Drawing by Jesse Egan

I’ve been serving booze in this town since 1985. That’s 26 years behind the plank. Truth is, I could have quit a long time ago, having parlayed other skills into a decent freelance business, but I really do love bartending, and believed I could do it forever.

Well forever came early last month, when I was informed by the powers that be that my services would no longer be needed.

Now, this is not going to be a screed against my former employers about how they could have fired such a hard working, honest, efficient, speedy and spectacular bartender (with handsome features and genius tendencies). They had their reasons, which I respect. For the record, though, I did nothing wrong, apart from the fact that I got older and the bar (710 Beach Club) got younger. In dating parlance, you could say that we had “grown apart.”

Indeed, the news of my unemployment came the day after my 49^th birthday—a fact that has hit me pretty hard. Not because I’m getting old, per se (I typically don’t sweat birthdays), but because it probably means my bartending career has come to a close. I mean, let’s face it, in this economy, there aren’t that many bar openings available, and the ones worth having are going to the young and fun babetenders.

Well, polly wolly doodle if that don’t suck my nuts! Bartending has been a part of my identity for as long as I can remember having an identity. It’s how I know everybody I know, and that’s how everybody I know knows me. Christ, I haven’t worked at Winston’s Beach Club for 15 years, yet people still ask if I can get them on the guest list, which is really annoying because only friends have the right to request guest-list privileges, and if they were my fucking friends, they’d know that I haven’t worked at Winstons for 15 years.

But I digress. The point is, I’m not a bartender anymore, and it’s time to face the fact, time for closure. Hence this column, which is a bittersweet farewell (or good riddance) to the people and things that were part of my life for so long. For instance, I would like to send a heartfelt farewell to my former co-workers and bosses at 710 Beach Club. It’s been a brilliant 12 years. Thanks for all of them.

Farewell to my customers—regular or infrequent—who never gave me no guff. Your business was greatly appreciated.

To the sumptuous cosmo-metro mamas, the busty, blondie, beachy babes and the “Just-flew-in-from-Louisiana” Susyannas—who grinded each other’s pelvises on the dance floor in a Technicolor, quasi-lesbo grope-show—fare thee well, my fairy fays.

But, to all the drunken trolls who approached them and said or did something trollish, thereby bringing the Technicolor lesbo-grope show to a screeching halt—good riddance!

Good riddance, in fact, to all the buffoons who inappropriately touched or leered at any of my female customers.

Good riddance to all the jukebox hoarders who played $20 worth of Celine Dion and Lil’ Bow Wow while Johnny Cash paced  in the green room, guitar slung over his back, waiting to go on.

And to all you impatient bastards who like to bang your bottle on the bar to summon the bartender, I bid thee a mighty middle-fingered good riddance. May the bottle break in your hand and sever a nerve.

To all the moocher-Minnies who rested their ample breasts on the bar and fake-flirted with me to get a freebie—I say, “hidey, hidey, hidey ho–ho’s.” However, to all those ladies who rested their breasts on the bar for no other reason than their breasts were tired, well, hidey, hidey, hi my lovelies.

To every band that rocked out, even on the nights when no one was there, but played like the room was full and your stomachs empty, and said “please” and “thank you” when you ordered on your bar tab, and were just all-round good guys—goodbye, farewell, good luck. But to all the bands who bitched incessantly—on and off stage—and brought down the mood of the room with your grumpy, faux-rock-star demeanor, then had the balls to act like I sold your sister to slavery when I said your bar tab was a mere $75—good riddance. May your next million gigs be played at the Shady Meadows Senior Assisted Living Facility and Resort.

And to all those off-duty bartenders who asked for the (wink-wink) bartender discount, adios, mofos. I didn’t give you the bartender discount because you aren’t a real bartender. A real bartender never asks for a discount.

To all you last-call lizards who never could quite grasp the concept of closing time and refused to leave, even as the clock ticked ever-dangerously toward the 2 a.m. mark, and held on to your nearly empty bottle of backwash so tightly that I had to pry it from your hands and literally push you out the motherfucking door—oh, man, oh man, good riddance to youse.

To the Baileys Irish Cream—arriverderci! You always fouled my sinks right after I changed the water.

Au revoir, while we’re at it, to being hunched over the sink washing glasses all night.

Auf Wiedersehen, broken glass in the ice bin (you cut me the deepest).

Don’t let the door smack you on the way out, bar rot.

Catch you later, San Diego vice squad and undercover minor-decoy operation.

Buh-bye, sloppy, excessive-high-fiving white guy.

Ciao, garnish-tray gobblers (it ain’t a buffet!).

Hasta la vista, “I-lost-my-beer-now-give-me-a-new-one-dude” (It’s not my job to babysit your beer.)

See ya, sticky, broken soda gun!

Cheerio, cherrys, and the industrial-sized jar you came in, filled with the chemicalized maraschino syrup that causes hand-cancer.

Too-da-loo, fruit flies.

And tautugniagmigikpiñ*, slimy lemons and limes. I will miss youse all the way Maria Shriver misses her housekeeper.

But to the rest of it—the people and things that make bartending great—fare thee well, fare thee well and a-polly wolly doodle all the day.

Ed Decker
06.07.11

*Tautugniagmigikpiñ is how Alaskan Eskimos say goodbye.

This was supposed to be a different column. It was supposed to be a column about Juan Williams’ being fired by NPR for saying that he is afraid to fly with traditionally dressed Muslims. It was going to be called “Sheiks on a Plane,” which was supposed to include a scene in which Williams runs through the aircraft shouting, “I have had it with these motherfucking sheiks on this motherfucking plane.”

This is gonna be sooo funny, I thought as I brought my piping hot coffee into the office and excitedly began typing out my brilliant idea—for a couple of minutes, anyway, until the creature arrived. It was a fly, and when it flew in the door and landed on my coffee cup, everything came to a screeching halt.

For two hours, we were at war, with him dive bombing my head and landing on my stuff, and me hunting him down with an Esquire magazine until losing him. Then I would search for bit, fail, give up and return to work—at which point he would return, forcing me to chase again, over and over again, for about 10 cycles.

