Robert E. Brown. The 2 Street Chronicles

Ode to Cookie and Charlene part II: Toilet Corpse (the punchline)

Charlene's fiance had demanded that she stop stripping. She had taken a job as a server at a sports bar by the stadiums but she just wasn't making enough money to feed her poker machine hobby. After a few weeks she started secretly taking shifts across the street again. On this infamous night Cookie arrived at her poker stool early. Charlene was dancing and Cookie had gone over there to visit. Strangely a customer had accused her of stealing money off the bar and she had been evicted. She had only just been allowed back in. (She had been 86ed eight months earlier. After blacking out drunk, she had rushed the stage and knocked a girl off the pole. Then ripped off her own shirt and exposed her ogre breasts to the terrified patrons. Then promptly passed out cold on stage.) She was in a foul mood and began to immediately order shots while feeding the poker machine with her newly found money. An hour later Charlene showed up stumbling drunk, slamming her big gym bag full of stripper costumes on a table. She had left in the middle of the shift, sloppily slurring oaths that she would never work there again. She had suffered one too many insults. First her dear mother had been wrongly accused of stealing, then she had been denied another drink by the manager after falling off the stage.
"Yo, I threw a drink in that cunt's face when I left." she said cockeyed and wobbling.
I believed her.

A few minutes later the owner pulled me aside, "Charlene just put 300 dollars into the machine. Buy them a round of shots."
"Uh, you know she can barely sit up in that stool?"
"Perfect, then she'll put another 300 in."
So I set them up with more shots.
Then more.

For four more hours they sat bobbing back and forth, drunkenly smashing their fists at the buttons. Occasionally screaming insults at the machines or each other. Eventually the bar closed but they were still at it. I was stuck, ready to go home, but resigned to the long wait for the poker machine to read 0. I started reading at the end of the bar and about 20 minutes later Cookie began screaming. "Rob, Rob, I'm worried about Charlene." I looked up and she was gone from the stool.
"Did she leave?" I asked.
She went to take a piss and hasn't come back" she screeched.
"Cookie, the restroom is 3 feet from you. Why don't you knock on the door." I answered blasely.
Cookie tried getting off her stool and fell straight to her knees. With some effort she stood up and weaved to the door and began banging.
"Rob, she won't come out, I think she's dead, I think my baby's dead."
I thought my head would explode. I walked over to the door and it was locked.
"You have to get her out, she's in trouble" Cookie wailed.
I did my best to calm her and popped the shitty lock with a kick to the door. I squeezed my way into the tiny bathroom and found Charlene. She wasn't dead, but she was dead drunk, passed out cold on the toilet. She seemed to have lost consciousness right after she had pulled down her panties. She was slouched sideways on the toilet and covered in piss. The restroom was too small for both Cookie and me. She continued to shout her concerns from outside. "Is she dead Rob? Is she dead?"
"No Cookie, she's not dead."
I was able to hike up her piss soaked panties, but as I tried to pull up her jeans she slunk down to the floor and her head cracked down with a slab of meat sound. I tried to lift her up but the dead weight was just too much and I exited the restroom flustered and irritated. Cookie bolted in past me and started trying to drag the body out by one arm. She got Charlene half way out the door and fell flat on her ass.
"You need to help me drag her home." she said "We only live 3 blocks from here."
I just stared at her as I envisioned what I would say to the cops as they found me at 3 in the morning, dragging out a stripper's body from the tavern.
I sat on top of the bar and contemplated the very tough spot I was in. I couldn't leave them there. I couldn't get them out. There was only one option and while it offered some danger to me, it also offered some bit of comeuppance for them.
"You're going to have to call Charlene's fiance."
Suddenly Cookie's face became very somber. "Please don't make me do that Rob." in a tone I never heard from the ogre, but immensely enjoyed. After a couple of minutes her resistance waned.
"You know it's your only option." I smirked.
"Fuck you Rob" she said in a quiet, resigned voice, and flipped open the phone.
Her conversation with him was quiet, nervous and stuttering. She closed the phone announcing a 5 minute ETA. I unlocked the door and positioned myself defensively behind the bar with one of the bats in reach, not knowing how this spectacle would be received. I pointed out to Cookie that she may want to work on getting Charlene's pants pulled up. She stumbled over to the body but the lower half was still inside the restroom and the door blocked access to the jeans bunched at the ankles. Cookie's solution was to resume tugging on the body by an arm but the jostling set loose all the Swedish Fish shots and Michelob Ultra in the girls body. Charlene let loose a stomach full of vomit which sprayed her long blonde hair and the whole right side of her shirt. NOW Cookie felt like she needed to do some damage control. "He can't see her like this" she shrieked and proceeded to pull off Charlene's Tee shirt. She ran over and unzipped the gym bag full of stripper costumes and stuffed the vomit soaked shirt into the mouth of a clear plastic pump.
I stammer screamed in disbelief
"WHAT...
ARE...
YOU...
THINKING??" still trying to process her logic and I heard the door click shut.

