DRAMA QUEEN
BY DELL FRANKLIN
Sheila’s almost 30 now and has a slight pooch to her belly and that primal ass is broadening just a bit, but who cares (especially if you’re drunk or high) the skin is still a flawless porcelain, the implanted boobs stand tall and hardly move when she displays her flouncing strut. She has pert features and large expressive brown eyes that shift constantly in a staggering range of human emotions throughout the days and nights spent in the musty cavernous bar—flitting from confidante to confidante, famished for gossip, forever commiserating, solemnly confidential, exulting at another’s happiness, tearful at another’s misfortune or loss…back and forth, in and out of the restroom, locked in the phone booth, sad, angry, hysterical, Sheila at the bar needing hugs, the lighting of a freshly cadged cigarette, a free shot of Jack, which she tosses down with gusto and the slamming of glass upon the bar…suddenly smiling.
Sheila has intimate relationships with all bar regulars, though not with me.
“Why do you hate me?” she demands to know, jabbing her unlit cig at me as I take a break from pouring drinks. I light it. “You never hug me.”
“I don’t hate you, Sheila. I like you. But you’re a dangerous woman. One hug and I might be seduced and my life destroyed.”
“Oh blooey. It wouldn’t hurt to be nice to me, Dell.”
“I’m always nice to you, Sheila.”
“I know. You’re a dear. You’re my friend. I love you. You know I do. I know you look out for me and care about me--even if you don’t act like it. I know you love me, too, in your own funny way, I know…”
It goes on and on. Sheila had this affair, had this boyfriend, Jerome. Musician. Which meant he plucked a guitar and sang in a manner where you couldn’t understand the words. Lived in his parent’s summer home in Morro Bay and rented out rooms to various local druggies and ciphers.
Jerome worked at a liquor store and was fired and at a record shop and was fired and tried to get on here in Happy Jack’s as a bartender, but I sabotaged his chances with my owner/boss, so he tried other jobs, mostly waiting tables, always getting the axe, always having a big excuse and blaming everybody. He was one of those stylish charming touchy-feely guys, but also a persnickety perfectionist, had to have a little more booze or a little less mix in his drink, an extra squeeze of lime or a bigger glass. He had long curly black hair, wore form-fitting jeans, flowery long-sleeved shirts rolled up at the forearms and flared open at the chest to reveal curls of hair and a gold chain. And he wore these damn girlish fur booties like some Hollywood Boulevard type. Christ.
When he came on the scene, Sheila was between lovers and sleeping with whoever had the nose candy and could withstand her ceaseless prattle into the wee hours before she decided to devour you, as I’d heard from several sources she was of voracious sexual appetite and unparalleled imagination when it came to pleasing a man. Victims showed up at the bar the following evening with sickly, triumphant smiles, visibly drained, blotches on necks, every tom in the bar waiting their chances as Sheila completed their drug deals as go-between with the poolroom Mexicans, always rewarded by these dealers with generous toots.
Jerome met her on a Friday night—band night. Sheila knows all the musicians from all the bands and dances to all their songs in her various slinky weekend outfits, getting sweaty and over-heated, a woman who can whirl, stomp, wiggle, shimmy, shake and snake-dance with pros, gallivanting through the bar between sets, drinks lined up on the bar by local swains, often coming up with a cadged sawbuck for a shot of Jack, tipping me the dollar change, tossing down the shot, and then, drenched, still panting, asking for a cold towel or ice, and I cease what I am doing and turn her around as she lifts her mane of thick glossy brown hair and very tenderly rub ice on her long white neck, and she swoons, telling me how good it feels, “Oh God, you are sooo good to me, I just love you…”
But then she saw Jerome, and Jerome saw her, and after one slow dance they left together, and Jerome showed up the next evening bragging about how he slept with Sheila, as if she were Monroe, and they were an instant hot item, Sheila moving her few possessions from a friends apartment where she slept on a sofa to his house, Jerome at the same time lollygagging and cementing solid associations with local bands and sitting in with them during weekend gigs while Sheila danced by herself or with some harmless mooks, Sheila catching Jerome’s eyes and returning a look of devoted adoration as she blew him kisses.
Jerome became a nuisance. He felt he should get freebies like band members. I shook my head until he dug out a bill and paid and then tipped me the complimentary dollar. I repeated this process throughout the night, until hangdog Jerome went whining to unsuspecting Sheila about my shabby treatment of him.
“Why do you hate Jerome?” She asked, eyes bulging with tortured disbelief.
