The Tao Of Bad Ass
A Porno-Comedic Episode of Our Time
Enter at your own risk.
Bad Ass, Texas was unusual in that it lacked Karma: none good, none bad, and none at all. A black cloud of nothingness seemed perpetually parked over the town. There were worse places than Bad Ass, but few. Everyone wanted to leave, but no one ever did. It was a sad place, a cruel place, an ugly place, a lonely place, and a loser’s place. Motivation evaporated like spit on a Texas street on a July afternoon.
It all started with Marlene’s rack. She was a waitress at The Rat’s Ass Bar and Grill. It got its name when the founder couldn’t think of one and said he didn’t give a rat’s ass what it was called. So it became the Rat’s Ass of Bad Ass. It was not a high-end establishment. It was somewhere beneath a dive. It was the sort of place where if you ordered anything other than a Coors Light, malevolent looking cowboys cast glances that seemed to question your masculinity. But it was the only watering hole in Bad Ass, so it did a brisk business.
Now Marlene was a big girl. Six feet tall and massively not fat. Just huge. She had bleached blond hair, chewed gum, and rarely spoke to the rag-tag customers other than to take their orders with a grunt. She wasn’t unfriendly, but the life of a waitress at the Rat’s Ass was hard, filled with drunken gropes, obscene propositions, and lewd gestures. Her silence and slaps helped keep them to a minimum.
Marlene’s Magical Rack compounded the problem. Marlene’s boobs were goddess quality. They stood out like a dare; like twin Everests waiting to be climbed; like two minuteman missiles straining to launch. Consequently, no one ever looked Marlene in the eye. Their eyes went directly to her chest. Everyone called her Rack behind her back. It made a girl lonely.
Marlene lived in a room above the Rat’s Ass. As a result, many thought she was a hooker. Far from it, though the dismal quality of the local breeding stock was such that she hadn’t been properly mounted in a long, long time. That made a girl lonely, too.
The only customer she talked to was Ted. He came in every afternoon and ordered a Coors Light. Marlene would serve the beer, park the rack on the bar, and chat with Ted, who actually made eye contact.
Ted was what was called in Bad Ass, “at loose ends.” Actually mostly everyone in Bad Ass was at loose ends, in one way or another. The town consisted of a jail, the Rat’s Ass, a Haji Mart, and a gas station. Opportunity did not abound.
So Ted and his fellow Bad Asses did the best they could. They got welfare, food stamps, and whatever work they could find under the table. Ted lived in a 1956 single-wide mobile home. It sat on a bare patch of ground just outside of town. His ancient Ford pickup was parked out front. His only neighbors were the rattlesnakes. It didn’t make for much of a social life.
He was tall as Marlene and thin to the point of gaunt. He always wore old jeans and a small variety of give away T-Shirts. He had light hair (in a tasteful mullet), pale blue eyes, and vaguely Appalachian facial features. Give or take a few pounds and he looked like most of the other guys in Bad Ass.
It wasn’t that he didn’t notice Marlene’s rack; it was that he didn’t stare at it. He mostly looked her in the eye and sneaked furtive glances when possible. She liked that. By Bad Ass standards, it was gentlemanly.
Marlene wasn’t the only bodily challenged person in Bad Ass. Ted was too. He was unusually—immensely — well-endowed. Cruel and envious classmates had mercilessly teased him throughout school.
They tried a variety of nicknames: donk, dork, dong, mongo, etc. But one wickedly cruel little classmate, whose father owned the Bad Ass garage, had hung the moniker pinion on his prodigious member. The pinion was the very long, very hard shaft that coupled with the rack to work the brakes on some cars.
They liked it and so Pinion he became ever after, behind his back, and everyone in Bad Ass knew he was hung like a rhino. Even the girls knew, including Marlene.
Oddly, this worked against his sex life, which was non-existent. Ted was a virgin. Apparently girls wanted to be probed, not perforated. Even Marlene, who liked him, was put off.
He was reduced to abusing himself regularly and intensely, usually to the image of Marlene’s rack. Those impossible boobs transfixed him.
This was a hardship. Being a believing Catholic, Ted had to drive 37 miles to Our Lady of Dehydration Church in Dry Hole to confess and be absolved. It put a lot of miles on Ted’s tired pickup.
Suffice to say, little of note ever happened in Bad Ass.
Until the lottery ticket. Every Friday Ted bought a lottery ticket at the Rat’s Ass. Every Friday he lost.
Until that Friday. On that Friday he won $100,000 and instantly became the richest man in Bad Ass. Life changed quickly for Ted. Women suddenly seemed to overcome their fear of being fracked and spoke to him in seductive tones. Men started to try to borrow money and cadge drinks from him. He got a new muffler for the pickup.
But Marlene was smitten. The only nice guy in Bad Ass was rich! What luck.
The next time he came in for a Coors Light she deposited the holy rack on the bar before him and flat out asked if she could visit him sometime. She moved just enough to jiggle the rack.
This was well beyond any treasure Ted had ever imagined. He heard himself stutter out: sure, how about tonight? He had a hard-on the size of South Korea.
She arrived at his trailer not long after her shift, but first she had gone upstairs and put on a very low cut and extra short sundress. As an afterthought, she skipped the bra.
Stepping over a few errant rattlers, she knocked on his door. When he opened it his eyes nearly achieved lift off from their sockets.
He offered her a beer, and for once he looked unabashedly at her boobs. They sat on his sofa.
There was not much time for small talk, even if either of them had known what that was.
Marlene was on a mission. She pounced. That hundred grand had turned her into a Tigress in heat. She wanted it and right now. She had a hundred thousand reasons not to be demure.
There was nothing subtle about this coupling. Before Ted knew it, she was naked and tearing off his clothes. She mounted him, gasped at the immensity of her task, but soldiered on. Outside, the rattlesnakes hissed.
For a moment, Ted considered this to be a mortal sin, but remembered that’s what priests are for. He also briefly thought that it was sad to get fucked for your money, but it quickly hit him that it wasn’t as sad as not getting fucked because you were poor. Besides, you could live a whole life in Bad Ass without this much luck. He heaved to and impaled her.
So it was, like yin and yang, that the Rack and Pinion were joined and the Tao of Bad Ass became whole. For the four minutes that it lasted, it didn’t even seem that bad.
Ted was sated. Marlene elated. Supply yielded to demand. It was like an impure, but more satisfying version of Sleeping Beauty, with a princely mullet to boot. A few months later, the newlyweds visited Silver Dollar City. In Bad Ass, that was as close to a happy ending as had ever occurred.
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Thanks to Stephen Tomic for his editing.
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