I cannot tolerate flies in the least. Sucks for me because I live in Ocean Beach, which is like Cancun for houseflies. If that weren’t bad enough, my house is against the alley, near the garbage cans, so they swarm and swirl outside my house all day and somehow—like a barricaded house in a zombie apocalypse—a few of them always manage to get in.

Every morning, depending on the time of year, I wake up to about 2 to twenty flies in my home. At that point I have but one mission: destroy. Before showering, before breakfast, before coffee even, I must rid the house of every single fly so that I can continue my day in peace.

It’s called pteronarcophobia.

To be honest, I don’t quite get that word, nor does it accurately define me. I understand the “ptero” part. Ptero means winged. But “narco”? as in lethargic, sleepy? Hell no. There’s nothing lethargic about a housefly. And the one in my office is freakishly speedy, like he got into my coke stash somehow. Furthermore, while I am definitely fearful of flies, the “phobia” suffix leaves out the other, equally-important, half of the equation: hatred. I fear and hate flies, as do most people with this condition. So I took it upon myself to tinker with the word. I dumped “narco” and replaced it with “tacho” (meaning “speed,” as in tachometer) then added “miso” (meaning “contempt,” as in misogynist) and put it all together to come up with, “ptero-tacho-miso-phobia (tero-tacko-meeso-fobia), the fear and loathing of flying insects, specifically, the fly.

So, what is the reason for my pterotachomisophobia? It all began in 1986, when I saw the remake of The Fly starring Jeff Goldblum as a scientist who turns into a murderous member of the musca domestica species. There’s a scene in which his girlfriend catches him regurgitating on his meal. When she recoils in horror, he explains that this is how flies externally digest their food. The acidic vomit liquefies the solid so it can be sucked through their straw-like proboscis, and it occurred to me then that when a fly lands on my food, it’s probably puking on it. They are also fond of defecating, urinating, salivating or simply shedding any or all of the horrifying pathogens they carry in their disgusting little leg spurs.

At any given time, that teeny little housefly—sitting on your coffee cup, cutely rubbing it’s forelegs together like a kitten cleaning his paws—could be a bounty of typhoid, cholera, dysentery, salmonella, tuberculosis, anthrax, hepatitis, cysts of protozoa or the eggs of helminths.

When I see a housefly, I envision a dead raccoon festering under the SoCal sun, with him and a hundred of his friends crawling over the thing until something startles them and they all take wing, each hurtling toward a different surface on which to deposit its biological mayhem—like my coffee cup, on which the creature rubs its forelegs together to shake off every single cyst and egg it brought with him.

I take a swipe but the bastard is fast. I chase him around the room, knocking over pictures and plants until he finds refuge in some cranny that I can’t locate. It’s a viscious cycle, and I can’t get any writing done! So I Google “Lifecycle of the common housefly.”

I was under the impression that they live for only three days and thought, Well, maybe I can ask my editor for an extension and then wait for it to die. But the little upchuckers live 20 days! And, judging by its size and speed, this one was young— probably only a few hours has passed since it was a mere maggot munching on the infected innards of a dead raccoon, the thought of which makes me want to externally digest my monitor.

It’s midnight now. Deadline is tomorrow. My best hope is to ignore the fly and keep working on Sheiks on a Plane. So I write, “The problem with firing Juan Williams for his comment is that he is rubbing his forelegs together and dropping the cysts of protozoa into my goddamn coffee again!”

I watch with contempt as the creature crawls deeper into the cup. If I could, I would drop a nuclear bomb on his head and tolerate the radiation poisoning. I hate him so much. I hate him the way sharks hate surfboards. I hate him how hipsters hate Styx. I hate him the way Mormo—suddenly, he takes wing and heads toward the area of the door. In a flash, I leap from my seat, rush toward him and maniacally wave my hands shouting, “Out, fly, out!”

The beast is discombobulated as I use my hands and body to herd it out the door. Clearly, it does not want to leave, preferring, I’m quite sure, to torment me further. But my shouting and waving has startled him and he bounces off my chest, the wall, and my chest again before conceding and careening out of the office.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the rear abdominal segment on your way out!” I shout, as I slam it shut.

Peace then. Elation. Emancipation. After a few moments, I peek to see if the coast is clear. It is. I walk to the kitchen, pour a glass of victory wine and return. Breathing easily, I start typing. My brilliant column about air-bound sheiks, it appears, will be completed after all. Before long, I am in the zone.

Then the unthinkable happens.

“Honey?” says my wife, as she opens the door. “Have you seen my wallet?” at which point the little vomit-monger zips over her shoulder, lands on the rim of my freshly poured glass of victory wine and barfs a few thousand anthrax spores. Reflexively, I wail. The sound is guttural and dampened, like a mouthless banshee being gang-raped by a grove of pine trees.

“What’s wrong?!” my treasonous wife asks.

“I have had it with this motherfucking fly in this motherfucking office,” I howl, with bloodshot eyes and throbbing neck veins. She backs away, slowly, quietly. When I’m on deadline, and blocked, I’m prone to demonic outbursts. At these moments, my wife has learned, it’s always best to retreat and shut the door.

“May the cysts of million protozoa infest your pancreas,” I scream at her, as the fly rubs his forelegs and drops a few thousand more Helminths’ ovum into my wine. I sigh, and delete the Sheiks on a Plane title, replacing it with “The Fly,” thereby tendering my unconditional motherfucking surrender to a motherfucking insect.

Edwin Decker
Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat
11.10.10

My friend Larry is a formidable Scrabble opponent. We’re usually pretty even, but the last time we played was a holocaust. The prick had subjugated every reachable triple word score, wielded two-letter words like daggers and scored a handful of bingos before I ever scored one. By the time we got to the endgame, I was behind by 150 points, with nothing in my rack but redundant vowels and a board so tight it had all the scoring potential of Gary Coleman in a slam-dunk competition. So I forfeited.