“I don’t hate Jerome. Vermin can’t help themselves. They’re still God’s creatures.” I grinned at her.
She was very hurt. “Jerome likes you. He wantsa be your friend.”
“I don’t make friends with customers, Sheila—it confuses our roles.”
She was starting to sniffle. “Aren’t WE friends? A tear ran down her cheek. “I thought you liked me.”
“I do, Sheila. You know I do.”
I poured out two shots of Jack, spotted Jerome lurking tensely in the background. I patted Sheila’s hand with reassuring tenderness, kissed her cheek, and we downed our shots, and when she returned to Jerome he was troubled and grave and they had a serious heart-to-heart, and Sheila suddenly got angry, started crying and ran out of the bar, a couple concerned girl friends following her, and Jerome brooded and paced and somebody bought him a drink and he talked to his musician friends during a break, and when they started playing again Sheila returned, pouty proud, girl friends commiserating, and she had another shot and soon Jerome was off the stage for another serious heart-to-heart and they suddenly hugged and kissed and everybody clapped as they left, and it seemed for a week or so they lived together in harmonious bliss, until Jerome somehow escaped Sheila’s probing eyes and fucked one of a band’s groupies and Sheila found out and went berserk, drinking herself into an abomination, one minute sobbing, the next minute raging or whirling on the dance-floor, living at a friend’s, up for days doing meth, finally ending up at the emergency room with heart palpitations, and staying away for a week until she was fully recovered and wan and re-emerging just in time to meet Marvin.
Marvin was new to Happy Jack’s. He wore glasses. He was around 30. He had a job.
“He’s got a job!” Sheila announced to anybody within earshot. “I can’t remember the last time I had a guy with a job. I mean, he’s got an occupation. He’s a printer.”
“He’s very green,” I warned Sheila. “I don’t think the poor boy’s terribly experienced with women.”
She grinned, winked, as Marvin returned from the restroom, plunking down money for another round. Soon they became an item, and just as soon Jerome began hanging around, wanting to talk, making excuses for his cheating (“I was fucked up out of my mind on Ecstasy!”), pleading, vowing his love, all this while Marvin waited, waited, Marvin following Sheila around like a puppy, clinging, Sheila clinging back, and Marvin, who at first only drank the occasional draft beer and did not smoke or do drugs, transformed overnight into a bit of a misguided mess, looking blotchy and disheveled, and confused, and finally distraught and irritable, trying to get Sheila to quit moving drugs and settle down and start a family and get away from this bar crowd (she smoked and looked bored as he made his desperate plea), and so she dumped him and went back to Jerome, and Marvin snapped and broke into their house in a drug-crazed rage and beat up Sheila and then beat up a terrified Jerome and afterwards tied him up and lit his hair on fire, hysterical Sheila having to scamper to her feet and beat out the fire with her best coat and hosing down Jerome while Marvin took out a knife and threatened to cut off his prick, but Sheila turned on him with the hose and screamed and yelled and Marvin fled, disappeared, leaving his job and apartment, a really big event in Morro Bay, everybody talking about it, in the San Luis Obispo paper and on local TV news, Jerome interviewed alongside a still emotional Sheila, his hair hanging in singed strands, one of his eyebrows gone.
She lasted another month with Jerome, who shaved his head and grew a Fu Man Chu, and finally left him for good (he was dealing cocaine and hogging his stash and fucking her friends). Sheila spent days and nights in the bar, moping, lethargic, so unhappy that no amount of cuddling, coddling, and getting fucked and devouring could alter her mood, so she hung around the Mexican dealers in the poolroom, eyes glittering, tongue-flicking, lips chewing, losing weight and developing dark puffs beneath her eyes, and she began complaining about her liver and kidneys and made a couple emergency runs to the hospital in San Luis Obispo, only to return and start in again, informing everybody she was dying and didn’t care, and how she had cancer while living in Hollywood after she’d been married and divorced from a porno director and had miscarriages and became a stripper, then a call girl, then a street hooker, then a bulimic glutton, eventually suffering a complete nervous breakdown that landed her in an asylum, and finally in a hospital where she had an operation on her sexual organs and could no longer have children, sniffle-sniffle, poor baby.
Jerome made one last attempt at “saving her,” eyebrow restored, hair growing, beggarly and solicitous, having spent a month in jail for warrants, determined to “put his life back together and get a real job and get away from this low-life bar.”
Sheila glanced at me as he delivered this spiel, and said, “Get away from me, you maggot. Go fuck your coke whores.”
