Drinking With Pat And Tom

Only fags pee here... At least that's what someone had written with a sharpie on top of the urinal that I was using yesterday (with the ellipsis). This was the work of one of the middle schooler's where I was subbing or maybe it was a teacher or the custodian. Anyway, I braved the possibility of peeing in a fag zone. My friend Tom, who also calls himself Gay Tom, says "Oh that's so gay, in a bad way, not in the good way."

A couple of months back some guy asked Tom for one of his beers as he left the Handy Pantry. Tom said no. Tom was riding his blue scooter. The guy aggressively said, that scooter should be pink. Tom, said, "Why because I'm a cocksuscker?" The aggressive man just looked to the ground.

Tom has been a good friend of mine for a long time. He hosted my 50th birthday party. About five years ago or so, we were going to see the Japanese band Melt Banana. They are great live act, with the diminutive cute Japanese woman fronting a thrashing noise pop group that executes very precise songs that at first sound thrown together. I've seen them several times. They are very affable, speaking broken English, one of my favorite languages.

Tom and I decided to meet for drinks before the show at the Backbooth bar. We met at the old Bodhisattva Social Club. We also decided to send out press releases and make a poster that simply said, Drinking With Pat and Tom.

When we arrived at Bodhisattva's we went upstairs to the stage and just started to have one of our usual conversations, except we had mikes, but paid no attention to the people in the audience. Some guy, yelled "What time are you going on?" I said, "We are on." Then resumed conversation with Tom as if he were the only person in the room, a couple people were visibly upset. They said they thought we were going do a play. Another guy asked, "Is this one of those avant-garde plays?" Tom and I just kept talking to each other.

A few minutes later that nights DJ came in. He was pissed off at the club. He thought that we had taken over his night. Tom and I decided to go over to the Backbooth.

I had made some banana bread. I have been told that my banana bread is some of the best in the land, but of course I got the recipe from my friend Sandie Walker in Knoxville, she got it from some elderly woman in the small town where she grew up in middle Tennessee. Sandie got word that I was getting lots of credit for this recipe that was passed down from a nice old lady. Sandie, said, "I hope you're not dishonoring this woman by seducing women with banana bread."

I know Sandie would probably really be happy if she found that the bread was acting as an aphrodisiac.

I almost forgot, the reason I started to talk about the banana bread. I made some to give to Melt Banana. Tom made tin foil sculpture to wrap the bread in. We presented the bread to the band before the show. The drummer placed it on top of his bass drum while he played manically. The bread tumbled down soon after the show began.

A couple of months later, somebody told me that Tom and I were mentioned, not by name on the Melt Banana site. It said something like thanks to those two nice boys in Orlando who gave us a tasty cake, named Melt Banana Bread.