There is an ongoing debate between Larry and me about the ethics of quitting. Larry, like a lot of Scrabble players, thinks you shouldn’t stop until that last tile is played and all points tallied. He says Scrabble – like life – is about the journey; it shows integrity and sportsmanship to see the game through.

I, on the other hand, am a shameless quitter. I have no problem quitting when defeat is inevitable. And not just board games, either. I quit college. I quit women. I quit reading mediocre books right in the middle. I walk out of sporting blowouts. I quit watching the movie if the movie doesn’t quit sucking. I start new writing projects without finishing old ones. I quit jobs. I quit friendships. I quit smoking cigarettes, but couldn’t hang so I quit quitting. Then I quit again. Then I quit quitting again, and so on-until I had quit and unquit smoking 75 more times before I actually quit.

I even quit music. At 13 years old I tried violin lessons, but immediately started sucking, so I quit. At 15, I took piano lessons, sucked instantly, and then quit. At 16, I took up the clarinet and quit before I ever blew a note correctly. At 18, I took up guitar, didn’t suck right away, but then showed signs of sucking, then a bit more sucking crept in, until finally full-blown suckage commenced, then I quit.

Maybe you’re thinking, Wow, all that quitting sure is a waste of time. But that’s not how I see it. I believe you’re saving time by not pursuing the things you can’t do or don’t enjoy. Life is too short to suffer crummy movies till the end, and to this day I shudder to think of what unspeakable horrors I might have witnessed had I stayed till the end of The Bad News Bears Go to Japan.

And maybe you are thinking, Whatever happened to the Try, try again’ theory? The problem with the Try, try again theory is that try-trying doesn’t always work. I know that your leaders and role models want you to believe that anything is possible if you just try-try. But that’s bullshit. Martin Luther King Jr. try-tried to end bigotry. Marsha Clark try-tried to try O.J. And the San Diego Chargers try-try-try every year to advance in the playoffs.

Trying don’t always do it. Oh, sure, I could have stayed with the guitar, could have tried real hard to be a great axe-man just like the other zillion aspiring guitarists out there who are trying their nuts off to achieve excellence, yet never pass the level of mediocrity. They waste their years aspiring to greatness and the most they ever get for their troubles is 50 bucks and a pitcher of Guinness for their monthly gig at O’Sucky’s.

Or worse, the Never Say Die attitude actually works for them. They strive and toil and–though their musicianship doesn’t improve much–all the hard work opens some corporate doors and they eventually become big-time rock stars.

Ugh.

Now you’ve got this utterly average asshole–and all the utterly average assholes like him–caterwauling their mediocrity on the radios, and the jukeboxes, and car speakers, and polluting your otherwise tolerable existence.

In this way, quitting is a noble gesture. To spare others of your ingloriousness is the ultimate sacrifice. That’s why the violin had to be abandoned. There’s no telling what murderous clamor my lute might have unleashed upon the world had I continued.

And thank God Jewel is a quitter. I mean, what if she hadn’t quit trying to publish more poetry books after the critics trashed her debut, A Night Without Armor. What if she responded to the bad reviews by saying, “When you fall off the horse, you got to get right back on,” and kept releasing more and more poetry books with abominable new poems like “I Love You Like a Person Who Loves a Lot” and “My Van Still Smells Like Poltz,” and inside your head you’re screaming, “No, Jewel, no! You got it wrong! If you fall off the horse, then you should stay the fuck off horses!”

And what if Jerry hadn’t pulled the plug on Seinfeld? Did you really want to see a 17th season, when Jerry’s cute, bespectacled nephew comes to live with him, and George and Elaine fall in love and give each other smooches every other scene, and Kramer’s newest stunt is to jump over an “Afro-American” on water skis?

Some people say quitting is the easy way out. I say the opposite. Quitting is hard. Continuing as you were, using the same tired formula, writing the same tired jokes for the same tired characters–that’s the easy part. It takes balls to quit. Quitting means starting something else. Quitting rocks. Quitting is good. I am a quitter.

Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat circa I-have-no-fucking-idea-when

“You’re a horrible driver,” my wife tells me as she merges onto westbound Interstate 8 from the 805—the last leg of our return trip from Lake Arrowhead. This is hilarious for two reasons. First, I’m one of the best drivers in the world: I never tailgate, rarely speed, drive with both hands on the wheel and have successfully trained myself not to stare at beautiful women for more than three seconds (five seconds if it’s a busty redhead with lots of tats).

The other reason her comment is funny is that at the moment W. says it, she is tailgating a hazardous-waste transportation truck at 90 mph while shaving her legs and playing Bejeweled on her iPhone.OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but she is tailgating at high speed, and I’m clutching the dashboard so tightly my knuckles are changing colors more often than a mood ring embedded in one of Russell Crowe’s ovaries.

I’m a bad driver? I think. Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle “monosyllabic”?

It’s true. This woman stinks up the entire roadway when she’s driving on it: She doesn’t check her mirrors. She’s a habitual multitasker. She thinks “blind spot” is a section of the highway where cops can’t see you speeding. And while the rules of safety dictate that we steer with our hands on the 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock positions, my girl’s hands are always at 12 o’clock and QWERTY—that’s one hand steering, the other hand texting.

But of it all, it’s the tailgating that scares me most. I tell her, “Babe, any accident investigator will tell you that driving too closely is the leading cause of accidents because reaction time is greatly redu—.”

“Ed,” she says, cutting me off, “how many cars have you wrecked in your lifetime?”

“That’s not fair,” I blurted.

“It most certainly is fair,” she answered. “How many?”

“Well, let’s see. I crashed my 280Z, my Horizon, my friend’s Mustang and, oh, there was the seaweed-green Gremlin that some guy was trying to sell me. But I crunched that one without actually driving it, so it’s just three.”

“What about the camper?” she asks.

“Oh, c’mon,” I protest. “You can’t count the camper.”

“Why not?” “Because it was a camper shell mounted on the back of a pickup truck, and the pickup part of it was never actually damaged in the, um, incident.”