Jerome slithered out. For a while Sheila hung out with the Mexicans in the poolroom, where she was a pretty good left-handed shot, liked to stretch out over the table when lining up a ball and flex that ass and feel the Mexicans grin and nod. When she wasn’t in the poolroom she made the rounds with friends along the bar, mostly girls, many of them between lovers or strung out on drugs and faced with immense personal problems, almost as if it was the season for suffering.
Then she met Antonio. Movie star handsome young Mexican who didn’t sell or do drugs but worked three jobs in local seafood restaurants to support his wife and kids and sisters and brothers and parents down in Oaxaca. A cook. Fiercely proud. Polite and soft-spoken. Neither a dancer or charmer. He took Sheila out of the poolroom to the opposite end of the bar where they played her favorite video games for hours or chatted quietly, Antonio holding her hand, stroking her hair, lighting her cigarettes, conducting himself like courtly gentleman of the old school.
The poolroom Mexicans stayed away. Only Jerome came over, still hovering and pleading his case, though he was broke and kicked out of his parent’s house and hiding out with a musician friend because drug suppliers were hunting him down. When Antonio pinned him with a murderous stare, he skulked away.
Antonio was offered a better paying job at a big hotel/casino in Las Vegas and they moved together to get married. We didn’t hear from Sheila for a few months and somebody said she was miserable because she could not give Antonio babies and had blown up to over 200 pounds while stuffing her face with junk food and watching soap operas by day and boozing in clubs at night.
She reappeared about a year after her departure, sans Antonio, resembling a skeletal cadaver. She moved in with Happy Hour regulars, Estelle and Ed, who fed her regularly. She came down to sit with friends, not drinking, claiming to have a disease so mysterious no doctor could figure it out and insisting she invented it. After putting on a few pounds and regaining her color and her ass, she began sipping beers and then downed shots of Jack, and talked of applying for this job and that, refusing a gig at Big Bill’s Hotdog stand across the street because she had bad knees, refusing jobs as a waitress in several diners because she hated guys “making cracks about my ass,” and was terribly disappointed when a drug raid sent all the Mexican drug dealers to jail or fleeing back to Mexico, although she has to know a new crew of these boys from down south will begin trickling back into the bar in a month or so, no longer, as supply-side economic reign in Happy jack’s.
Sheila’s almost 30 now and has a slight pooch to her belly and that primal ass is broadening just a bit, but who cares (especially if you’re drunk or high) the skin is still a flawless porcelain, the implanted boobs stand tall and hardly move when she displays her flouncing strut. She has pert features and large expressive brown eyes that shift constantly in a staggering range of human emotions throughout the days and nights spent in the musty cavernous bar—flitting from confidante to confidante, famished for gossip, forever commiserating, solemnly confidential, exulting at another’s happiness, tearful at another’s misfortune or loss…back and forth, in and out of the restroom, locked in the phone booth, sad, angry, hysterical, Sheila at the bar needing hugs, the lighting of a freshly cadged cigarette, a free shot of Jack, which she tosses down with gusto and the slamming of glass upon the bar…suddenly smiling.
Sheila has intimate relationships with all bar regulars, though not with me.
“Why do you hate me?” she demands to know, jabbing her unlit cig at me as I take a break from pouring drinks. I light it. “You never hug me.”
“I don’t hate you, Sheila. I like you. But you’re a dangerous woman. One hug and I might be seduced and my life destroyed.”
“Oh blooey. It wouldn’t hurt to be nice to me, Dell.”
“I’m always nice to you, Sheila.”
“I know. You’re a dear. You’re my friend. I love you. You know I do. I know you look out for me and care about me--even if you don’t act like it. I know you love me, too, in your own funny way, I know…”
It goes on and on. Sheila had this affair, had this boyfriend, Jerome. Musician. Which meant he plucked a guitar and sang in a manner where you couldn’t understand the words. Lived in his parent’s summer home in Morro Bay and rented out rooms to various local druggies and ciphers.
Jerome worked at a liquor store and was fired and at a record shop and was fired and tried to get on here in Happy Jack’s as a bartender, but I sabotaged his chances with my owner/boss, so he tried other jobs, mostly waiting tables, always getting the axe, always having a big excuse and blaming everybody. He was one of those stylish charming touchy-feely guys, but also a persnickety perfectionist, had to have a little more booze or a little less mix in his drink, an extra squeeze of lime or a bigger glass. He had long curly black hair, wore form-fitting jeans, flowery long-sleeved shirts rolled up at the forearms and flared open at the chest to reveal curls of hair and a gold chain. And he wore these damn girlish fur booties like some Hollywood Boulevard type. Christ.
