Nurse the Hate: Hate the Greenskeeper

Once I was in Nashville killing time before a show with the Blue Moon Boys at this club called Wolfy’s. With five hours to kill, I set up camp at the bar, ordered some food and started up a conversation with the bartender. Now normally in these cases someone will tell you interesting attractions in town, where they grew up, that sort of thing. Not this guy. When I asked how long he worked there, he counters with “About 3 months man…I had to get out of town fast and landed this job. Get this…”

It turns out he had to leave the Birmingham AL area after a relationship gone horribly wrong. He met this girl that was part of a well established family in town. Her father ran the big car dealership or furniture store or real estate developing firm or some such shit. Dad was the big guy in town that always had his smiling picture in the paper while handing out over sized checks to tax deductible charity organizations. She was a nice girl. Fun girl. Apparently they liked to get really drunk on Jim Beam and 7-Up, and attempt to find new and exciting places to have sex. One night while they were abusing her father’s country club account, they decided to have sex on the 17th green. It was all good fun until the next morning around 9:30.

If this was a movie, you’d change scene to the bartender’s rental unit on the wrong side of the tracks. Picture a guy sprawled out on a twin bed sleeping with his mouth open with his dirty clothes strewn all over the place. I'm picturing that Frank Zappa poster with him on the toilet too. The door bell rings and the bartender doesn’t stir. The door bell keeps ringing, and the bartender guy eventually drags his hungover ass downstairs to see who exactly it is that won’t get the message and just go away. He opens the door and standing on his porch is an older guy he vaguely recognizes. “Are you John Doe?”

“yeah…”

“Son, I’d really appreciate it if you picked up after yourself.”

Then from behind his back the older gentleman reveals a used condom pathetically draped on the end of a stick. With great distaste, he drops it at the feet of the bartender. It hits our hero like a ton of bricks. Shit! It’s the greenskeeper from the country club. He knows this because he now recalls with startling clarity how as a lark he and his girlfriend deposited the remains of their good time last night inside the 17th hole itself.

The greenskeeper starts walking to his pickup truck, and curiosity gets the best of our Boy. “Hey, how did you know it was me?”

The old man stops, turns around and reaches into his pocket. He says, “You lost your wallet.” as he tosses the wallet across the yard to the doorway.

Now that’s a really tough break. It’s an especially tough break as he was supposed to go on a cruise with the girlfriend and her parents later that week. Clearly the greenskeeper is going to have a word with her father. Dad's probably not going to be real excited about this turn of events.

Things unfold in a surprising way… Dad forbids The Girl to see him. The Girl cries and argues. Mom takes daughter’s side. Father yells at everybody. Mother and daughter decide to go on cruise with bartender anyway and leave Dad at home (or he decides he isn’t going…I don’t remember).

So the three of them hit the high seas and have the bond of the angry father uniting them. It’s all fun and games until on Day 2 when the wind kicks up, the sea gets rough, and his girlfriend gets horribly sea sick. With little choice the bartender goes to dinner with Mom. He is pleasantly surprised to have a good time. So much so that they decide to hit the ship’s casino after dinner. They play some craps, have some drinks, and win some money. Good times. In fact, they have such a good time that they decide to have a little nightcap in her cabin. That, of course, ends in him having sex with Mom and then passing out in bed with her.

The next morning the seas have calmed, and his girlfriend is surprised to find her boyfriend the bartender guy never came back to the room. She decides to ask her Mom if she’s seen him, opens up her Mom’s cabin and finds him in bed with her. As it was described to me, the scene was a little, shall we say, awkward. The best part was that they were only in Day 3 of a 7 Day Cruise.

The bartender spent the rest of the cruise with the Mom. The girlfriend fumed on deck. The cruise finally ended and the ship docked. The girl called her Dad. Our man packed up real quick, slunk off to Nashville to tend bar at Wolfy’s, and told me this story while I ate a club sandwich.

I wonder what that Mom looked like.