“Honey, you drove an 11-foot camper under a nine-foot bridge, which stripped the camper shell clean off the bed of the pickup and deposited it on the middle of the road, where it lay in a giant heap of metal, wood, glass and porno magazines.”

“OK, you can count that.”

“And what about the time you wrecked two cars in eight hours?” Oh, snap! I forgot I had told her about that debacle. It happened in New York, during the summer of 1980, after my high-school commencement, driving my Mustang home from a graduation party, around 3 a.m. and quite drunk in the face when a strange, bug-eyed bird beast—a cross between a harpy and Marty Feldman—jumped in front of the car, causing me to swerve and plummet into a massive, axel-snapping ditch.

Unharmed, I walked home, went to bed and dreamed dark, nervous dreams.

The next morning, I asked Dad if I could borrow the family car—a silver Dodge Aspen station wagon—so I could return to the scene and assess the Mustang’s damages. Dad reluctantly gave me the keys, and off I drove, for about a mile, where a sedan pulled out in front of me and I slammed into its side—a classic T-bone.

“So I told you that story, huh?” I ask W.

“Yes, and you also told me what happened to the Aspen afterward.”

“That it sustained about $1,500 of damage and took months to pay my parents back?” “No,” she snorted, “I mean about a year later, when you killed it for good.”

“Oh, you mean when I took it to see The Kinks at Hartford Civic Center but, instead, drove it right into the back of a Mack truck, totaling the car and my kneecap, which required reconstructive surgery, months in rehabilitation and a lifetime of knee problems—yeah, I guess you can count that one, too, but keep in mind, that’s the accident that makes me so frightened of your tailgating. I’ve seen what can happen!”

“Whatever. The point is, you had seven accidents to my zero accidents.”

“But, honey, don’t you see—those collisions are exactly what makes me a better driver. Most of them happened when I was a stupid kid. I learned my lessons and have become the safest driver in America, whereas you drive like a bungling bank robber after the dye packs explode in the getaway car.”

“Well, you drive like an old lady,” she says. “You drive too slow and herky-jerky; you leave the directional signal blinking and miss exits because you’re too busy ranting about something Sarah Palin said instead of paying attention.”

“Well, OK,” I respond. “I do blabber a bit when somebody is in the car with me, but you should see me drive when I’m alone— I’m awesome!”

“Well, alone is the only way I would drive with you,” she says as she speeds up to get a closer look at the “stay back 100 feet” warning sign on the rear of the hazardous-waste transportation truck.

Originally published in San Diego CityBeat
09/15/10

I love being an uncle. This may come as a surprise to some readers, but as long as I don’t have to feed, clothe or—Christ forefend—cohabitate with them, I get along with kids famously.

One reason is because I don’t have any kids of my own. I’m not a parent and, therefore, don’t issue many of those annoying, parental-type demands, such as “Don’t say this” or “Don’t drink that.” I have only one rule: No secreting! Keep your disease-addled puddles of snot, spit, poop or pee away from me and my belongings. Other than that, it’s an open game. You want to run with scissors? Absolutely! Just keep them pointed inward. Feel like another Red Bull? Sure! Will that be with or without vodka?

Yes, I’m a fantastic uncle. It just comes naturally. However, there are many who struggle with the role. No worries, because today, I’m going to share my Theories on Uncle-ing—you’ll want to pay attention.

Play Games: Playing games with your nieces and nephews is what uncle-ing is all about. My favorite is the classic Hot and Cold Game. It’s great because you can sit on your ass and watch football while engaging the kid at the same time. It’s especially fun with River, my 5-year-old nephew. This is because River is a dumbass. It takes him forever to find the object. He’ll start walking in the wrong direction and I’ll say “colder, colder,” and he’ll keep going in the wrong direction. So, I’ll keep saying, “Colder, colder, you’re getting much colder,” and still he heads toward the arctic hinterland that is the place where the thing is not hidden.

The last time we played, it got so ridiculous that I yelled, “You’re frickin’ freezing, kid! Even the polar bears are telling you to turn around,” at which point River finally stopped in his tracks. You could see his brain working then. Suddenly, his eyes flashed a spark of enlightenment, as if to say, “Yes, yes, it’s all clear to me now.” Then, with his newfound understanding of Hot and Cold Game, River lurched back into action, moving—in the same, wrong direction!

Feign Interest: A good uncle will pretend to be interested in all the mundane crap kids talk about. Indeed, one of the hardest parts about being an uncle is having to repeatedly respond, “Wow!” and “Really?!” to the child’s excruciating stories of utter white-noise nothingness, such as the one about the stick and the ladybug Joey told me when he was 7.

“Uncle Ed, um, guess what? Yesterday, I found a stick, and it was a brown stick, and it had a, um, ladybug crawling on it. Then the ladybug crawled down the stick, then on my arm, and then, um—Uncle Ed? Why are jamming a butter knife into your ear?”

“Only to hear you better, child. Only to hear you better.”

What you should do in this situation is alleviate the brain-blistering boredom by entertaining yourself with a little harmless emotional torture.

“You need to be careful, Joey. Ladybugs can paralyze you with their venom and lay eggs in your eyeballs. Next time you see one, it’s best to run away screaming, ‘Ladybug’s gonna get me! Ladybug’s gonna get me! Acck, acck, acck!’ as loud as you can.”

Kick their Asses in Games: Letting kids win does not encourage them to improve and will not prepare them for the series of heartbreaking losses that life will undoubtedly shower upon them as adults. In a country that teaches its youth that “everyone’s a winner,” I feel it necessary to counter the lie with truth. Not only do I never let them win, but I destroy them, violently. In chess, I slash through their pathetic defense and toss their pieces aside with disgust. If we’re playing Call of Duty, I sneak up from behind, put the shotgun to the backs of their skulls and wait until they turn around—so they can see the muzzle-flash—before pulling the trigger. Whatever the game, I crush them as quickly and as brutally as possible. Afterward, I dance on their graves. Like, a few days ago, when I beat young Noah in Connect 4 and told him, “Don’t let it get you down, kid. It’s not your fault you’re mother huffed nail polish when she was pregnant.”