When he came on the scene, Sheila was between lovers and sleeping with whoever had the nose candy and could withstand her ceaseless prattle into the wee hours before she decided to devour you, as I’d heard from several sources she was of voracious sexual appetite and unparalleled imagination when it came to pleasing a man. Victims showed up at the bar the following evening with sickly, triumphant smiles, visibly drained, blotches on necks, every tom in the bar waiting their chances as Sheila completed their drug deals as go-between with the poolroom Mexicans, always rewarded by these dealers with generous toots.
Jerome met her on a Friday night—band night. Sheila knows all the musicians from all the bands and dances to all their songs in her various slinky weekend outfits, getting sweaty and over-heated, a woman who can whirl, stomp, wiggle, shimmy, shake and snake-dance with pros, gallivanting through the bar between sets, drinks lined up on the bar by local swains, often coming up with a cadged sawbuck for a shot of Jack, tipping me the dollar change, tossing down the shot, and then, drenched, still panting, asking for a cold towel or ice, and I cease what I am doing and turn her around as she lifts her mane of thick glossy brown hair and very tenderly rub ice on her long white neck, and she swoons, telling me how good it feels, “Oh God, you are sooo good to me, I just love you…”
But then she saw Jerome, and Jerome saw her, and after one slow dance they left together, and Jerome showed up the next evening bragging about how he slept with Sheila, as if she were Monroe, and they were an instant hot item, Sheila moving her few possessions from a friends apartment where she slept on a sofa to his house, Jerome at the same time lollygagging and cementing solid associations with local bands and sitting in with them during weekend gigs while Sheila danced by herself or with some harmless mooks, Sheila catching Jerome’s eyes and returning a look of devoted adoration as she blew him kisses.
Jerome became a nuisance. He felt he should get freebies like band members. I shook my head until he dug out a bill and paid and then tipped me the complimentary dollar. I repeated this process throughout the night, until hangdog Jerome went whining to unsuspecting Sheila about my shabby treatment of him.
“Why do you hate Jerome?” She asked, eyes bulging with tortured disbelief.
“I don’t hate Jerome. Vermin can’t help themselves. They’re still God’s creatures.” I grinned at her.
She was very hurt. “Jerome likes you. He wantsa be your friend.”
“I don’t make friends with customers, Sheila—it confuses our roles.”
She was starting to sniffle. “Aren’t WE friends? A tear ran down her cheek. “I thought you liked me.”
“I do, Sheila. You know I do.”
I poured out two shots of Jack, spotted Jerome lurking tensely in the background. I patted Sheila’s hand with reassuring tenderness, kissed her cheek, and we downed our shots, and when she returned to Jerome he was troubled and grave and they had a serious heart-to-heart, and Sheila suddenly got angry, started crying and ran out of the bar, a couple concerned girl friends following her, and Jerome brooded and paced and somebody bought him a drink and he talked to his musician friends during a break, and when they started playing again Sheila returned, pouty proud, girl friends commiserating, and she had another shot and soon Jerome was off the stage for another serious heart-to-heart and they suddenly hugged and kissed and everybody clapped as they left, and it seemed for a week or so they lived together in harmonious bliss, until Jerome somehow escaped Sheila’s probing eyes and fucked one of a band’s groupies and Sheila found out and went berserk, drinking herself into an abomination, one minute sobbing, the next minute raging or whirling on the dance-floor, living at a friend’s, up for days doing meth, finally ending up at the emergency room with heart palpitations, and staying away for a week until she was fully recovered and wan and re-emerging just in time to meet Marvin.
Marvin was new to Happy Jack’s. He wore glasses. He was around 30. He had a job.
“He’s got a job!” Sheila announced to anybody within earshot. “I can’t remember the last time I had a guy with a job. I mean, he’s got an occupation. He’s a printer.”
“He’s very green,” I warned Sheila. “I don’t think the poor boy’s terribly experienced with women.”
