when the Stars come out...

Say what you want about Ypsi, if you're making Cadillac tracks down Michigan Avenue, leaving
the Motor City for Chic-town and points west you're driving by.

Most people tap the gas and pull out to pass but
if you're in show business, and the Star is low on reds and greens, you might flip the blinker and turn off, looking for the Brick Dick, and the second left and the bar where a friend of a friend might have something like what you need.

The Star is looking for Dwayne, and the bar
is where he does his business, as he calls it. Mostly, he hangs around hustling free pours off other people's jugs and shooting his mouth, but once
in a while he sells a handful of pills.

Some called him white trash, but nobody out at
the Coachville trailer park thought he and his were all that special. His old man was a dumbass first class and his mother was a soiled dove, semi-pro. In Dwayne's file at the sherriff's, there was a short report from his first probation officer that said it all: "Dwayne might not have been born a dickhead, but he took to it like a hog to a bucket of fresh shit". 

The Star et al find the bar, park the car and walk inside. They suck up all the air in the room for minute, then a pool ball thumps a cushion and people drift back to their whatever. It's nobody's first dance - Dwayne and the Star pick each other out at the get-go and head for Dwayne's office.

It takes a minute for occupants to zip up and disappear. The Star asks him "What've you got?", and Dwayne throws a blindside sucker punch upside his head and runs out of the men's room and the back door of the bar.

He gets as far as the dark edge of the parking lot where he stops, gasping for breath, not sure whether to laugh or to cry.


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