His Quest

A short story

By Edwin Oliver

 

Clint sat at an isolated table near the bar.  He had been sitting there for the last two hours; his thoughts swimming in alcohol.  His nephew, Johnny sat next to him.  This was a night for celebration because Johnny was getting married in the morning.

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"You're a ding-dong, that's what you are", said Clint, slurring his speech. "A goddamed ding-dong." His head swayed from side to side as his hand moved towards the bottle. He poured himself another one.

"Come on, Uncle," said Johnny. "I've gotta take you home. You've had quite a party tonight."

"Hey," replied Clint. "I said I'd get you to the church on time, and by God, I will!"  He looked at Johnny as straight in the eye as he could and continued, "sit down, I got something to say, and we ain't goin' nowhere until I say it."

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Johnny was a little surprised at this. Clint had not said anything remotely coherent for the last hour, but now his demeanor seemed dead serious.

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"You're in love, aren't you?" he said as his hand touched Johnny's with unexpected tenderness.  Before Johnny replied, however, Clint raised his hand and shook it in front of him, "no, don't say it.  I know, I know... you think you finally found it."

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"Found what, uncle?" asked Johnny, playing along with him.

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"The Grail, my son.  The Holy Grail." His eyes slowly moved from his glass to the ceiling of the bar. "You embarked on a quest, and believe you found it."

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"Oh, You mean..." Johnny began, but was immediately interrupted by Clint.

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"I mean the Quest, damn you. The Quest!" Clint's eyes turned red for a moment, almost managing to stand up.  But just as fast, the spark disappeared and replaced with an indescribable sadness. "Listen to my tale and you'll learn of the Quest..."

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Johnny, intrigued by his uncle, instead of insisting upon leaving, sat back on his chair and allowed Clint to continue.

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"When I was younger," began Clint, "I was a walking hormone." He looked at Johnny with sympathy.   "I wasn't alone in this, mind you. Just like you, all my teenaged male friends had the same testosterone problems."

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A couple of the guys from the adjacent table had subconsciously stopped talking and began to pay attention.

 

"Women, for most of us, seemed like a far away, almost unattainable dream." Clint, by now, waved his hands dramatically, as if he was the main character in some tragic play. "My mother, of course, didn't help matters for me because she raised me to believe that women, mothers in particular, should be on a very high pedestal and venerated."

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He looked about, not noticing how his piece seemed to be drawing everyone's attention, and yet, his address was soft, and intimate. He paused for a moment.

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"God bless her soul!" he finally exclaimed. "Why, I was almost conceived in the same fashion as Jesus was." By now, everyone in the bar seemed compelled to listen. "My mother couldn't really say she was a virgin because that would have pushed my faith in her a little too far.  She did manage to emphasize that my father never saw her without clothes." He giggled a bit. "Almost like a Hassidic kind of thing.  Yes, that really made it easy for me to approach women." You could hear the proverbial pin drop.

"Son," he said to Johnny, his head, clearing a bit, "I saw a women as this pure, holy, incorruptible virgin-like creature that, through no fault of their own managed to raise my hormonal levels to daily unprecedented heights."

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"Yeah," replied one guy from the bar, as if trying to draw attention. "That was me, all right. Horny to the end..."

The rest of the guys told the asshole to "put a sock in it!" or "shut the fuck up". The man next to him showed him his fist and said "I want to hear what the man has to say. If you don't keep quiet, this is going down your gullet!"

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Clint managed to smile to the group, but he was determined to finish his story.  He moved back towards Johnny and continued, "I thought that if I approached a woman with these impure thoughts, I would be immediately repudiated.  Heaven forbid that a woman would ever have these repugnant thoughts."

He paused again. "Then I saw my first 'Playboy' issue." He turned to the crowd and said, "Remember that, guys? Remember?" He slapped his thigh with gusto and a short guffaw. "What a turning point this was! Yessir, what a moment.  I could not help but ask myself," he continued as he also seemed to ask the crowd, "were these not women also? Why they must be depraved, or something.  And, of course, my immediate question was, where can I find such a woman?" His face then came close to Johnny's. "It was then that I realized; these women must exist somewhere in this world."

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Clint stood up and moved away from his chair. He now had the whole floor to himself, like a professor lecturing his students.