There he was. Dressed like a Soprano's extra with his eyes bugging and the veins visible in his head. We were all motionless and silent for a moment as he stood at the door looking down at his dear sweet fiance stripped to her underwear, laying on a dirty floor half out of an even dirtier restroom in a shitty south Philly bar covered in her own piss and vomit at 3 in the morning.

My palms began to sweat and I placed my fingers on the handle of the bat.

He looked up at Cookie. "What the fuck?" She backed up a couple of steps with her hands in the air surrendering.
He turned to me. "How'd she get like this?" he snapped thinking he might have a lucid culprit.
"Hey, they came in like this." I snapped back, half lying.
He paused and looked back at the body. "But like this? You gotta control 'em." He said with a slight air of frustration.
I wrapped my right hand around the handle of the bat.
"Can anyone control them?" I asked in a rhetorical tone that seemed logical to him for a second. He looked at the body again and his face turned red.
"Why the fuck is she half naked?" He shouted and both my hands were gripping the bat just out of sight behind the bar.
He took a step towards me and then noticed the gym bag with the stripper shoes popping out the top.
"What the..." he said as he stood over the bag pulling out a shoe.
Cookie stood quietly with her hands in the air and her ogre jaw wide open as he stared her down for a moment.

"Fuck this, lets go home." he said slinging the bag over his shoulder. And without another word, he and Cookie picked up the dead drunk body by the arms and legs and shuffled out the door without bothering to pull up the jeans. When the door closed I lunged over the bar and flipped the lock.
I lit a cigarette and poured myself some bourbon with shaking hands. There was 50 dollars worth of points still on the machine. I left the score up, filled out the record and put the winnings in my pocket.

Do I really need a punch line after that? The next day they were back in and didn't say a word. As if absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened. At my old 2 street bar, nothing had.



My Company

Robert E. Brown. The 2 Street Chronicles

Ode to Cookie and Charlene part I: VIP Poker Machine (the setup)

The owner of the 2 street bar I worked at considered himself a free market man. But his conservative view went well beyond a hatred of regulation and extended to any laws that impeded his ability to turn a profit. In the corner of the bar he had two "for entertainment only" video poker machines that everyone in the neighborhood knew paid out a quarter on every video point. It was the staff's job to quietly pay the winners out of the register. He didn't trust the bartenders to be honest about the winnings. Fearing they might skim, he actually made the jackpot winners sign a record sheet which the bartenders in return forged for their own pocket on a slow night. The money the neighborhood sank into that machine was astonishing. Families went hungry on payday after a few short hours in front of the video bandits. The machines were a huge source of revenue for the owner who laid out special rules for the 2 street gambling VIPs.

Cookie and Charlene were a mother-daughter petty crime team that had earned this status.



Cookie was the mother. An Ogre of a woman who terrified even the toughest longshoreman. I used to giggle to myself every time she walked in, picturing her wearing an animal pelt and dragging a big spiked club. Fee Fie Fo Fum. She was 6' tall, at least 300 lbs. She had a short spiky quaff of shocking red hair, a gnarled face that only a hard street life can give you and a jutting under-bite jaw sporting a couple of teeth. She was a proud ex-crack head and even prouder compulsive thief. Shoplifting was her full-time job. She would shower insults across the room as she strutted up to the bar, then radiantly slam a stolen 10 lb. ham in front of her freshly lifted from the Acme down the street. Like she was a barbarian returned from the hunt.

