Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [143]
back to my high school days and all those horrid yet great fun beer blasts we had where everybody tried to cop a few free feels off their or somebody else's girlfriend really made no difference before puking all over our tennis shoes. What ever happened to those good old times? Apparently they were back again for these young citizens and scores, nay, armies like them ‘cross the nation, who perhaps were more fortunate than even we (who were there and repress traumatic memories) realize in having never endured the first go-round of those wonderful old days, which of course was why they were all hopping on it now. Right on ‘n’ more power to ‘em, I say, quaffing another hearty Viking stein of brew, ‘cause as ever power's to the people and these are one kind of people just as worthy as any other of their day in the sun, just folks and not the first in human history to lob a rotten egg or two your way. But gazing fondly backwards I came upon something which I’d all but forgotten, the noxious memory of which was still enough to jolt me from my reverie. I looked at the big can full of red fluids. “Ah, no thanks anyway,” I said. “Uh, say, that wouldn’t just happen to be one of these things you hear about sometimes, where they take about fifty fifths of all of ‘em different kinds of booze and empty ‘em together in one big vat…” They leered at me. I hightailed it back to our own special little dressing room off stage left. Here's what our gentle cultured hosts were so kind as to provide our little dressing room with: (1) chair, folding; (2) a broken card table partially propped on some stacked cardboard boxes; (3) great and historic paddles that’d warmed umpteen generations of pledges’ butts, hung upon the wall in precise symmetrical formation all the way around the room, which wasn’t all that far since it only really had two walls in the first place; (4) best of all, our very own BEER MACHINE! Yes, that's correct: a soft drink dispenser just like by any gas station, except ours had cans of Coors and Miller and Lite in it. Of course, you had to pay. But the beers were reasonable at 50 cents per. Like many magical devices, this beer dispenser contained a surprise within. The surprise was that when you put in your quarters and pressed down on the handle, no can of Coors came rolling out. But do listen, this is unusually cute. What you had to do, see, was get down on your knees, then stick your hand and then your whole arm almost up to the shoulder in, up, around, back, over, under, and through this monster until you’ve almost broken your arm and worn out the knees on your pants, and only then, just then, did your numb embarrassed fingertips suddenly run smack up against a cool plump little can of beer just waiting there all for you. So you’d wrench it out, around, down, etc., after which you were free to drink. Now, I don’t think it was just my chemical state that made this operation seem more than a little bit like sticking your right arm up a great robot cunt from Stanley Kubrick's dreams, there to wrench off perhaps a fallopian tube. Freud: whatta guy. What I’m really still pondering, actually, is the possibility that just maybe this was not in fact a defective machine awaiting repair at all. Just maybe this was a deliberate sabotage, maintained this way all the time, in the cause of ribald party winky fun ‘n’ noisome hijinx. What better way to prove your manhood before the whole house than to risk one's only strong right limb away aloft in the maw of a vibrating corporate clammy cunt complete with rubber around the opening? Frigidity jokes. Comparisons with recent dates. Why, the possibilities were endless. Which led me to a further line of speculation: did they reserve this little manual safari for pledges and unsuspecting but good-natured (hey, I can take a joke; what the hell, guys!) strangers like us, or did they see to it that all of them had to go through these post-penetration exertions and contortions every single time they needed a fresh can?!?! Go on, tell me it's out of the question! One never really does know precisely