Myth Busting: Parents will likely disagree but I feel after an appropriate age, it’s the uncle’s job to dispel such myths as the Santa fantasy, the Tooth Fairy conspiracy and the God / Christ fables. This past Easter, on the phone, I asked Little Michael (11) what the Easter Bunny brought him.

“A basket of chocolate,” he answered.

“Trick question!” I shouted into the phone. “There is no such thing as an Easter Bunny! Forget about the logistical impossibility of the story—just ask yourself, why would a giant, intelligent, upright-walking, opposable thumb-having, magical super-bunny take a low-paying delivery job instead of getting his own lucrative reality show? Think, boy, think!”

Inappropriate Language: It is my belief that not only should we use profanity in the presence of children, but that we should actually teach it to them. A child needs to have an arsenal of curse words to maintain his or her playground cred. It’s also another way to entertain yourself because you can get them in trouble with their parents. For instance, one time, when my sister was in the kitchen cooking pasta, I’ll called her son James over and whispered, “Go tell your mom you think she should rename her ravioli ‘shittyoli.’” Then I disappeared before the fireworks ensued. Last Christmas, I told her other son, Michael, “Here’s 20 bucks for you to rent a crack whore.”

“What’s a crack whore, Uncle Ed?”

“Go ask your mother,” I said and slipped out the side door, beaming with pride over another successful bonding moment.

Originally published in San Diego CityBeat

Ed Decker
03.14.10

My bride

It was February 1999. I had just written a Sordid rant condemning a cluster of City Council-proposed anti-stripper laws that prompted a dozen or so local dancers to e-mail me in gratitude. It was an exciting chapter in my life as I had—for a brief moment—realized my boyhood dreams and became a hero to the strippers of the land.

Among these e-mails was a complimentary letter from a gal named Willow in which she noted, among other things, that she was not an exotic dancer. Somehow, I missed that part because, during our subsequent e-mail conversations, I got it in my head that Willow—a stripper alias to be sure—did make her living hanging upside-down upon the glittery poles of golden grandeur.

Fast forward two weeks: I’m at the gym when I notice this scary-looking wife-beater type—arms, legs and face popping with muscles and prison tats—staring at me in such a manner that I can’t tell if he wants to shank me or be my Valentine. Eventually, he approaches and asks if my name is Ed Decker.

“Um, yeah,” I respond, timidly, hoping and praying that it’s a Hallmark card he’s reaching for and not a shiv.

It’s a cell phone.

“I know somebody who wants to meet you,” he informs me, dialing.

“Hey, Willow, it’s Scott,” he says into the mouthpiece. “That Ed Decker guy you were talking about is here in the gym” and hands me the phone.

As Willow is on the other end explaining how embarrassed she is, that her friend Scott is nuts and that she swears she is not stalking me, I’m thinking, How cool is this? Willow the upside-down-stripper-pole-hanging hot-dancer mama digs me so much that she appointed her gangster pimp bodyguard to locate me. I must be supa-bad!

We agree to meet that night, midnight, at a bar in Ocean Beach, and, man, I have to say, I am psyched! I’ve dated a couple of strippers in my day, and my impression was, up until the time they go batshit crazy from hanging upside-down on stripper poles all the time, they’re a blast to run with. And I know, as long as I don’t bungle this thing, that the night will most certainly end up back at her kick-ass stripper apartment, with her big, bay bedroom windows—overlooking the ocean, or some kick-ass canyon—balling each other till sunrise with a handle of Jack and a pile of blow on the nightstand.

When I arrive, Willow is already seated. She’s a hottie, to be sure, but I am surprised by her lack of stereotypical stripper qualities. She isn’t all that busty or sparkly; rather, she’s more what I call a “pecutie” (petite cutie), with cream-colored skin, shoulder-length amaretto hair, slender figure and a juicy-wide Jew nose, which, for me, seals the deal.

We introduce ourselves, order drinks, and are off and running, quickly settling into a conversation devoid of any contrivance or awkwardness—until, that is, I inquire about her occupation.

“So, where do you dance?” I ask.

“Huh?” she snaps.

“In which gentleman’s club do you work?”

“I’m not a stripper!” she protests. And just like that, it’s up—The Great Wall of YouBlewIt towering over us as she sits on the other side metaphorically filing her nails.

“Look,” I say, “it was an honest mistake: You responded to a column about strippers, you have ex-con gangster pimps arranging your dates, you meet strangers in bars at midnight and you’ve got a stripper name. What am I supposed to take from all that?”

“My parents gave me that name!” she snorts and, like a strong, smart game fish, wrenches herself off the hook and swims away. In a panic, I do the only thing a man can do when a fish goes rogue, and that is to ditch the lures and use a worm instead—and by “worm” I mean shots of Mezcal, and more shots, and more, and soon we’re back to effortlessly laughing and drinking our way through closing time. Then we stumble back to her place, which, sadly, is nothing like a stripper pad—totally lacking a view, or whiskey, or drugs, or all-night balling, for that matter, as she repeatedly throws me out trying to steal third base. No matter, though; I’m crazy about her. That much is clear.

At about 4 a.m., we kiss goodnight and I step out onto her courtyard.

Now, this is where the story gets goofy. And, I swear, what happens next is not a bogus literary device intended to create some sweetly clean Sleepless in San Diego ending for you. It happened just as it is written, in all its goofball glory.

Stepping off the stoop, I look up to see—as if on cue, as if it had been sitting there the whole time waiting for me to look up—the biggest, brightest, bitchinest shooting star streak across the width of the sky in a blaze of ultra-white. I have seen shooting stars before but never anything like this. It is—no exaggeration—10 times as big, 10 times as bright, with a tail 10 times as long as any I’d witnessed, causing me to freeze in my tracks and my jaw to drop. And though I’m neither a superstitious person nor a believer in destiny, nor a subscriber to the theory of “The One,” I can’t help but perceive this encounter as a signal that I have met the one girl in the universe I could love forever, and that the universe is happy about that and wanted me to know.

Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat 02/16/2010

W. and I have been married five years. We have no children; nor do we intend to ever have them. Now, I know, to the gleeful breeders of the world, the phrase “childless couple,” sounds so sad and bleak—as though everything in our house is gray and cold and we are just this joyless, old couple drably dipping soupspoons into our bowls of hot water and potatoes every night.

Not true, of course.

Whenever we meet one of these gleeful breeder-types, and they find out that we don’t have or want children, it always seems to amaze them, as if we just told them we don’t want oxygen or food.

“Why not?!” they’ll inevitably ask.

For the record, I’m not offended or even irritated by that inquiry. It’s just that I think the wrong people are asking the wrong question. Shouldn’t we be asking you how come you do want children? Think about it. I don’t have to change anything about my life in order not to have kids. On the other hand, parents of a newborn baby have to change their entire existence, if not essence. Asking us why we don’t want children is like me asking why you don’t want a barbell piercing through your urethra. One does not ask a person, “How come you do not climb mountains?” One asks mountain climbers why they do. Not that I would begrudge you breeder mountaineers for climbing Mt. Kidimanjaro—just don’t act like I’m the one who needs to explain himself.

That said, I understand the norm is to reproduce and that childless married couples are something of an enigma, so I am happy to tell you why I don’t have or want children:

1. Kids are Messy: With toddlers, there’s far too much puking, burping, spitting, spewing, leaking and pooing for my liking. I already spend too many of my waking hours cleaning the hairballs and dander that my cat dumps all over my house. I’m not about to add a serial secretor to the mix.

2. Babies are Born Bad: Right from the start, they are bellicose, reckless, greedy, impatient, dishonest, selfish, annoying and more narcissistic than the most narcissistic adult you’ve ever met, times 1,000. I don’t know about you, but I spend most of my life avoiding people like that.

3. Children are Life-Changers: Parents always say that life as you know it comes to an abrupt halt when you have a child. Well, I don’t want my life to change. I like my life just the way it is. The day begins with a cup of hot coffee and ends with an ice-cold beer, and nowhere in between those two moments of bliss are there any halfling banshees trying to flabbergast me.

4. Paternal Instinct: I just don’t have it. Never have. I don’t see the baby in the carriage and think, Aww, he’s cute. I wish I were a father. I look at the baby in the carriage and wonder how many kittens he’s going to torture when he gets older.

5. Too Many Bosses: My work life is chock-full of bosses. I really don’t want another one. And what are babies, after all, but tyrannical household supervisors who do nothing but make messes for you to clean up and bark marching orders in an alien tongue.

6. Kids Cause Worry: Whenever I’m in the presence of children, I spend the whole time watching and worrying about them injuring themselves. It really is an obsession. I have a particular issue with the corners of coffee tables which, honestly, the way my nieces and nephews horseplay around that thing, it’s a miracle they have any eyeballs left. Another issue that causes me high anxiety is when a child plays with a pet. It could be the most loving, docile puppy on the planet, and I will still anguish because, in my mind, every animal is capable of tearing a child’s face off for no apparent reason, and every child is stupid or evil enough to provide one.

7. Creep Factor: Sometimes I wonder if procreation is really just a way for people to manufacture more people to love them. I find that creepy.

8. Kids = More Present-Buying: Like everybody else, W. and I have a lot of presents to buy on birthdays and holidays. Between us, we have four parents, eight siblings, 12 actual (or honorary) nieces and nephews and a shit-ton of friends. The last thing we need is to create another person to buy presents for.

9. Good Memory: I remember what I was like as a teenager. I remember how selfish I was; what a prick I was; what an obnoxious, careless, lying, conniving, vandalizing, burgling, drinking, drugging, dangerous-to-myself-and-others, juvenile-delinquent douchebag I was. And I was one of the good ones. I don’t want to take the chance of bringing another monster like me into the world.

10. Kids are People Too: Friends, please don’t interpret this article to mean that I hate kids. That’s not true. I like kids. I just don’t like them more than I like anybody else. Children are not divine cherubs to be idolized and aggrandized by over-doting adults at the expense of the rest. Kids are people, too, and like most people, they can be tolerated in small to medium-size doses. The problem is, when you’re a parent, there’s no such thing as small to medium-size doses—hence my decision to remain childless. Makes sense to me.

Ed Decker
Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat Magazine
07.22.09

Well, here comes springtime: time for young lovers to plan their big, badass, expensive weddings. Naturally, I have advice: Don’t you do it! Blow off your over-priced, over-produced, big, badass wedding plans before it’s too late. Yes, I know, many of you ladies have been dreaming your whole life about walking down that aisle. But, trust me, the dream is a lie.

Your wedding will not live up to your fantasy, and the reality is depressing. The average American betrothal costs between $20,000 and $30,000 and will take about five years to repay. And the worst part: It all goes by in a flash. After years of planning, thousands of dollars flushed and all the heartache that typically accompanies preparation, the wedding will end before you barely realize it started.

Kids, please, I beg of you, do not have a traditional ceremony—if not for yourselves, then for us, your guests, because traditional weddings suck giant, bloated, festering crackhead balls.

Lord knows I’d rather lie in a pit of carnivorous razor beetles than have to watch another couple stare googey-eyed at each other while some cornball cleric solemnizes their union with all that spooky language about soul-merging with The Spirit, after which he pretends to be an authority on marriage and lectures the couple on the importance of forgiveness, trust and fidelity, as if they needed Father Obvious to explain that resentment, suspicion and infidelity are bad things.

And just when you think it couldn’t get worse, the High Priest of Poppycock starts analogizing wedlock to world affairs.

“We live in a troubling world,” he’ll say, and then pontificate on such issues as torture, war, global warming, MTV and colony collapse disorder, then somehow try to bring it back around to why you shouldn’t argue over the toothpaste cap. Meanwhile, we’re shifting, squirming, dying for that moment when we can get our devastatingly sober faces to the reception, which, of course, will suck crackhead balls—a living nightmare of small talk, weak drinks and a castrated corporate musical group called Eunuch and the Prosthetic Testicles: “Playing All the Hits Previously Approved by the Bride’s Grandmother.”

