I knew an exotic beauty and was thinking of doing a painting of her.
She demurred and asked me instead to make one of Betty Boop.
So I did, just to see if I could make it work. She’s about 12″ tall
Never did get to try for the portrait of the girl herself because she moved away shortly after I finished this.
Gave it to her of course.
No idea where it is now…
The Mating Dance is a series of obvservations of human natrure in pursuit of (more or less) romantiic endeavor They are not in any particular order. That would imply rationality .
The Mating Dance
The “Butterknife Girl”
She who squeegees her body against you as she talks to you…
She pays particular attention to pressing her breasts against you…
Making sure you know she’s there…
The Mating Dance
So a girl asked me how guys could be so dumb when it came to relating to women. She was quite beautiful but the object of her attention seemed to ignore her.
I said “It’s the Stegosaurus Syndrome.”
“What’s that…?”
“You’ve seen pictures of a Stegosaurus. Big dinosaur… had big plates along its spine and a spiked tail. It had a small brain and allegedly had a swelling in its spine to help run its ten ton body. Guys are like that. Nut sized brain and the rest of their brains in their ass.”
The Mating Dance…
There was this little feathermerchant of a guy… skinny, mussed hair, jeans and tee shirt type came in one night and went from one girl to the next and said “Wanna f___k”? He didn’t ask it exactly lewdly… it was more like you would ask someone if they’d like a cup of coffee. He was making an offer…
I heard about this and was about to go tell the guy to settle down when, to everyone’s surprise, the little guy left with a smiling girl in tow…
“I guess it’s true.” Dan said.
‘What’s that?” asked Self
“If you go to bat often enough you’re bound to get a hit.”
The Mating Dance
So she came up to him as he sat at his barstool and ran her hand along his inner thigh… she, a petite, pretty little blonde with short hair…
“Got a girlfriend?”
Startled by her boldness, he blurted “Uh… no…”
“What a waste!” she said, giving him a gentle but firm grope in the crotch.
He didn’t see her for the rest of the night…
He never saw her again, actually… He still thinks of her to this day…
The Mating Dance
“I’m the girl your mommy warned you about…”
The Mating Dance
It’s closing time and she comes up to him and says “I’m not wearing a bra.”
He ponders this for a second and gently reaches inside the scoop neckline of her peasant blouse and caresses a bare. fully aroused, breast.
“You’re right. You’re not wearing a bra…”
The Mating Dance
There are some perfumes that combine with skin in such a way that they are a pheromonic version of a lethal weapon because they short circuit all reason.
Not all brands do the same thing on all bodies nor do they affect all nostrils the same.
There is an art to wearing perfume be ye male or female. I had been given a sample of cologne called Chaz that I used until the company discontinued it. One of the crew had received it when she’d bought some makeup and potions. It took me a while to learn how to apply it without it being too much. Definitely less is more.
I got it figured out and the complements rolled in even going so far as some women making a point of nuzzling my beard when they first came in.
Women’s perfumes were another matter. Some just ‘smell nice’ but some, some, when combined with the chemistry of certain sweat glands, had a euphorically derailing effect on some men rendering them helpless…
The Mating Dance
“She doesn’t know it yet but she’s about to meet the love of her life.”
Apparently she still doesn’t.
She eventually got him eighty sixed out of the bar.
The Mating Dance
“What’s your name, little girl, what’s your name?”
The Mating Dance
Not pretty enough? Have a few more. By closing time she (or he as it may apply) will look gorgeous!
The Mating Dance
She was a lovely woman.
Dark eyed with inhumanly long eyelashes and a brilliant smile, full soft looking lips…
She may once had a truly lovely figure but she has gotten a little heavy. Far from being obese, however, she seems to be very aware of her breasts and knows the effect full bosoms have on men.
She doesn’t flirt as much as she expects to be admired and desired. When she tries to flirt. she simpers, probably because she may not really want a romantic liaison.