The daughter Charlene was a sharp contrast in looks only. A once gorgeous but still attractive stripper employed at the big club across the street who had crossed into her thirties and knew her career there was ending soon. Her boob job had taken on a natural appearance as the beer fat layers began covering her once tight body. The two would trowel the neighborhood bars. While Charlene flirted or made out with random marks, Cookie would pick their pocket or swipe money off the bar.

In an effort to get out the brass pole racket Charlene had gotten engaged to a shady construction contractor who was perpetually absentee in an effort to avoid the loud, violent, psychotic duo. Her bitterness towards him was biting. "Yo, when are we getting married? Not for nothin' but it'll be in May. May the day never come... the limp dicked mother fucker." He was a skinny, slick haired, gold chain adored guido who physically seemed no match for them. But his rare appearances were the only times the two became passive and nervously behaved. The bar manager's opinion was that he had finally snapped and started handing out beatings after Charlene had thrown a plate of hot wings in his face in front of his friends one night.

Sadly, he didn't come around often and Cookie and Charlene were video poker VIPs. They were in the bar every night, sitting side by side feeding the machine hundreds of dollars. It didn't matter how many fights they initiated, how many accusations of theft were leveled at them, the owners instructions were clear. Cookie and Charlene could not be cut off, could not be thrown out and they could stay at the bar as late as they wanted as long as they kept feeding the machines. It didn't matter how blacked out belligerent drunk they were, and my concerns about accountability fell on deft ears. Quite frankly, even if I had been allowed to cut them off, they were the scariest customers I had. I really didn't know HOW to do it with out getting into a full fist fight brawl with these two women.

So I resigned myself to the madness and tried to enjoy the mayhem my eyes absorbed with some level of fondness. I did my best to bury my level of culpability if they killed someone into the way back of my conscious. Oh such great memories. There was the time Charlene drove the three blocks home, rear ending two cars and side swiping six more. She was discovered because the neighbors simply followed the oil trail to her car parked right in the middle of her yard. Yes that was a nice one. Or then there was the time an old city yuppie came in looking to confront Charlene. He had come in the night before slumming it. (probably looking for coke) Felt pretty lucky when he found himself in his car getting his cock sucked by a drunk big boobed striper. Didn't feel so lucky when he realized his wallet was empty. The poor douche was truly outmatched. They denied ever having seen the guy and were so outraged at such wild accusations that the confrontation ended with him fleeing the premises beaten and bloodied by these banshees. As he made his retreat they shattered the back window of his car with a pursuing beer bottle. Yes, yes those were good times. But my favorite, my favorite was the night of the toilet corpse...



My Company

Robert E. Brown. Why I love Philly

So I'm in the Gallery the other day. For those of you not from Philly, the Gallery has nothing to do with art. The Gallery is a three level subterranean mall just blocks from City Hall. It's connected to the convention center and Philly's second largest train hub where all of the regional rail and subways intersect. When they knocked down half of Chinatown in order to build this jewel of commerce, I believe the powers that be thought it would be the cherry on top of the city's urban renewal movement. But sadly there is no affluence to the gallery. Instead it's an underground ghetto fabulous hangout and homeless retreat. Ever been worried about being mugged INSIDE a mall? Come to the Gallery.

But clearly I digress so I'll start again.

