Glass Rose, Blue Hairs, Space Hog and Zebra Dog.

It was more like a dream than a reality, in fact I still can't believe there really is such a place.

Time: Friday Night, 10:30pm.
Location: The bar which I work.
Comments/Details: Ali and I were sitting at the bar having some tasty cocktails making plans for the rest of our evening. The options we came up with were go to the sew fest, which I am still unsure what the hell it is, eat or go to my friend Sara's suprise birthday party at the All Star Lanes. Seeing that I had accidentally left my sewing machine at home I recommended we did not attend the sew fest and to skip eating to hot foot it over to the suprise party. Miss. Ali agreed, so we were off.

We pulled up out front of the bowling alley, or rather we crashed into the light post in the lot because as Ali says, "It's really quite a bore using brakes" so she's constantly driving over medians and crashing into walls. This could be the reason her front bumper is in the back of the truck, and her radiator dangles out front of the beast, who knows. We headed into the lanes to see Sara and tell her happy birthday and pepper her with lil' kisses, but it was a no go. She hadn't arrived yet instead the lanes were full of 'The Croutons', as I like to call them, a tatoo'd ruffneck mob of a motorcycle club who frequents my bar. I saw Tommy, the crouton I'm closest with, and I slo-mo ran and twirled and rolled and kicked all the way into his arms. He in turn sucked on the side of my head for a hello. I said my hello's to the rest of the crew and grabbed at Ali and stated it was time for the bar.

She said, "after the bathroom".

So of course we both went and here is where my magical night started to give me little suprise nuggets, and I AM talking about what happened in the bathroom... it's just may not be what you think. We rounded the end of the dank locker corridor into the womens bathroom. Coming out of the stalls were...

1. Portly woman with an aerosol sprayed cotton ball like puff of a head that was actually the softest peach color I have ever seen gracing the top of an old one. She was in a snug teal shiny jogging suit that had a gold chord swirling all across sewn on the jacket.

2. Short miniature woman roughly early 30's in a stone washed mini skirt and flowered button down. Her hair had wings!

The two of them were standing in front of the mirror cackling away as Ali and I chose our stalls. As we were filing our papers, the big one belted out "Well hell one of you got old over flowy and the other one got old spitty.", then she laughed and lauged. We all laughed and laughed and had now joined them at the sinks to wash our hands as the toilet spit and the bathroom flooded.

"Come on girls, lets get a drink." The miniature woman said.

As we all walked and laughed over near the entrance of the bowling alley to the bar I heard the sounds of Queen getting louder and louder... this wasn't normal Queen ,however, that was not Freddy Mercury's voice I was hearing. I pushed aside the shiny green wrapping string curtain that had been placed in the doorway and walked into my very special, and newly favorite, insane assylum karaoke time warp. Had I died and gone to heaven? I couldn't have found a more perfect place, and the night hadn't even given me it's best yet. It was a visual overload, and I couldn't even grasp it at that moment in time. I walked over to the bar recognizing the bartender and said, "Aren't you one of Jodie's friends?". She said, "Ya' but that's not how you know me, I met you one night with Patrick and Anna.". This I suddenly remembered, Anna used to be my roomate and Patrick was a crazy bartender I used to know that I called Ground Beef. The three of them, Ground Beef Anna and this bartender, stumbled into our house one night coked out of their brains with an empty bottle of Beam all rearin' up for a threesome. I gently detoured them to Ground Beef's house where apparently Anna did some crazy monkey moves on the kids and wet his bed.

"My name is Winky." I told the bartender afraid she may not remember.
"Amanda", she said and we shook hands.

I grabbed my vodka soda from the bar as they called Julie Irene to the stage for her big number. It seemed she was quite well known and very popular with the old folks at the back table, you could tell by the way everyone screamed and clapped. I couldn't even tell you what song started up but it was some Taylor Dayne/Juice Newton-esk 80's love song. The blue hair's rushed the stage like molasses, and I turned to see where they were going. I almost dropped my drink at the sight that lay before me when I turned. I stood paralyzed. On the stage stood Julie Irene in very tiny purple denim shorts and a lavender frumpy sweatshirt. She had long skinny legs with white hightops, the kind with the velcro strap around the ankle. This woman had an honest to God mullet, not one of those 'cool' mullets all the kids have been trying to sport over the last couple of years, a mullet she had probably had since 1981. She was very thin, face all sunken in, looked very hungry like maybe she wanted a sandwich or something. I imagined that by the way she was twitching around and holding the mic like it was trying to get away from her and the funny faces she was making while belting out(actually sang well) her song that she had recently rehit her crack pipe, or more likely... never put it down. You've seen the sort the one rummaging through the grocery store looking for the glass rose and chore boys. The blue hairs had made it to the area in front of the stage now and were deep into some serious slow dancing. I just stood and stared.