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"It was at this point during my teenage years that I decided to embark upon a quest." Clint walked slowly from the middle of the room to the bar. He motioned to the bartender with his finger for another hit before he turned back to his audience. "I was to find a woman that enjoyed sex as much as I did. One with no hang-ups or virginal attitudes."

 

The next sentence, he almost whispered, but the room was so quiet, everyone heard it. "If I ever married a woman like my mother, I would shoot myself."

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There was a mild sense of shock on some of the faces, but Clint just looked from one guy to the next, until he found a sympathetic one.  He leaned against the bar and rested his right elbow on the counter. "My poor dad, you ask? Well, he never found the courage to commit suicide!"

 

The bartender touched his shoulder to indicate his drink was ready. He turned around and took a long swig from it, then continued with his back partly turned on half his audience.   

 

"It was then, that I started to compare notes with my friends.  It seems we were all on the same quest. Would this be equivalent to finding the Holy Grail? Believe me, my friends, this was a question I carefully pondered."

 

His uncle mesmerized Johnny. Not so much because of the story he was telling, but his command of the floor.  This was a side of Clint he had never seen before.

 

"Then my best friend found a girl. Aaahh... She was something! Her face and body was the envy of any movie star and, the clincher, she wanted sex all the time." Clint smiled a happy smile as he went on. "He just couldn't keep up with her. It was love. He fell in love with a real nympho... and lucky he, she was in love with him. Inevitably, they got married."

 

Then, Clint's smile trickled down to a smirk. "I saw him six months later," he said. "It seems she lost interest in sex two weeks into the marriage and he was forced into manual labor. One day, my friend couldn't take it anymore and decided upon the services of a prostitute." He paused once more, and for dramatic impact, allowed his eyes to go around the room, making eye contact with each and every one.  He knew his story telling well. It was a long, silent moment.

 

"Gonorrhea, said the doctor. Divorce, said the wife. What a poor fellow.  What luck!"

You could hear the oohhs and the aahhs from all of the guys, as his words sank in. They sympathized.

"Another friend of mine," he continued, not allowing his audience to drift, "it seems, embarked upon this very quest again, and again, and again. He found his first gold nugget and married her."

 

Another pause. Everyone sort of knew what he was going to say next.

 

"A year later, his quest began anew. Seven marriages, 6 kids, and tons of alimony went by before he gave up on the quest."

 

"What happened to him?" asked Johnny as he stood up momentarily with a worried look on his face.

 

"He still goes out with women," replied a smiling Clint. He was finally getting his point across to his nephew.   "He just doesn't marry them anymore."

 

"Oh," said Johnny in an almost inaudible voice before he sat again.

 

"Most of my friends," continued Clint, "I later realized, had very similar experiences.  They met nymphomaniacs before marriage...  who then turned into virgins with gold mines between their legs afterwards."

 

"I gave up on the quest for the nymphomaniac, and I..."

 

It was at this juncture that Clint looked towards the barroom door and saw the shadow of an imposing figure standing there. A woman.  Her body seemed to fill the whole frame of the door.  She had her arms crossed across her chest, and flames spewed from her eyes.  Satan was at the door... his wife.

Clint went pale for a moment, but recovered almost instantly.  Twenty years of living with the enemy was more than a lifetime to teach a man when he faced an emergency. He pretended not to see her as he turned back to the group with a louder voice than before.

 

"You see, my friends, I'm married." He turned to the bar and took the last swig from his glass. "And goddamned proud of it, too."

 

He walked towards his table to pick up his jacket while he addressed the group, which by this time, were totally lost on whatever point Clint was trying to make.

 

"There are more differences between men and women than stars in the heavens," continued Clint without breaking a sweat.   "Me, I decided to go simple.  I married a flesh and blood woman who is NOT a dream I concocted in my immature, adolescent mind, but a friend and partner for life.  As for sex, my hormone levels came down to an acceptable level for the both of us."

 

He looked at Johnny and quietly said, "Come on, lad.  Let's get you to the church."

 

The moral of the story:

Bushwhacked and pussy-whipped are words that seem to be of similar nature, yet they are not.  A man can be pussy-whipped, and a man can be bushwhacked.  No man should allow himself to be both bushwhacked and pussy-whipped.

The End