So I'm in the Gallery walking through a department store. A realitively nice one. I stop to look at a kitchenwares display. Suddenly I hear someone scream "Oh now this is some bullshit." And I look over and see my Philadelphia beauty queen. That lady you've seen on the bus a thousand times. Obesity squeezed into two sizes too small. She had stepped into a huge wad of bubble gum someone had spit out onto the floor. Freshly chewed gum was stretching out and spreading with every step. She paused for a moment, deciding what to do. As she was contemplating her embattled shoe situation, I contemplated it too. I thought to myself, "Dear god, what kind of a low life just spits a wad of gum into the isle of a department store and-" She solves her dilemma. She pops off the shoe and starts scraping the gum off against the shelves of the display cabinet. This isn't some small penny machine gum here. This is half a pack of warm dirty chewed up Bubblicious and it strings and stretches all over the shelf of the kitchenwares display. I just stared in disbelief. When she had had enough, she turned to me with the shoe clutched in hand.
"Can you believe this shit? She quipped with indignation as she turned to walked away with a one shoe limp.

"No, no I can't."


My Company

Robert E. Brown. The 2 Street Chronicles

The staff can't bring guns to work anymore



I should have known what I was getting into at the 2 street bar on the day I first walked into the place. It was packed with 2 street blue collar tough guys on pay day and when I walked in I felt like a record stopped. Literally every eye followed me as I walked around the big horseshoe bar to where the manager was standing. "One of these things is not like the others." I thought to myself. The manager eagerly greeted me and told me that I needed to "interview" with the owner upstairs. He pointed to a little rickety spiral staircase almost blocking the mens room door that led into a hole in the ceiling.

I started circling my way up the staircase. It was so tight that it was more like a ladder. The second floor was well neglected. Piles of old beer brand lights, dusty dart boards and boxes of pint glasses were stacked on top of the ratty worn out carpet. The room was dark, barely lit by an exposed bulb hanging from the dropped ceiling that couldn't have been more than 15 watts. At first I thought they were playing a joke on the new guy but then I heard the sounds of a ball game coming from down a small first unnoticed tight squeeze hall. I made my way towards the sound which led to a door and my polite knock. When I was instructed to enter I found the owner sitting behind a huge ornately carved hard wood desk and sitting in what looked more like a throne than an office chair. The source of the game was a huge plasma screen t.v. For the life of me, I still can't figure out how he was able to get that stuff up into the room. He had a big Irishman's head of silver hair and the rutty red face to go with it. He was chomping a huge stinking cigar that polluted the room with so much smoke my eyes burned. He was counting out money from the huge wad in his hands to the multiple towers of cash stacked all over his desk. "Which fucking movie did I just walk into?" I thought to myself.
"So I hear you're a good bartender" he said with a slight mumble from the cigar rolling around in his mouth.
"I would like to think so" I said.
"Good. Just don't steal from me. I hate it when they steal from me" he said without looking up from his money.
And my interview was over. I went back down to get shown around and "train".

Now every bar owner is a drunk, and they always have their preferred poison. This owner was no exception and his was Stoli and soda. More Stoli, less soda. As I was being shown around, he stumbled down to the bar and while he slurped down his refill he slurred out his exiting instructions.
"Buy him a drink. Buy him a drink and him. Don't by her a drink she's a bitch" and then he left.
A few minutes later the manager laughed. "Oh he'll shit himself when he realizes he forgot this" and he picked up a leather briefcase.
"Why, what's in it?" I asked.
He bobbed the briefcase up and down by the handle, balanced on his fingertips like he was trying to guess it's weight.
"Oh I'd say... around 40 thousand dollars."
His cell phone started to ring.
"See, I told you" he giggled and then he answered the phone.
I turned to the hard bodied puerto rican hottie day shift bartender and asked "isn't he worried about carrying around that much money?"
"No, it's not a problem for him" she answered. "Oh but there was that one time..."
Seems there was a week where the owner got word that he should be worried and bought a 9-mm for himself. But after a couple of days, he remembered the briefcase and forgot the gun. One of the bartenders was fighting with his girlfriend and borrowed the pistol to shoot up her SUV.
"Now he won't let any of us bring guns to work" she said with a sigh.
"That's right" the manager interjected, closing his cell phone. "Staff can't bring guns to work anymore."
"This is a pretty rough bar isn't it?" I asked him.
"Oh no, don't worry" he reassured me. "You'll get used to it."

And I never did.

