Oregon Tavern Age: Jack Off
My associate and I sat at the bar of the Card Room in Gladstone. We ordered amber ales and watched General Hospital play silently on television. It was something of a comfort to me as the world and America continue to go to absolute shit that the character of Laura was still on the show, some 45 years after her heyday with Luke. Jesus, I watched them in the late 70s! They were on the cover of Time and here she was now, a kind and horny grandmother who had definitely eschewed Botox! Yeah, that was a comfort all right.
It was around noon on a weekday in this very solid OTA joint. Crap Halloween decorations made by child slaves in China gave the place a festive gulag vibe. Two OTA women sat at the far end of the bar, drinking and chewing the fat. Another OTA worked a slot machine that featured dancing dragons. A six-foot skeleton spoke with an English accent about murdering people with panache.
A pleasant, bespectacled, young female bartender presided over this mise-en-scene with a detached coolness.
Stillness reigned. I liked it.
A rather portly OTA man wearing a black Harley Davidson leather jacket stood to my left. He opened up his jacket to the ladies and said something about jacking off.
What? Was I going to observe masturbation by an elderly man in an OTA joint after all these decades? The prospect didn’t alarm me at all.
I said something to my associate about it and we laughed. Then, the bartender remarked to the man and he turned around and showed us a t-shirt that read, “I was a Jack Off in the Card Room” across the front. The t-shirt’s back design sported a black jack and four other cards that signified the hand was a jack off away from a full house.
I realize my description of the t-shirt will make very little sense to the reader because it made very little sense to me when I wrote it. I must say, however, the t-shirt did warm my heart because it meant someone connected to the Card Room had designed and produced a unique piece of OTA apparel. Christ, they might have screen printed it themselves in a garage while loaded on Cutty Sark!
After displaying the t-shirt, the man ordered his third shot of Dewar’s. Dewar’s! That an OTA man drank Dewar’s straight in such quantities, wore such an outlandish t-shirt, and flashed the ladies with it, well, that was a comfort, too.
I asked the bartender about the t-shirt. It cost $25! My skinflint associate didn’t want one!
We drank our ales and heard the OTA Jack Off Man behind us, now losing money at the slots, say to a woman, “Are you getting off my machine?”
She laughed, and said, with coy insinuation, “You want me to get off your machine?”
He yukked it up.
It was a wicked jest and I relished every minute of its lewd content. It made me chuckle and we all need more of that considering the current state of world affairs.