Boot

They give me a big glass boot and tell me it's free if I finish it, the beer inside. If I don't? I ask. Thirty dollars. Seems a bit excessive, but so is my appetite for the sauce. Time restraints? Thirty minutes. A dollar a minute seems just about right. I say I like those odds, they look like they've heard that before. Famous last words. Watch out, someone tells me, when you get to the foot. It'll slosh up at ya.

I start fast and hard and reckless. I'm on top of the world when it hits me, a boulder in my stomach, the heaviest weight in the world, and I'm not halfway down the calf. In the high-twenties' minutes left and no way I could ever finish. Everyone is looking at me and the dance floor is filled with old people doing the polka. They are in another time and place. They don't have to worry about things like this.

Every minute or so I bring the boot to my mouth and pretend to drink. If anyone's noticing the level isn't going down they're being nice and keeping their mouth shut. I wish I could keep my mouth shut. How hard is it to do that? How hard is it not to lift a big glass boot? Finish and it's free? You can't afford not to do it. There is something in the oom-pah-pah that starts my stomach rumbling.

A moment later and I'm in the bathroom, sick. When I come out most have scattered, gone back to better things, and the remainders tell me that's it, it's over, if I can't keep it down then that's all she wrote. I get out my wallet but someone says that it was already taken care of. I look around and no one's looking at me. No one claims responsibility. People have forgotten I existed. The lively tuba and the hope of a long future with a beautiful woman are all that's left.