About 4 months later I was shuffling a drunk outside to dump by the trash. (my favorite place to put them.) In the McDonald's parking lot across the street was the owner. He was bloated with Stoli, weaving back and forth with his cigar in his mouth, 40 thousand dollars in one hand and his dick in the other- pissing all over his own BMW. I was comforted knowing he didn't feel the need to carry a gun.

My Company

Robert E. Brown. Just Meat

I've been involved in a debate for quite some time. The discussion started when a buddy of mine pointed out that in the middle ages, the church would dry out the corpses of the Popes when they died. They would then chop them up and sell small samples of meat and bone as relics. We started crassly making jokes about Pope meat stew and Pope jerky. What an expensive snack that would be. But then we got in to a full discussion on cannibalism. The question posed in this context is different than the "trapped in the Andes" scenario. The Pope meat question isn't about survival, it's about pure opportunity. If you had a chunk of dried human flesh that was legally cut off a holy person and handed to you, would you be able to consume it? Would the thought ever cross your mind? I mean, the south pacific cannibals believed you gain a persons power by consuming their flesh. If you had the opportunity to consume the flesh of someone who many believe to be the living voice of god on earth... well that is some special little piece of jerky you've got there. Now maybe you aren't Catholic and the Pope isn't your thing. Well there are plenty of famous, holy and historical people whose corpses may really hold power and meaning to their followers. Would you take a small bite of Ghandi meat? What about Elvis jerky?

Now I know many would start screaming condemnations and questioning my ethics and morality. But that's ok. I have a single line mantra that I live by. "If it pleases you to do so, and all parties consent, then there is no wrong." But who is really ever going to consent to being eaten? Now this may be one of the strangest statements I've ever made, but I was actually in a position once where I had the opportunity to consensually eat human meat. (no sex puns please)

Actually the statement is misleading. The morsel of human flesh was from my own body. When I had my wisdom teeth taken out in my mid twenties I was given the teeth as souvenirs. A couple weeks after the surgery I sat and examined the teeth. There was a ring of crusty dried meat along the rim of the teeth. One tooth had an especially large chunk of dried meat hanging off of it. I tore it off and contemplated what looked like a sliver of beef jerky. Here was a piece of me, a piece of a person that looked just like food I have enjoyed so many times in the past. It was a strange moment. A moment when I was really confronted with the fact that we really are just meat. I rolled it around in my fingers and really considered that fact that if I popped it into my mouth I would cross that line and could say that I had engaged in cannibalism in some small form. I opted not to. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't consume myself. I flicked it into the trash, not really dwelling on it until years later.

Months later my buddy Victor Vearuelle asked if he could have my teeth and I gave them to him. Being that Vic was into Bruja magic and put them on a neckless along with a petrified frog and other odd spanish vodoo like items, perhaps I should have saved my teeth and consumed my own power.


My Company

Robert E. Brown. The Sansom Street Witch

As with all my entries, I'm not making this up. This is all very true. I don't have to write fiction. R.E. Brown= crazy magnet.

I was living above a coffee shop on the corner of 20th and Sansom. It was right in the heart of center city at a time before the trend towards gentrification and renewal had really taken hold. The city's suit and tie yuppies of the business district tensely coexisted with a fearless populous of homeless people by day. At night the street people aggressively made their presence known by harassing the nervous suburbanites and Jersey weekend amateurs who flood into trendy Ritenhouse clubs and restaurants only blocks away. I encountered the Sansom Street Witch three times in my life, but each time made a more and more intense impression on me.

