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Juke
What kind of juke do you prefer? For me, it’s the kind with three songs and thirty-seven blank title strips. Three songs, and two are “Luckenbach, Texas.” The third is beautiful and arcane, but the patrons hate it, and the record skips. I prefer the three-song juke and the three-toothed human smile. I found the juke of my dreams in a bar called “Chums,” no clue the origin or meaning of the quotation marks. It was a prime number of a bar, and now it’s dead. One night, drinking half-and- halfs, half beer, half tomato juice, with schnapps chasers, a cheap source of hallucination. A soon-to-be-defrocked Catholic priest, Vic Jr., my mother, and me, our faces streaked blue with pool chalk, juke red as a beating heart, and just a strip of hollyhocks and a tree line between us and the northern lights. I was young. I looked like a Rubens painting of a woman half-eaten by moths. What lucky debauchery, the ride back on a washboard dirt road, taking everything for granted, flipping off the aurora borealis like it was some three-toothed human in flashy clothes dancing to get my attention. I wasn’t a mean drunk then, just honest. Next morning, mom walked in on the naked priest in the shack’s garage, washing himself with a rag and cold water from the well in a metal dishpan. I’d later do dishes in that pan and wash my hair in that pan. We popped popcorn on the one-burner wood-burning stove and ate it out of that pan. I’m talking about a time and a place. All I can say of it is that it was real. The song choices were limited, so the grooves were dug deep.