Ask Bob

BY BRIAN PETRE

I recently went to the Dentist when we we�re in New Jersey; I had some sort of circus infection in my gums. I told them to fix my shit in 4 weeks or less, which they gladly attempted to do. Two cleaning visits a week, each with heavy Novocain, left me running a crew while sounding like a drunken boxer who�d taken too many shots to the mouth the night before. It�s embarrassing when the cute contortionist thinks you�ve asked her to stuff her mouth with used sweat socks, when you were really just asking her to prep for rehearsal. This lasted for the entire city run. Great, you�d think, a clean set of choppers to take on the circus cuisine in style. This was just the beginning.

Part of my follow up treatment consisted of maintaining my new gum line with an electronic rotary toothbrush called the Rotodent. This fucking thing is going to be the death of me. After a few weeks of intense training with the hygienist�s cute assistant on this new tool I attempted to use it for the first time alone at home. Instead of doing the water and mouthwash mixture I was taught, I thought why not just go in as if I was brushing my teeth, you know, to kill two birds with one stone. So, I dump toothpaste all over this brush tip and hit the on switch. Next thing you know I�ve got toothpaste all over the fucking place. It�s on the mirror, in my beard, on my shirt, in my eyes, everywhere. It�s just not stopping, I�ve got to do something with this Rotodent in Maximum Overdrive or else I�m going to smell like Arm and Hammer baking soda toothpaste all day. So, what did I do? I shoved the fucking thing in my mouth. Hell, that�s where it was supposed to be, cleaning my teeth, right? Bad idea. Now I�ve got this 2000 rpm machine in my mouth, choking me to death, working like a washing machine sending vast amounts of foam all down my chin, all over my clothes, and pooling up on the floor. Gagging and looking like a mad dog I tried to control this machine, aiming it in various areas in an attempt to clean my teeth, the whole time foaming at the mouth and eventually vomiting on the floor. Finally I ended this horrific scenario with a spit of bloody leftover bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich into the sink and went to work.

This, however, has absolutely nothing to do with my continuing story, �The Pelican Tragic�, which is now going into part IIII.

My last installment, cleverly labeled part III, ended with us finally reaching the West coast of Panama, in the port of Balboa. This place was a real shithole. We hadn�t been in the port for 2 minutes when a Chinese Junk needed our help making birth, meanwhile some crazy fucker had unloaded a bunch of watermelons on our ship and tried to make us pay for them. The whole time we�re trying to drink this bottle of Vodka we�d bought at the pier fruit stand. Finally we just fucked up the watermelon guy and ate the rewards while planning our one night stay in this lovely shit town. This, again, was no easy task. Somebody had to stay on the tug at all times to regulate the generators. As I�m sure you guessed, this person was me, that is, until the crew came back for bed. But the First Mate was still ready to party, and he was a friend of mine, the SOB who�d got me this hell job. We�d had a bit of an argument between the redneck engineers from the Carolinas concerning this, but eventually we just left. So, we head out into the streets of Panama looking for a good time.

What the fuck is there to do in Panama? Nothing. What did the First Mate want to do? Get whores. What did I want to do? I didn�t give a fuck, I just wanted to be off the fucking boat. So, we went to get some whores. Why not, we were sailors after all. Correction, we were pirates on a stolen tug illegally towing barges through the Panama Canal. Ah, fuck it, it�s all the same, and why should I care? Let me tell you why I should have cared, because you don�t just go looking for whores in Panama after jumping ship off a stolen tug boat, that�s why.

When guys like us are greeted to pass through customs in a port of Panama pier they don�t just ask you if you have anything to declare, and then check your bags for cigarettes. No, they call the Panamanian police. Then, do you know what they do? No, they don�t throw you in jail due to contrary tourist belief. They chauffeur you all night to the mafia underground for you to get what you need. This is a fact, one that I don�t think most people will ever encounter or believe. And where did we want to go? Leaving the answer up to the First Mate, we went to find whores.

Now, I�m going to be honest with you, I don�t like whores, nor do I feel the need to pay for sex. Before this whole Panamanian incident I would have said I don�t think I like whores, but now I just leave out the word �think�. Sorry to burst your bubble, but in the end I didn�t fuck a whore, or pay for sex, but I did almost get killed several times in this one evening. I, in fact, recalled the good old days from just a few weeks prior when I was just filling a tire trying the save the crew from drowning. Drip, drip, drip�pfhhshht. Ahh, the good old days, before I had guns to my head.