With some just being wanted is gratification in itself…
The Mating Dance
“I see you waggin’ yer tail…”
The Mating Dance
“How Can I Love You If You Won’t Lay Down?”
Chuck Wagon and The Wheels
Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…
1990
A singular year…
A singular event…
A lasting effect…
George Bush (the elder) is president, Dan Quayle vice…
Gas is 1.22 a gallon.
First class postage was a quarter.
The first Gulf War will kick off in August
Dances With Wolves will take best picture that year.
And California passed a new law lowering the blood-alcohol limit.
“…California laws lowering the legal definition of DUI impairment to 0.08% BAC and requiring the immediate license suspension of persons violating that law have proven to be effective in reducing the incidence of alcohol-involved accidents, according to a recent California Department of Motor Vehicles’ Research and Development Branch publication. In 1990, the 0.08% blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit and administrative license suspension laws were implemented in California and were expected to have a large potential for reducing the incidence of drunk driving. At the time, California was only the fourth state to introduce such a low BAC limit…”
Turn up the lights, the party’s over. Well, not over…just severely wet blanketed.
The new law was immediately and vigorously enforced and the effects were brutal to the drinking populace.
What used to get you an overnight in jail and a hefty fine now got you jail, license restriction, heavy fines, legal fees and Traffic School.
Overnight, it got inconvenient and very expensive to get pulled over for a DUI.
Some, of course, kept on keeping on, gambling on getting caught. Some of them never got caught. The ones who got caught were very often the ones who said “They’ll never catch me.” But some did get caught and the horror stories abounded…
“Designated drivers” was tried out. This particular duty posting was educational when it came to seeing other people getting drunk while the D/D cannot. But it worked. Except in cases where the D/D got bored and had “just a couple”…
Since two beers just about put you at the edge and the hard liquor offerings being even more potent, the end result was that people couldn’t risk getting inebriated.
So they spent less when they went out.
This meant less money to be made in the Saloon business…
True, there is a morality at work here. Carrie Nation’s WCTU is still with us in spirit.
The idea is to keep the drunk driver off the road and as such it is a good idea. Drinking and driving is responsible for a lot of annual agony for a lot of people
Sure enough, toward that end, the new BAC limit worked and the numbers showed it.
But it really didn’t keep drunk drivers off the road. But there were less of them.
However, the problem with drunk drivers is that they really think they can drive drunk.
Science hasn’t found a cure for that yet. Ya can’t fix stupidity.
Some ‘drunks’ can drive, obviously because not all drunk drivers (using the new .08 rule) get into accidents, get busted or get arrested. Some people, it could be said, were not all-over-the-road drunk if they tested to be .09. Technically, legally, ‘drunk’ but still very functional.
Unfortunately there are some seriously disfunctional drunks who drive regardless of fines, suspensions or probation. The only thing that will keep those guys off the road is death or jail.
We could try prohibition again but that didn’t work the first time around and there was ample doubt it will survive another trial.
After all that is said and done the fact remains that saloons are a business and this new law had a real impact on everyone who worked in the industry. And it seemed to affect the media, too.
Suddenly the fun and friendly drunk was no longer an entertaining thing to have as a character on TV. Writers put fewer of them in scripts.
In the latter part of the twentieth century you had “show biz” people like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin rightly calling themselves ‘saloon singers’. They both made fortunes doing it. The glass in one hand, cigarette in the other always in a tuxedo or expensive suit. The image was promoted as something to ascribe to, to mimic, to join. But few people had the opportunity to see Frank and Dean in a caberet. Even fewer had a cabaret to go to that warranted a tuxedo so the Sinatra/Martin Vegas swinger look was largely fantasy.
“Cheers” the sitcom based on a saloon, closed in 1993. True, it went into syndication but it closed its doors.
It was almost as if your parents had come home, caught you being bad and really put The Clamp on drinkage as punishment.
One of the regular Liar’s Dice players was a defense attorney who let it be known that handling DUI’s was his specialty and enjoyed the position of drinking heartily and playing dice with those destined to be his clients. The Bar became his office in some ways.