Bah!

W. and I got married in Las Vegas on Nov. 27, 2004, at the Special Memory Wedding Chapel drive thru. We call it The McMarriage.

We invited 25 friends, who met us at the hotel on Friday night for our separate bachelor and bachelorette parties.

Then, on Saturday, at 3 p.m., everybody piled into a fully stocked Hummer limousine and drove to the chapel’s drive-thru window, where we were eventually greeted by the house reverend, known as “Da Rev,” who appeared in the window wearing gold chains and slicked-back hair. We know he was called Da Rev because his name plaque said so.

Also, I could see his car. It was a pimped-out two-toned Caddy with tinted windows, custom paint, chrome wheels and a vanity plate that read: “Da Rev.”

While everyone in the limo was hooting and hollering, Da Rev pulled out two portable speakers, placed them on the sill and played “The Wedding March.” Then he gave a blissfully short sermon (all the time flirting with W. and staring at her cleavage) and pronounced us man and wife.

After the ceremony, we went for a joyride. We’d procured the limo for three hours, so the plan was to cruise, drink, stop at bars, do shots, then resume cruising.

This was the reception. No need to rent a banquet hall. No need to purchase expensive centerpieces. No need to hire a cheesy wedding band. I just inserted the CD I had prepared called “The Las Vegas Wedding Hummer Limo Mix,” and off we went.

The first song, for obvious reasons, was AC/DC’s, “For Those About to Rock we Salute You.” Next was an homage to my bride, Devo’s “Girl U Want,” followed by The Darkness’ “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” and Springsteen’s gorgeous “Let’s be Friends.”

I know this because I’m listening to it now.

Next came Public Enemy’s “By the Time I get to Arizona” (to get us rocking again), followed by “I Got a Man” from Positive K, then another tip of the hat to my wife with AC/DC’s “She’s got Balls,” which, if you knew W., you would know that her balls are not crackhead balls but, rather, the kind of balls every woman with balls should have: attitude balls!

“She’s got style that woman / Makes me smile that woman / She’s got spunk that woman / Funk, that woman / But most important of all / My lady’s got balls!”

It was fantastic. Everybody was rocking. Often, after stopping at a bar to take shots and then wobbling back to the Hummer, I played “Crazy Train.”

“All Aboard!” shouted Ozzy as the congregation piled in. Then that guitar riff splattered the walls of the limo, and off we went again.

When our joyride was over, we hit the casinos, gambled, drank, laughed, cussed and had an all-out amazing time through Sunday night. Total cost: less than $3,000, honeymoon included.

Not to toot our flute, but it was the best wedding I had ever attended. Our guests said the same thing. To this day, they still ask when we’re going to do it again—the answer to which is Nov. 27, 2014, our 10th anniversary. We’ll renew our vows, which means: Las Vegas, Hummer, Special Memory Wedding Chapel and even the same Vegas Wedding Limo mix. Save the date. You are invited!
Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat Magazine 6/10/09

Starting in two weeks, this column will have a new name and identity.

Allow me to explain.

Some of you may have noticed that “Sordid Tales” was missing from the March 18 issue of CityBeat. That was because I had a bit of an accident. Well, maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe it was an on-purpose, which is to say, I freaking overdosed! On what, I don’t know, since I had ingested so many liquids, powders and pills that night, there’s no way of telling what it was that stopped my heart in the same manner that a brick wall stops a speeding egg.

One minute I was recoiling from having unintentionally observed the top of Dan Frost’s inflamed ass crack as he lined up a pool shot, and the next I awoke with a rubber tube down my throat and a small gathering of whitecoats flailing above me trying to save my life.

The procedure is called a gastric lavage (commonly known as the stomach pump), and it feels as though your gullet is being gang-raped by horde of carnivorous alien zombies.

It was there, in the hospital, a few hours after that violent intubation–lying broken and twisted among the rocks and glass at the bottom of my bottomed-out existence–where I encountered Jesus Christ.

Imagine my surprise. All my life I had dismissed religion. All my life I pooh-poohed anyone’s attempt to show me The Light and The Way. All my life I’ve been told by the deeply spiritual that one day Jesus would appear to me, and all my life I snickered at them.

Not snickering anymore.

Of course, Jesus did not come to me in the flesh. I’m not crazy, you know. It was more like a warmth enveloping me, a general feeling of aplomb that was instantly identifiable as The Lord wrapping his enormous, goose-down arms around me.

Then He spoke. Not out loud, of course. I’m not crazy. Rather, He spoke as a voice in my head. He told me there was a hole inside of me, a hole excavated by Satan. He told me it was not my fault, but that it was now time to accept Him into my life. So I did, and, instantly, the giant hole inside of me–the hole that Satan dug, the hole that I never knew existed–was filled with the groovy golden cement mix that is the Gospel of Christ, our Savior.

After returning home from the hospital, I started implementing the appropriate spiritual changes in my life. You know, ditching the drugs and booze, getting rid of my Black Sabbath and AC/DC box sets, freeing the sex slaves from my dungeon–that sort of stuff. The next thing that needed changing was the title of this column. Obviously, with my newfound spirituality, “Sordid Tales” will no longer be acceptable, so I’ve changed it to “My Sacred Muse.”

Next, I had to scrub Edwindecker.com of all the blasphemous prose I had scribed over the years. All the religion-bashing and debauchery-promoting that was the signature of my writing simply had to go. And by-Jiminy was there a lot! I felt like a killer trying to scour every speck of blood from a homicidal home invasion.

Whether in giant pools or tiny drops, the blood and guts of my blasphemy was everywhere! On the floors, walls, ceiling, couch and lampshades of my website. It took no less than four score and 14 Red Bulls to clean it all, and it was quite a depressing task. Not so much because of how much sacrilege was there, but how little usable content was left behind. The whole process left me asking some serious questions: How did I not know that Satan was using me to publish his carnal worldview? How did I not know that Christ was always there, by my side, waiting to be noticed? How could I have been so blind?