She grinned, winked, as Marvin returned from the restroom, plunking down money for another round. Soon they became an item, and just as soon Jerome began hanging around, wanting to talk, making excuses for his cheating (“I was fucked up out of my mind on Ecstasy!”), pleading, vowing his love, all this while Marvin waited, waited, Marvin following Sheila around like a puppy, clinging, Sheila clinging back, and Marvin, who at first only drank the occasional draft beer and did not smoke or do drugs, transformed overnight into a bit of a misguided mess, looking blotchy and disheveled, and confused, and finally distraught and irritable, trying to get Sheila to quit moving drugs and settle down and start a family and get away from this bar crowd (she smoked and looked bored as he made his desperate plea), and so she dumped him and went back to Jerome, and Marvin snapped and broke into their house in a drug-crazed rage and beat up Sheila and then beat up a terrified Jerome and afterwards tied him up and lit his hair on fire, hysterical Sheila having to scamper to her feet and beat out the fire with her best coat and hosing down Jerome while Marvin took out a knife and threatened to cut off his prick, but Sheila turned on him with the hose and screamed and yelled and Marvin fled, disappeared, leaving his job and apartment, a really big event in Morro Bay, everybody talking about it, in the San Luis Obispo paper and on local TV news, Jerome interviewed alongside a still emotional Sheila, his hair hanging in singed strands, one of his eyebrows gone.
She lasted another month with Jerome, who shaved his head and grew a Fu Man Chu, and finally left him for good (he was dealing cocaine and hogging his stash and fucking her friends). Sheila spent days and nights in the bar, moping, lethargic, so unhappy that no amount of cuddling, coddling, and getting fucked and devouring could alter her mood, so she hung around the Mexican dealers in the poolroom, eyes glittering, tongue-flicking, lips chewing, losing weight and developing dark puffs beneath her eyes, and she began complaining about her liver and kidneys and made a couple emergency runs to the hospital in San Luis Obispo, only to return and start in again, informing everybody she was dying and didn’t care, and how she had cancer while living in Hollywood after she’d been married and divorced from a porno director and had miscarriages and became a stripper, then a call girl, then a street hooker, then a bulimic glutton, eventually suffering a complete nervous breakdown that landed her in an asylum, and finally in a hospital where she had an operation on her sexual organs and could no longer have children, sniffle-sniffle, poor baby.
Jerome made one last attempt at “saving her,” eyebrow restored, hair growing, beggarly and solicitous, having spent a month in jail for warrants, determined to “put his life back together and get a real job and get away from this low-life bar.”
Sheila glanced at me as he delivered this spiel, and said, “Get away from me, you maggot. Go fuck your coke whores.”
Jerome slithered out. For a while Sheila hung out with the Mexicans in the poolroom, where she was a pretty good left-handed shot, liked to stretch out over the table when lining up a ball and flex that ass and feel the Mexicans grin and nod. When she wasn’t in the poolroom she made the rounds with friends along the bar, mostly girls, many of them between lovers or strung out on drugs and faced with immense personal problems, almost as if it was the season for suffering.
Then she met Antonio. Movie star handsome young Mexican who didn’t sell or do drugs but worked three jobs in local seafood restaurants to support his wife and kids and sisters and brothers and parents down in Oaxaca. A cook. Fiercely proud. Polite and soft-spoken. Neither a dancer or charmer. He took Sheila out of the poolroom to the opposite end of the bar where they played her favorite video games for hours or chatted quietly, Antonio holding her hand, stroking her hair, lighting her cigarettes, conducting himself like courtly gentleman of the old school.
The poolroom Mexicans stayed away. Only Jerome came over, still hovering and pleading his case, though he was broke and kicked out of his parent’s house and hiding out with a musician friend because drug suppliers were hunting him down. When Antonio pinned him with a murderous stare, he skulked away.
Antonio was offered a better paying job at a big hotel/casino in Las Vegas and they moved together to get married. We didn’t hear from Sheila for a few months and somebody said she was miserable because she could not give Antonio babies and had blown up to over 200 pounds while stuffing her face with junk food and watching soap operas by day and boozing in clubs at night.
She reappeared about a year after her departure, sans Antonio, resembling a skeletal cadaver. She moved in with Happy Hour regulars, Estelle and Ed, who fed her regularly. She came down to sit with friends, not drinking, claiming to have a disease so mysterious no doctor could figure it out and insisting she invented it. After putting on a few pounds and regaining her color and her ass, she began sipping beers and then downed shots of Jack, and talked of applying for this job and that, refusing a gig at Big Bill’s Hotdog stand across the street because she had bad knees, refusing jobs as a waitress in several diners because she hated guys “making cracks about my ass,” and was terribly disappointed when a drug raid sent all the Mexican drug dealers to jail or fleeing back to Mexico, although she has to know a new crew of these boys from down south will begin trickling back into the bar in a month or so, no longer, as supply-side economic reign in Happy jack’s.