The first time I encountered her was outside a busy Wawa at the end of my block. The 24 hour connivence store was a major hub for the homeless. Sometimes I would have to run a gauntlet of 5 or 6 of them. They were emboldened by their numbers, demanding change and spitting out insults if declined. I was taking a girl out for dinner and we decided to stop off to use the ATM. The streets were packed and right outside the Wawa there seemed to be a pedestrian traffic jam. As we shuffled through the crowd almost single file, I discovered the source of the slowage. It was the Sansom Street Witch in all of her glory. When I think of the phrase "old crone." I picture her. She must have been in her late sixties, early seventies. She had a gnarled street worn face and long thick ratty locks of untamed gray hair hanging all the way down her back. She was strangely overweight for someone who clearly lived on the street. She was sitting on a manhole cover with legs crossed, wrapped in dirty blankets. The steam from the manhole was blowing up into her face and her greasy hair danced in the air out in front of her like she was controlling dark magic. She was rocking back and forth with one hand extended out to her side, middle finger reaching to flip off everyone that walked to her right while she blankly stared forward. She was giving the bird to everyone and no one, like she was in a meditative trance. She was such a shocking sight to behold that the pedestrians were literally jumping into the street in order to avoid any vicinity of her. The girl I was with seemed to lack everyone else's common sense and saw a chance to do her good deed.
"Oh you poor thing." she said to the Witch and dropped a handful of coins into the old woman's lap.
With out changing her forward gaze the Witch responded by screaming "Fuck your whore face!" grabbed the change in her lap and violently flung it into the street. My date reeled in horror and I protectively nudged her into the door of the Wawa. As I pushed through the door I looked back. The
Witch had stood up and was pointing at me.
"Fuck your whore face! I see your fuck face I see it now!" she screeched.
When we came out she was gone.



The second time I saw her was about a month later. I was laying in my shitty little studio apartment reading and I heard a commotion outside. It was late on a weekday night and the streets were empty. There was a shrill screeching coming from down the block. It slowly got louder. "Fuck you all mother fuckers, You're all going to die." the voice echoed through the buildings over and over like a chant. I looked out my window but my view was constrained to the building in front of me and the sidewalk across the street. Now the voice was loud, as if the violent prophetic curses were coming from inside my third story apartment. After a couple of minutes I couldn't stand my limited view and I forced the screen up and popped my head out to reconnoiter the source of the madness. And I saw her. Standing on my corner was the Sansom Street Witch. Her hair was braided into two long thick grey pig tails that draped over her huge saggy breasts and she was wearing a filthy knit cap with a big fuzzy red ball on top. The basic get up should have been cute, but looked more like a filthy menacing mockery of the trendy young girls that would go clubbing down the street. She was down there with both middle fingers extended. Letting the whole neighborhood know the end was near. But just after I focused in on her, she focused in on me. I was spotted. Again she pointed at me. "I see you! It's your turn soon. I see you you're going to die." she wailed and I flung myself out of sight, literally diving to the floor. I was frozen with fear. She continued to scream insults up at me for another minute. Then it went quiet. I waited two long minutes of silence before edging my head over the window to peer out and see if...
She was still there.
Standing quietly staring up at my window. I bobbed my head back down with my heart jackhammering through my chest bone. I reassured myself that there were three locked doors between myself and the witch. I actually pondered the security of my windows imagining her ability to scale or float up the wall. After another couple minutes of silence and courage building I popped my head out for a peek. She was gone.



It took me another month of Witch free living before I let my guard down. So of course that's when I had my final brush with her. I was working a shitty office job and they had called me in to work on Sunday to catch up on some paper work. I stumbled down the stairs of my building still half asleep and hung over at 7 in the morning. At that time on a weekend my neighborhood was truly a ghost town. I lumbered outside fiddling with my keys. As I slid the key into the lock of the the outside door I felt it. That feeling you get when you know you are being watched. I turned my head to my left and there was the Sansom Street Witch. She was standing two feet from me with her back stealthily pressed against the building. Her arm was outstretched, violently flipping me off with all of her might. There was a two second stunned pause and then in shock I said,
"seriously?"
Then I flung myself back as I dodged the first of her punches. She began flailing herself at me screaming "I know you! I know who you are! I see you!" While she continued to swing at me with her right, she grabbed her shirt with her left and yanked it up to her chin. Her huge floppy old woman breasts came bouncing out at me with anger and I literally bound backwards down the street avoiding her scary fist and tits like I was in a bad kung fu comedy. Then she just stopped. She pulled her shirt down with a look of satisfaction, turned and walked away. I watched her casually march down the middle of the street without a person on foot or in car to witness or verify this surreal assault.

I never saw her again, but for the rest of my time on that block, I never stopped looking over my shoulder for the Sansom Street Witch.



My Company