Billy Bacon & the Forbidden Pigs

The Other White Meat (Triple X)
by Lex Marburger

Oh, Christ. It’s 9:07, and I’m here in this smoky, dingy hardwood-paneled bar. There’s a glass of fizzing amber liquid in front of me. I asked for a beer, but who knows what I got. Hell, I better get a whiskey. Through the haze of cancer smoke, I can see a stage of some sort. How did I ever get this far South? I mean, it’s not Deep South enough to see family resemblances in third cousins, but the heat is just too much. The glass comes down in front of me, ice already melting in the watered-down bourbon, and I’m dreading the burn of bad whiskey when the jukebox starts up. There’s some swamp rock tune on, a fresh breeze that sweeps through the bar, sending precognitions of laughter past the swinging shutters onto the street, where passersby give a short smile on their way to wherever it is they’re going. That gives way to a hillbilly sound from the ’60s that I didn’t think existed anymore. The kind with a cheerful melancholy that can’t get anyone down, just grin in understanding of this life that twists us around into pawns in our own game. The whiskey tastes sweet in the Southern charm of slide guitars and the solid tenor voice, while night falls and the sweet smell of the dark creeps into the bar, full of passion and fire, a spontaneous movie to the soundtrack of the music. It’s 10:30, and the joint is jumpin’. Fuck y’all, I’m gonna dance.