No matter what kind of morality is at stake here, the fact remains that the legal limit being tied to .08 BAC had a definite impact on the income of saloons like The Bar.
One part of the industry fought back and is still fighting as of this writing.
The brewers.
The beer guys.
Gone are the tuxedoes. Now it’s jeans, a turned around baseball cap to cover the bald spot, am untucked tee shirt to cover the bulge and navel lint and a Budweiser. The brand may vary but the message in the commercials is the same. The guy who drinks this stuff and dresses that way is the guy who gets the babes.
Beer advertisers have divided the world into two camps.
One group is the football loving beer drinkers and the people who drive Detroit’s gas guzzling T-Rex’s, the pickup trucks and SUV’s.
The other group is ‘Everybody Else.’
And it is the first group who control the sports industry and sports channels. Because it is those people who control the Remote.
The beauty of this to the breweries is that the beer drinker might be at the event itself but far more of them are usually at home watching the game on TV. All drinking beer.
Some “sports bars” draw business based on sports but it now took a close race between teams to make the customer risk driving home from a bar after sitting for three and a half hours drinking beer with the New Law in effect.
But the guy drinking at home doesn’t have to worry about that.
A saloon does worry about it. They have to because the guy at home is not spending money in the saloons including The Bar.
A second salvo to the industry was the record/play visual media… the rise of the VCR. and it’s offspring the DVD.
The effect this New Toy had on the business took longer to impact. In fact it just kinda slid in there on the sneak…
We let it in because, hey, you could record shows to watch at another time. You could record a favorite show, go out and party and watch the favorite show later. Helluva deal!
It seemed like an innocent thing that blossomed into a meteoric success.
But the new machine had a more compelling trick.
Now you could actually rent a recent movie, order a pizza delivery and watch the movie from home!
This meant you didn’t have to get dressed, drive, spend money on a dinner… pay cover charge and pay more money for alchohol per drink that you could have at home much, much cheaper.
You didn’t have to risk rejection or otherwise complicating your life or risk embarrassing yourself. No traffic problems, parking hassles and best of all, no cops…no DUI hassles.
And if you had a squeeze, a lover, why, watching a movie at home put you near a bed. Very handy if the Carnal Urge came upon you. There was the plus of your being able to pause the movie while you indulged in joyful fornication or made a trip to the fridge or to the john…
So what Satchel Paige called “the social ramble” was curtailed.
True, sitting on the couch at home couldn’t match the fun and excitement of The Bar on a good band night… the pheremonic smells in the air, the noise and the lights, the extremely flattering glow of dim lights and candles on the tables that do wonders to a girl’s makeup… the loud bands, their sound deafening yet at the same time comforting. The dancing… feeling and being felt…
People still went out, to taste that, to remember that, but as they got older they went out less. They got married. Stayed home more. Whoever said two could live as cheaply as one was a damn liar and one of the first budget cuts made in a household funding is usually Entertainment.
Things changed in the Saloon business…
You still had your crop of new drinkers but they were more cautious and post-college carousing suddenly lost its appeal in light of the promised pillorying that a DUI would bring. And to catch the new batch you had to find a way to adapt to them without alienating your “regulars”, a daunting task and a largely impossible one because musical tastes change and the new guy’s music is seldom appreciated by ‘the regulars’ And your ‘regulars’ are getting older.
How did that happen?
A saloon’s life is short. They peak fast.
You only have a little time to be The New Kid On The Block and suddenly, it seems, you start pining for ‘the good old days’.
A dry season is upon the Serengeti of Saloondom
And the new law guaranteed that a Saloon, be it New Kid or Fogeybar, was going to have a smaller, more cautious herd to feed on.
Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…
There is almost a ballet, a juggling act, to watching a good bartender work.
The good ones work best under a little pressure, or so it seemed… hundreds of memorized recipes and no time to write down the requests shouted over the din of a deliriously loud band.