"Close your mouth", Ali said as she nudged my arm.

I closed it as Julie Irene jumped off the stage, still singing, and walked(walked kinda' like Frankenstein legs all kicking to the outside taking too big of steps) over to the middle table where two large american indian woman sat straight faced with their palms down on the table. Julie Irene slung her arm around the neck of the one facing the stage and threw her body back, kicking her leg to the heavens, poiting her elbow up as she crooned with all her might. The women gave no reaction.

"Close your mouth", Ali said as she nudged my arm.

I closed it as the song came to an end. I hadn't even noticed my birtday buddy had come in and was staring at me like "hi are you going to say happy birthday to me?".

"Happy Birthday, were you suprised?" I asked.
"No I knew all about it." Sara responded, "This place is right up your alley huh?".
"I can't believe it." I said realizing we both looked and sounded like we may have died because our eyes were racing around the room surveying all the nuggets.

Sara left to go be at her party on the lanes, I found a booth in the bar as Ali sat next to me flippng through the book to find something to sing. She submitted her song Bonnie Tyler 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart', and I decided to go have a smoke. I walked outside to find another crack head this one however was wearing a long camel colored coat smoking one of those long skinny cig's with flowers on it. She immediately grabbed my arm and told me she liked my tatoo then showed me all of hers. She had her kids names on roses on her wrist and some crazy trbal thingy on her lower back and the ever popular dolphin jumping out of a wave on her ankle. The lady finished her smoke and told me to join her and her friends when I came back in. As she left me the hottest guy came walking out, so hot I wanted to pull my arms off. We smiled at each other and struck up a conversation and flirted and shuffled from one leg to the other. My head was getting hot so I had to walk away but I made sure I turned back and gave him a wink from Winky before going back in.

As I made my way back to the booth Ali was being called to the stage.

"...every now and then I get too fucking tired of the sound of my fuckin' tears, turn around, I can't fucking look at Winky 'cause she's makin' me laugh tooo fucking hard, turn around bright eyes,....." Ali sang while sitting on the edge of the stage as I realized we we're beginning to get a little sauced.

She finished and the host got on the mic to say, "I don't mind if you cuss if it's in the lyrics of the song but try and keep added curse words to a minimum".

Ali laughed and asked if the guy standing by the indian women was good looking or was she just drunk. I told her if she liked guys who wore coats with fur lined hoods and pants that are waiting for a river to blow through all hiked up in their mangina's with karate shoes and an independent T shirt then she had struck gold. So she called him over and they started their own little flirty conversation, as Tommy found his way to the booth and placed himself next to me to suck on the side of my head some more, then the hot guy walked in and layed eyes on me with old head sucky. He lowered his head in disappointment and turned and left, I wanted to call out "he's just my friend who acts all crazy and sucks the side of my head or licks my forehead sometimes", but I couldn't because Tommy was trying to cram his hand in my mouth. What was happening around me Ali was now making out with the stranger Tommy was wasted the blue hairs were cutting some serious rug along with old camel coat cracky. Purple Shorts cracky looked like she was trying to chew her face off starting with her lips. My head was spinning, I had to get out of there but Ali was now lip locked with old weirdo and Tommy was climbing all over me like I was a damned jungle gym. I slid under the table and began to crawl from the whole nightmare, or dream depending on how you look at it. As I hit the entrance to the bar I saw through the green string someone else on their knees crawling toward the door to the outside world. I peeked through the green and it was the hottest guy ever, again. He leaned forward in his crawl stance and gave me a kiss. We both jumped to our feet, because the kiss was explosive, and he thrust open the front door and yelled, "run"! Which I did, I ran and ran and ran and some many miles later I realized when he said run he probably meant for us to run away together. I don't know what happened when he said run it triggered some sort of race horse instinct in me and I took off. I stopped running and looked around a bit, I had no idea where I was. There wasn't a soul in sight.

"Dang, what am I gonna do now?" I said outloud to myself.

Out of nowhere, I mean nowhere it was like she fell from the sky, this woman in a chemical suit gas mask and all came whirling up on a scooter. She handed me a Miller Lite 12 pack box for my head and told me to jump on, that we had to move quick 'cause the 'Zebra Dog' was hot on our tracks. I asked no questions, put on my box and hopped aboard. She putted along at a raging 30 miles per an hour, just whipping around the bends. Somehow we ended up in front of my bar at the stop light, I jumped off. Startled she flipped her head around and asked what I thought I was trying to prove. I responded, "World peace does exist and I now know it is all up to you space hog.". She meowed loudly like a cat in heat and sped away at 30 miles per an hour.

I walked into the bar to see all the familiar faces, found a cozy stool and ordered one Fenet Branca neat. I woke up two days later in my tub wearing a gas mask.