Super Born: Seduction of Being Read Free Page B

end up lining
the bottom of birdcages before they were read…if you know what I
mean.) When I first saw the peeling white paint, blinking sign, and
sagging gutters of O’Malley’s, I could see that its decline
paralleled the slump of the city itself.
    I started the short walk to the front door,
determined to make the project with Dr. Jones work. I needed some
money from somewhere. The tank was empty, if you know what I mean.
I needed to completely focus on Jones’s work.
    But instead of keeping my focus, I
couldn’t help but notice this chick walking by. Whoa, look at the major-league yabbos on
her , I thought as the long haired brunette
slithered by with her coat open, revealing a “Ravage Me” low-cut
dress. Not that “Ravage Me” was a brand name or a designer or
anything, but maybe it should be. I made a mental note to my Get
Rich Quick List to start a line of women’s clothing with that name
just before I ran head on into O’Malley’s hole-in-the-wall
entrance. What made it worse was the fact that Miss Ravage Me
laughed at me as she walked away, fully aware of what her slinky
dress had done. Now where was I? Oh, yeah, focus.
    I pushed through the doors of O’Malley’s
promptly at 9:27 to be greeted by the stale smell of yesterday’s
beer. I found Dr. Jones immediately, despite the dim lighting in
the bar. There was only one man there that could be him. He was a
short, dark man in his late twenties, wore glasses with thick
frames, and had a gigantic, endearing smile, like a lap dog ready
to pounce. Compared to him, I felt like a giant with my
six-foot-two-inch, okay, six-foot…five-foot-ten-inch, cyclist’s
build…okay, working on the cyclist part. (Hey, I did own a
bike…once…)
    He greeted me with an endlessly pumping
handshake that proved tough to break. After a minute, I pulled away
and we sat at a table in the middle of the bar.
    Jones gestured with open arms to the room
around us. “There, do you see?” he asked.
    I looked around, not wanting to feel stupid or
intimidated right away…I’d save that for later. “Just what am I
looking at, Professor?” I asked, opening up my laptop and trying to
look professional.
    “ Just look, look my friend. Tell me
what you see.”
    I looked around the bar. “Well, over there I
see two young men. One is trying , to ‘pull’ the ‘push’ door to the
backroom—with no success, I might add. The other guy is standing
too close to the men’s room door and is repeatedly pulling it open
into his face. Over there, I see a guy trying to get onto a bar
stool and, every time he does, he slides off onto the floor…what
assholes!”
    “ Good, good,” said Jones excitedly.
“And in the backroom, can you see what is happening there, my
friend?”
    The lights were starting to come on in my head.
“I see five more guys back there. Some are wearing leather helmets
with antlers on them, and another has a rifle.” There was a loud
roar as the rifle fired. “And that guy just shot at the guys with
the antlers! Holy crap, let’s get out of here!”
    Behind the bar, the grizzled old barkeep just
shook his head and continued rinsing out glasses, unfazed, as the
gunshot rang out.
    “ I assure you that we are quite
safe, my friend. This curious male-only activity is called the
Antler Game. They have been doing it for years and no one has ever
hit anything…ever, not even a hit song…not even a.…”
    “ Okay, I get it!”
    “ The odds of one of them shooting
and hitting a target is about the same as you winning the
lottery…twice. Now tell me what else you see.”
    “ Man, that guy is a lousy shot! He
wasn’t even close!” Just then a different man took hold of the
rifle and began the Antler Game over again. The men wearing the
antlers scurried randomly around the backroom with beer bottles in
hand, some hiding behind others while the rifleman tried to decide
which end of the rifle to use and how you loaded the bullet, only
succeeding on occasion. Most