Their hands a blur lining up the proper glasses, add the ice, mix, pouring the alcohol, sometimes holding multiple bottles in each hand. The blender screams like a chainsaw that lost a link and magically, the drinks come out right.
If a waitress was on duty she would be helping by adding the final touches, the olive, the onion, the fruit wedge, stir sticks and straws. Four hands instead of two in a flurry of alchemy, making the drink what it needed to be. Seldom are two alike and each must have the exact finishing garnish to be correct.
Periodically, a waitress on a busy night will come up with a tray of dirty glasses and empty beer bottles to offload even as she shouts her next order. Then off she goes with a delivery of what can be to ten items, more if they carried a couple of long necked bottles of beer in the hand not holding the tray.
“Comin’ Through…!”
From its opening until it finally shut down The Bar had the best looking cocktail crew in the area for an easy fifty miles. The faces and forms would come and go because cocktailing is a draining occupation and there was quite a turnover. The Bar had basic requirements and the scheduling followed a formula. During lunchtime and “Happy Hour” one waitress usually sufficed. Two, sometimes three, very pretty girls working on band nights.
But day or night, “Very Pretty” was the standard…
_____________________________________
She was a piece of work.
The pretty legs, the nice figure, the sensuous walk and the paint… she had really lovely, soft, hands (Vargas hands) and knew how to wear rings… small and simple rather than garish and showy, to show her perfect manicure. She moved with a practiced sexuality when she wanted to, stirring lustful thoughts…knowing this but not really caring because she wasn’t looking for a man. However having the ability to raise lustful thoughts usually meant larger tips.
It’s a balancing act. Make the men like her but at the same time she manages to let the women know that she’s not out to Steal The Boyfriend.
Were all of the cocktail waitresses like the one described above?
Hail, No!
But all of them had some of those qualities, some more than others but the only quality they all had was the “when she put her mind to it she was a Helluva waitress”.
You hoped.
They were a kaleidoscope of beauty… tall, short, girl next door types, striking model types, some were gamine and cute, others were heartstoppingly beautiful, beautiful enough to be actresses. Some were slender, some were not, some were tall, some were not, but all had their admirers. Few were older than twenty five. Most had problems, in that respect it was just a matter of degree… seemed that way sometimes…
Some of them were going to school…working their way through college. Some were just ‘going’ stopping at The Bar to see if it was any different than the last one they worked at. and usually finding that the set may change but the script does not.
Some, the new girls saw it as a way to make money for doing almost nothing…
“Comin’ Through…!”
Consider the left arm of a waitress…
What does a trayload of drinks weigh? Ten pounds? Twelve…?
Held at an Egyptian Dancers angle or at a frightening, arm straight overhead height as they glide miraculously through a crowded room …never spilling a drop.
We won’t try to describe how precarious it is to tote a tray full of empty long-necked beer bottles through the same crowd on the return trip. A crowd steadily getting more inebriated, a crowd mostly concerned with its own pleasure. Empties are less stable than full bottles. What keeps them from falling off the tray? What keeps the drinks from spilling?
It’s a secret that ancient slaves figured out thousands of years ago and passed on to all servants bound or free and the secret is…
“They won’t spill if you don’t look at them”
…and they don’t!
A miracle of physics, of balance, based on blind faith that not looking at something keeps it steady.
Ah, yes… for a large part of the run of The Bar I hired the waitresses…
Stay tuned… I have stories and fables…
“Comin’ Through…!”
This is one I actually had hanging on the wall in my apartment. Taken from a magazine tear-out
Because it’s here I can relate what is written on the back.
First line reads “Didn’t get her name” But it has an asterisk and it goes on to say
“Based on a pose by Barbara Bouchet. Not a portrait” 3/17/93
It was a hard angle for me to catch facially and she ended up looking more like Marlene Dietrich than Barbara Bouchet who was one of “Bond’s Girls” in a James Bond movie of the day.
The face could have come out better but, overall, it’s a nice pose and a fair looking work.
