned out to be super cool and wanted to hang and get drunk.

Rule one; “never take a gift from one of these guys”. If you do, then they’ll own you.
Rule two, always keep rule one in the front of your head. You’ll think the gold watch was no big deal until you’re sitting in front of the bank in that stolen car asking yourself how could you be so stupid. Word.

The guy asked me if I wanted to go to a club down the street. Now I’d heard of this club and it was known to be quite the shit. Word was that if you went there for lunch and gave the proper tip, you could get a blowjob with those fries. But Friday nights was the kicker. The place featured an old fashioned south of the border “Dog & Pony show”, except with no dog and no pony. They had a donkey instead. Yeah boy! Show your secret handshake and a fistful of money and you got to see a woman do a donkey, and get this, it was a betting event!

Without getting all graphic and shit, what they did was put numbered bands around the donkey’s dick, and you placed your bets on a certain number. I’ll let your imaginations fill in the rest. Needless to say I got invited and I kept thinking of rule one. And I kept thinking about the freakiness of the whole thing and how it might affect my young life forever. So I passed. But I sometimes wonder if it’s a good thing that those days are long gone.


"and the monkey flipped the switch"