Anyway, there’s your back story. In two weeks I begin writing my new beginning: “My Sacred Muse.” Instead of being a column about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, “My Sacred Muse” will preach abstinence, restraint and the glory of singer-songwriter music. Instead of writing about drunken, barroom encounters, I will write about all my kooky escapades at midnight mass. I will write about the joys of procreation, the wonder of faith healing and the mortal danger of excessive penis-washing–which I used to do several times a day, even though the penis is, as Jesus informed me in the hospital room that woeful night, “A self-cleaning organ.”

I was also thinking, as part of a monthly routine, I would use “My Sacred Muse” to identify the more notorious sinners of San Diego, as a call to my fellow Christian crusaders to do whatever it takes to convert their souls–black and slimy as the underside of a rotten Portobello–to The Gospel of Christ: sinners like Steve Poltz, whose songs about fornication and tomfoolery disguised as nursery rhymes irrevocably damage the psyche of unsuspecting children; sinners like Tim Pyles, who thinks “being saved” means successfully sneaking out of some godawful broad’s apartment the morning after a particularly beastly one-night stand; sinners like Anders Wright, who writes all the CityBeat movie reviews with a secret gay code embedded to further his homosexual agenda. (If you highlight every 15th word, it reads, “I lick balls and like it,” over and over again.)

Oh, gay Anders, don’t you know you must repent?

I know, I know, in my pre-Christian days, I supported homosexual rights. But all that has changed. As Jesus told Paul when they were lamenting about Judas’ unnerving habit of patting the other apostles on the butt, “If I wanted homosexuality to be in the mainstream,” said Christ, “I wouldn’t have made all the queer bars so dark inside.”

April 1, 2009

This is the sort of rumpus that will pretty much ruin your entire next day and half the day after and, realistically, there’s just no way for a person to write a column under those conditions, unless, of course, the column is called “My Head is Exploding and I Have to Throw Up Again.”

Now, some of you might ask? “Why not just have a few cocktails, ring in the New Year and get home before 1 a.m.?”

To which I might respond, “Yeah, right.”

The people I know–these friends and co-workers, these bar-goers and pub-crawlers–they’re animals! They are vicious, snarling beasts who will not allow me to have a few drinks and slip out at 1 a.m. Certainly not on New Year’s Eve, certainly not before I’m passed out in a pool of my own swomit. It just doesn’t work like that. Not with this pack.

10:31 p.m.: A friend called. He wanted to know if I was going out tonight. I told him no and explained why.

“Dude!” he said, “It’s New Year’s Eve! Just come out, have a couple of drinks and get home before closing.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “There is no way you or any of those other varmints are gonna let me go home at 1 a.m.”

“Yeah we will, man, I promise. No pressure at all.”

“You’re pressuring me right now,” I snapped.

“Hmm, I guess you’re right. Bummer.”

“No worries man,” I said. “I’d pressure you, too. That’s what we do. That’s why I’m staying home. Have fun, though.”

After hanging up, I felt a momentary rush of solitude. There I was, alone again, on New Year’s Eve–no foghorns, no fireworks, no fanfare of any kind–just me at my computer doing (ugh) work. Make no mistake, though. This is not a woe-is-me holiday column. I’m not regretful or depressed. Like most people, I have a defense mechanism for such situations. It’s a built-in device for those times when, for whatever reason, you are not able to celebrate a particular holiday in the traditional way you have grown accustomed to celebrating it.

It’s called The Jader.

For instance, when I can’t fly home to New York for Christmas, well, then, I just turn on the device and become instantly jaded about Christmas as a whole then–voila!–depression gone.

By the way, my Jader (not to be confused with the Jadar, which allows me to identify and commiserate with other nearby jaders) is top-of-the-line. Not that it matters. New Year’s Eve is very easy to get jaded about. It is arguably the lamest holiday in the universe. It celebrates something that doesn’t even exist: an arbitrary point on the Gregorian calendar, itself an arbitrarily chosen calendar, among hundreds of other arbitrary calendars, themselves arbitrary measurements of time, which itself is but a theory sopping with arbitrariness.

And then there are the material problems with New Year’s Eve jubilations: the high cover charges, the crowds, the excessive back-patting, the rattles, horns, bells and party poppers going off in your ear all night and, worst of all, the pub-rookies, who always seem to be ahead of you at the bar, waiting for service with their money still in their pockets and a 15-drink round still not assembled in their brains while you stand behind them with a glass that is beyond empty and an increasing compulsion to stab them in the kidney with a kazoo.

11:04 p.m.: That said, there is one thing I will miss about celebrating New Year’s Eve tonight. It’s that moment, when the midnight hour clangs and everyone hoists their glasses and yells “Hap-pee New Year!”

No matter how high I turn up the knob on my Jader (it goes to 11, incidentally), I simply cannot get negative about the moment when the hugs and handshakes start up, and everyone–strangers, chums and lovers alike–all whisper in each other’s ears, “Happy New Year,” which is shorthand for “I wish you peace and the promise of better futures and the ditching of worser pasts,” which, to me, is just the shit.

Then, when “Auld Lang Syne” kicks in–a song of friendship eternal–and everyone sings together, that moment is worth all the horsecrap, and it occurs to me, as the digital clock clicks on 11:52 p.m., that I can make that moment happen, right here, right now. That I can use this column–at my desk, alone, a few minutes shy of 2009, Jader be damned–to ring in the New Year.

And here it comes, the clock says four minutes to go, three minutes, two, one–wait for it now–Hap-pee New Year! May peace and good will shine upon your heads and shoulders. May 2009 treat you in the manner that a septuagenarian sugar mama treats her boy-toy. And may 2008, that cheap-ass, unfaithful stripper bitch, fall into a loch and have her skin licked off by carnivorous eels, for auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne.

Ed Decker
1/1/09