AIR PLUNGER
BY BRYON QUERTERMOUS
Stanley Bard didn't know Mexico existed until the fateful day he made his pilgrimage to the House of Rock in search of his lucky guitar and they were out of milk. Stanley looked like the kind of guy who would have a guitar fetish. Every time he had a big job, Stanley headed to the House of Rock restaurant on Main Street in Dairy Head, Ohio and groped the guitar used in the studio recording sessions for Barry Manilow's "Copacabana."
Maybe I should explain what kind of restaurant House of Rock is. If you are picturing a slick commercial venture sponsored by celebrities to lure star-struck tourists into buying nine-dollar rubber hamburgers, think again. Think of a road tour featuring the robot from "Lost in Space," the kid who played The Beaver, and Gary Coleman.
The memorabilia in the House of Rock collection includes the back-up jumpsuit Elvis kept in his trunk, the badge of the cop who directed traffic when John Lennon was shot, a nametag from the guy who made Jimmy Hendrix's bandanas and of course, the aforementioned Barry Mannilow guitar. It's a six degrees of separation warehouse of celebrity junk, but in Ohio it makes a killing.
There are three more House of Rock restaurants in the world, one next to the world's largest neon sign in Nevada, one a top a haunted lighthouse in Maine and the newest one, built for a crazy billionaire on his own private island in Mexico.
Stanley started into his usual routine anyway, purchasing a souvenir guitar pick for $3 from the gift booth, literally a booth in the back where a blind midget named Goblin sells House of Rock wares. Stanley then sat at his regular booth just across from the men's bathroom and sat his plunger in the seat facing the door so she would feel at home. Stanley is a plumber and his plunger's name is Nancy.
Nancy is about three feet tall and is the last remaining girl from the old PlungCorp SoftSide line. The SoftSide line had been an attempt by PlungCorp in the eighties to make plumbing tools and skills more accessible to women. Stanley is not a woman by any means, but in an art as overpopulated as plumbing, you have to have a hook or a gimmick, so Stanley is the "Ladies Man" plumber.
He tries to show his soft side by using Nancy and showing the women what he's doing so that they won't have to call him again. Of course this may sound like bad business, but Stanley knows that women aren't particularly bright when it comes to plumbing so they never remember what he tells them and they always call him again.
Stanley was thinking about Nancy to distract himself from the fact that the House of Rock was out of milk. He didn't like it when little things changed because he knew that the world was a big complex mass of tiny little threads running through every loophole of life. If the House of Rock ran out of milk, that would set in motion a chain of events that could tear apart the entire fabric of the world order, or at least make Stanley's life more difficult. The distraction wasn't working, so he vomited instead.
Normally, vomiting fit into Stanley's plan because he was lactose intolerant. Some of the best plumbers he knew were raging alcoholics and did their best work drunk, but drinking alcohol would kill Stanley instantly. Drinking a tall glass of milk would give him a rush of rebellious exhilaration and as the vitamin D haze descended on him, Stanley would then shake a slim Jim out of his pocket and light it to give him the feeling of the post drunken cigarette.
But right now Stanley was just vomiting because he was Stanley. When he was done, he tried lighting a Slim Jim to try and regain control of his thread, but he gagged on the smoke and then vomited again.
Desperate to regain some control of a situation that was scattering across his line of vision like a rampant game of whack-a-mole, Stanley dragged himself to the case where his lucky guitar was stored. It was empty.
The next day Stanley woke up in Mexico.
Now I'm still not exactly sure how Stanley got to Mexico. He keeps trying to tell me there's a door between the two restrooms that he thought was a broom closet but instead turns out to be a portal to the other two House of Rock restaurants. I'm not too sure about that one, I mean if God was going to install a portal in the universe, why would he put it between three second-rate tourist traps? Isn't that what the interstate highway is for?
But how he got to Mexico isn't really important and I guess I could make something up, but my imaginations no good so let's say he stole a bus.
Mexico reminded Stanley of his last vacation to the Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville Fun Park in Coconut Grove, Florida. The spot on the island where he fell out of the closet or got off the bus, depending on whose version you believe, looked over the ocean as the sun was setting. It created one of those imported beer commercial moments that make you feel like chucking it all to spend your days playing air guitar in a dive bar band on the side of the island where the tourists don't go.
Of course Stanley knew he couldn't stay here because islands like this had no use for plain old plumbers, he was just there to stroke his guitar and then get back to work where he was really needed.
Just off the beach, the island Stanley landed on sloped downward into a bowl of trees that looked as if they might bite and more than certainly housed things that liked to bite. But one of the trees seemed to be glowing so Stanley made his way toward it. Dangerous things never glow he figured.
The glowing tree turned out to be a neon sign for a House of Rock restaurant and was only dangerous to Stanley if it fell on him or he touched it while standing in a puddle of water so he followed the arrow through the trees.
The House of Rock Mexican branch turned out to be the private home of reclusive software billionaire Stefan Intelasoft. It seems Stefan fancies himself an amateur musician and couldn't get a gig in any of the "real" theme restaurants so he bought one of his own. According to the sign, the restaurant was around back in what Stanley took to be the guesthouse.
When Stanley walked in, Richard Nixon was drawing a Guinness from the tap for a short man at the bar. Of course it wasn't really Richard Nixon, but it was an amazing copy. Stanley figured the only man in the world who would let himself look like Richard Nixon was a reclusive software billionaire so he ordered a milk and asked the guy if he could stroke his guitar.
"Pardon," Intelasoft asked?
"I asked for a milk, and none of that sissy skim stuff."
"You wanted to stroke something."
"Oh yeah, your Barry Manillow guitar."
"You some kind of pervert?"
"Just a plumber," I said.
"I always wanted to be a plumber on some tropical island like this."
"Why aren't you," Stanley asked?
"Some guys just aren't born to be plumbers. But when I'm on stage with my guitar sometimes I'll get lost in a fantasy and start doing an air plunger with it imagining I'm attacking a big nasty clog."
"I do the same thing when I'm working on a nasty clog. I'll start playing air guitar. But I know what you mean...I could never be a rock star..."
"I could never be a plumber..."
Now this is the point at which if this were a movie, the character's faces would gradually morph from sad frowns of unattainable dreams to smiles of newfound inspiration.
"I have a stage," Intelasoft said.
"I have a plunger," Stanley said.
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3.15.2002