The first sip of the shitty, bottom shelf whiskey burned my throat on the way down. I chased it with a big swig of my flat pilsner. The ceiling in this bar looked like it could fall down on us all at any moment. The lights flickered and almost went out about two or three times tonight. It smelled like a sweaty ass crack in here, as always, and Marge was behind the bar. She slowly unfurled her walker and hobbled her way over to me to ask if I was ready for another round. I wasn’t but I felt bad that she made the considerable effort to drag her bum leg those seven feet toward me so I told her to go ahead and pour me one more beer and one more shot.

It was dead as hell at Frankie’s Saloon that night. I was in a shithole, divey, redneck, biker bar that was walking distance from my apartment. If you know me then you know The Classy Alcoholic loves drinking rare craft beer and expensive cocktails at upscale bars in Tucson. But unless you really know me then you don’t know that I also like getting overserved pints of flat macro beer and house tequila at the shittiest bars I can find. One of the reasons I come here is that I need to hold on to the last remnants of the local watering holes near downtown Tucson that are gonna disappear as my neighborhood keeps getting gentrified. The other part is that sometimes it’s nice to go where nobody knows your name.

Whenever I’m here I look forward to getting drunk enough to take over the digital jukebox with the app on my phone. Every time I walk in I hear some variation of country and/or western songs playing. So after a few rounds I load up money on the app and play a bunch of reggaeton or rap songs about butts ‘cause I know it pisses everyone off. I try to be sneaky about it but I’m pretty sure they know it’s me.

Not that I’m always the only brown guy here. More than a few times I’ve heard some drunk as fuck dudes slurring in Spanish while playing pool. I go hard on the Tejano songs when they’re around because they’ll love it when I play Bobby Pulido or Intocable and I know Marge and the rest of the Necks will be less likely to suspect me.

I always come to this place pretty late and the biker gangs are usually gone by the time I’m around. But this night I heard the roaring engines of a few hogs outside. I know Tucson has a few Mexican biker gangs and there was a slim chance it was them outside. But Frankie’s is like a box of STDs. You never know what you’re gonna get and whether it’s gonna kill you or just make you uncomfortable enough to quietly run back home and lie to your wife about where you were all night. I closed out my tab and went to the bathroom to take a piss. I walked past a wall full of a bunch of shitty boomer bumper stickers that said things like, “I’m not crazy, the voices in my head are!” and, “Exercise? I thought you said ‘extra fries’!” and “Glory be to the white race.”

The bathroom at this joint was either exactly what you would imagine or worse than you would imagine but never better. I did my usual quick breathing exercises before I walked in so I could hold my breath for as long as possible so as to avoid sucking in the black mold in the corner and then ran to the urinal that was barely hanging onto the wall. There was a toilet next to it that I would never sit on even if it cured my grandpa’s cancer. But, to be fair to the toilet, my grandpa is an asshole.

There was a live cockroach inside the urinal and I would’ve been disgusted if I didn’t take it as a challenge to try and pee on it as it scurried around. The walls of the bathroom were thin enough that I could hear the commotion as the bikers walked into the bar but thick enough that I couldn’t tell if they were white or not. I used this opportunity to find another Tejano song on my app to play. I added the song “Sergio el Bailador” by Bronco to the queue thinking I may piss somebody off outside.

“Eyyyyyy! ES BRONCO!!!” I heard a drunk ass Mexican guy yell as he kicked the flimsy bathroom door open. I guess that was one mystery solved. He was wearing the standard leather biker cut with some patches I couldn’t quite read. “Oh shit I’m glad we got two things in here ‘cause I gotta piss real bad. You don’t mind right?”

He smacked me on the back hard enough to make me miss the cockroach with my stream.

“Yeah, go ahead,” I said, turning away enough so we didn’t make eye and/or dick contact.

“Thanks, hermano! My name is Burrito. What’s yours?” he asked as he peed into the toilet, badly.

“I’m…Classy.” I gambled on him never having heard of me and it paid off.

“Classy! That’s a cool ass name. You with an MC? I’m with SAMMCOP.”

“No. I’m not,” I said, still trying to catch that roach and trying to ignore this dude who was too fucked up to be just drunk.

“Man of few words. I like it! Coyote is too! He’s the prez. I’m the Sergeant at Arms. We’re about to do a deal real quick and then we’re gonna party all fucken night! You seem cool, Classy. You can join us if you want. The more the hairier, that’s what I always say!”

Burrito cackled out loud as the lights in the bathroom flickered on and off again.

“Thanks for the invite bro but I-”

The lights went completely out before I could finish my sentence. I felt a stream of piss hitting my pants leg and I honestly had no idea if it was mine or Burrito’s. I finished up my business and put my junk away and walked over to the door. I tripped over something and fell on my face and took a quick second to think about the most efficient way to kill myself right then so I didn’t have to live with how close my mouth came to the floor of this disgusting bar.

