Punctuated Drinking

March or April...

PART I

Taichung was hosting the final Olympic baseball qualifying round.

Ton and Nat came in from Changhua one Saturday night to catch a game and drink beer.

They wisely took the train in and I met them at the ballpark.

It was Korea vs. Australia.

The Koreans had cheerleaders. And chants. And horns. Those fucking horns.

Kevlar joined us in the second or third inning. This was before he quit smoking.

The Koreans won handily, forcing the mercy rule so the game ended before we ran out of beer.

"Damn," said Nat. "It's still early. Let's have another one."

So we went outside. We sucked down our last cans as the parking lot emptied.

"Let's get to town!"

PART II

"I know a place," said I. "It's called Fairies."

So off we went, Nate on my scooter and Ton in Kevlar's bitch seat.

Fairies sits on the corner of the busy intersection of Zhong Ming and Bo Guan Rds. across from the Seven.

Or, as our friend Dean likes to call it, "the corner of Carbon and Monoxide."

We plunked down inside and started in again.

We drank and laughed and smoked.

We learned that Nat wrote a book about Taiwanese vampires.

"I talked to a Taoist priest about them. He says they definitely exist but you'd never meet one because they'd never choose to show themselves to a mere mortal. They're too powerful for us to see them in this dimension."

"So do they feed on people? I they never reveal themselves to people then what do they eat?"

"I guess they must eat something. Animals, I guess."

"I saw a movie once. They eat teenagers," said Kevlar.

Ton talked a lot about his man-wife, Paul. And Chico.

There was nothing else worth repeating.

PART III

We stepped over to the Seven for a last round.

Everyone got a beer except for Tom. He got a raspberry wine cooler. In a can.

Next to the Seven there is a bar.

"Look at that bar. The Coma," said Kevlar.

"Looks dead," said Nat.

I looked more closely at the blackened windows, colored lights and sign above the door.

"That's not the Coma, Kev, it's the Comma."

"Yeah, the Comma," added Ton.

"A bar named after a punctuation mark," said Nat. "That's kinda dumb."

"It's not dead, Nat, it's just pausing!" said Kevlar. "Hee, hee, hee!"

"This is the punctuated drinking district," I said. "Across the street is The Period."

"The Period? What kind of bar is that?"

"It's a lesbo bar."

"Oh! And over there?"

"That's The Colon. It's a fag bar."

"And the Semi Colon?"

"For the bi-curious, I guess."

"I think that's all."

"What? No Exclamation Point?"

"That was a redneck bar but it got shut down for being too rowdy."

"The Back Slash is still open. Everyone has really long finger nails over there."

"Yeah, we're gonna get a cab."

And never saw any of them ever again.

Except Kevlar.

He's always around.