G’s Friend, The Pickle Incident and the Ice Queen

One night I went and picked up G at his house. He had a friend with him that night. I don’t remember his name. What I do remember is that he was a spaz. I asked him within the first 5 minutes of our meeting if he was on speed or something. The guy was wired.

We went to a local bar to get a few brews and this guy started freaking me out right away. He couldn’t sit down for even a few minutes. Worse yet, he was going to every woman in the place hitting on them. Even the women that had men with them. I remember thinking that if he gets his ass kicked, it would serve him right.

During one of his short stints at the bar with us, he noticed one of those giant pickle jars sitting in the middle of the bar. The pickles were those huge kind, about 6-8” long. So naturally this guy decides he has to have one. The bartender gets him one and he sits there with it on a plate just playing with it, making stupid jokes.

Then the bartender asks us to let her know if anyone needs anything because she was going to go and clean some tables in the area behind us. We were OK with that. While she was busy, Spaz takes a big bite out of the center of the big pickle and quickly puts it back into the jar with the bite facing out. Anyone looking at the giant pickle jar would easily see this pickle with a big bite out of it right in the center. He did it so quickly, we had no time to react.

At first it was kind of funny, but suddenly we realized that the bartender would be heading our way any second and she could not miss the pickle, so we chugged our beers and left.

We went to another place that G and I frequented and I sat at the bar with a friend I saw there. She was playing cards with several others. Some kind of gambling game for $5.00 a hand. One of the players turned out to be the bartender/bar owner. She was a very nice person, maybe 50 years old or so, and we were having a good time (especially since I started winning a lot) until Spaz came up to get a new beer. When he found out that she was the owner, he looked her right in the eye and said “If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” To her credit, she never even blinked, just looked him right back and flatly said, “No.”

When he walked away, she started laughing about the idiot and his stupid, lame country music pick up line. I was relieved that she had a good sense of humor. The good humor didn’t last long.

Soon she leaned into me and said that Spaz was starting to get to be too big of a nuisance and she was going to ask him to leave if he didn’t let the women in the place alone. Turns out he was harassing the women here just like the other place we had been. As I turned around to see what he was doing, I started to chuckle. He was standing next to a table with 4 women, talking/drooling over one that I knew fairly well. Her name was Sean and she was known to some as “The Ice Queen.” A colorful name she earned by the way she always managed to put down would be suitors without even saying much at all. A cold look from her and you knew she wasn’t one to mess with. She was quite attractive, long auburn hair with pale blue eyes. The kind of eyes that, when she looked at you, it seemed like she was looking right through you. She had already given him that look a few times and he wasn’t giving up.

The owner started to go toward the table then, but I stopped her. I told her to wait and see what would happen. I knew it wouldn’t take long for Sean to blow off Spaz and I wanted to see how she did it.

Spaz wasn’t giving up and now he reached out his hand, apparently trying to get her onto the dance floor. She slowly looked from his hand to his eyes and stood up, smiling a half smile. She took his hand, walked a few steps toward the dance floor, turned slowly to face him and the stupid grin he was wearing, pulled back her foot and proceeded to kick him as hard in the nuts as she could. So hard that his feet left the floor by about a foot.

The place went crazy. Everyone cheering and laughing. I looked for G and saw him lying on the floor near the fireplace laughing hysterically. I guess pretty much everyone had had enough of a-hole Spaz and there weren’t any sympathizers. Owner Lady, after recovering herself, asked me if I would now get him out of there. I got G and we went and picked his friend up, one on each arm. As we walked by Sean at her table, where she was once again peacefully sipping her wine, she laid her hand on my arm and quietly asked, “Friend of yours?” I laughed and told her no, I was just the taxi. She said “Good. Get rid of him and come back. I need a taxi myself.”

Needless to say, I hurried G and his buddy to his house and returned, but that’s a story for another time.