But before I could end my life the lights came back on and I saw two other Mexican bikers standing over me. One of them had a shitty tattoo of a coyote on his neck and the other one had a shitty tattoo of a possum…also on his neck. I tried to stand up but the possum guy punched me in the face and knocked me back down.

“You sonofabitch!” the biker said. “You killed Burrito!”

“Wait, what the fuck? Who the hell are you?” I was drunk enough to barely feel the pain in my jaw but I could taste the blood in my mouth mixing with the remnants of the shitty liquor.

“We’re SAMMCOP. And so was he.”

The guy pointed behind me and I turned to see that I had tripped on Burrito’s body laying on the floor inside the bathroom. He wasn’t moving and had blood coming out of his eyes. That motherfucker was dead.

“Okay but I don’t even know what that means.”

“Don’t play dumb! Are you with another MC? Are you trying to mess up our deal?!?”

“How about we all take a breath for a sec? I’m just a rando patron at this bar and I don’t know shit about shit.”

“Maybe you’re police. You don’t wanna know what we do to cops. SAMMCOP don’t trust anybody.”

I slowly stood up and got my bearings. Apart from the possum tattoo guy and the coyote tattoo guy there were about half a dozen other bikers from their crew in the bar; all brown dudes. The few customers that were hanging out when I got there were all gone. I looked the possum tattoo guy dead in the eyes.

“I’ve been called a lot of things in my life. A drunk fuck. An insufferable drunk fuck. A drunk ass fucken fuck. A piece of shit drunk fat fuck. A fat drunk piece of fuck. A piece of fuck drunk fat shit fuck. And none of that bothers me. But I won’t EVER let anyone call me a fucking cop!”

I punched the possum guy in the gut hard enough to make him keel over. I was about to punch him in the head when the coyote neck tattoo guy pulled out a handgun and pointed it at my head.

“You just made the biggest mistake of your life, cabrón.”

Coyote guy bashed me in the side of the head with the butt of his gun hard enough for me to feel it even through the beer and liquor shield I was working on all night. Everything started to get fuzzy. But, like, fuzzier than alcohol fuzzy. A couple of the other bikers zip tied my hands behind my back and dragged me to an open area inside the bar.

“Lock the door, Marge!” the possum guy yelled once he got his wind back.

“Goddammit, Possum, I don’t need no police in here!” the bartender said.

“Don’t worry about that. We’re gonna finish this real quick!”

I was starting to think the guy with a neck tattoo of a possum was actually named Possum.

“Stop, please!” A woman’s scream broke through the noise. “The Classy Alcoholic would never kill anyone!”

I looked around to try to find who said that. My head was spinning so I could only make out the silhouette of a Mexican woman with long hair and a biker vest. She knelt down and put her hands on my cheeks. My vision adjusted enough for me to recognize her bright blue eyes and her beautiful, thick lips.

“Kimberly?” I asked.

“Holy shit, you do remember me,” She whispered.

I hadn’t seen Kimberly Suarez in over twenty years. I hadn’t thought of her in over a decade. But at that moment I realized that I never truly forgot her. I was about to ask what the hell she was doing here when I noticed the leather cut she was wearing. It had an ironed-on patch that said, “Property Of Possum.” At that point I knew for a fact that the guy with the neck tattoo of a possum was actually named Possum. I had an idea what the guy with the neck tattoo of a coyote might be named but I didn’t want to say it and be wrong. I’d look dumb.

One of the lower ranked bikers searched through all my pockets but couldn’t find whatever it was they were looking for. The coyote tattoo guy kneeled in front of me, gun still in hand.

“Let me make this real clear to you because I don’t have a lot of time. My name is Coyote.” Hell yeah. I had guessed right. “I’m the President of this motorcycle club. Typically I have enforcers who help me deal with guys like you. But I’m kind of a hands-on president. Which means that if you don’t cough up the drugs you stole off of Burrito I’m gonna blow your brains out myself.”

“Well it sounds like you have a bigger problem than me right now, Señor Coyote. Because I didn’t steal shit from you and I didn’t kill your guy. But I can help you find out who did.”

“The only people in this bar right now other than you are my crew, Possum’s old lady and Marge the bartender. And none of them would ever betray me.”

“Are you willing to bet your entire deal on that? If so then go ahead and shoot me because you’re gonna come up empty handed. Unless you let me go and let me figure out who did this.”

Coyote looked back at his group of guys. He tried to play it cool but doubt is one thing most people can’t hide if you’re watching them closely.

“That’s right,” I said through a bloody smile. “Trust no one.”

To Be Continued…