I went back home for the weekend the other day – did the whole good Friday thing with the folks, then went out to the pub Saturday night. You’d think that they’d just give up on the whole weekend, given the amount of alcohol consumed at a traditional Easter barbie, but my town is full of pisstanks, and my friends are no exception, so the traditional Saturday gathering got shifted over to the Saturday.
Anyway, unsurprisingly, I’m not the only one up for the weekend. In fact, one of my mates from a different uni (studying law – useful friend to have I’m sure) came up, with his girlfriend and a friend of hers, Jen. Apparently, her parents were holidaying or something, but she couldn’t miss class, and kind of found herself with nothing to do for Easter. Pissed Cheyne off a little, but his loss was my gain. She was pretty, though not really what I’d’ve considered to be my type. Still, I figured I might as well try my luck, and things actually seemed to be going pretty well after an hour or so. Anyway, I get up to go to the bar (it’s my round) when suddenly I feel this tap on my shoulder. It’s an older guy – I don’t think I know him, but it’s hard to tell, because half of his face looks like it’s been burned or something – it’s pretty nastily scarred up.
“Excuse me” he says “Have you seen a guy, ‘bout yea tall, black mask, cape, rubber torso?”
“Err… yeah.” I say, trying not to stare at this guy’s disfigured half face. “I think he’s in the back, with the band.”
“Oh, cheers.” And he walks off.
Then, all of a sudden, the rest of my little group sort of scurry up, kind of furtive.
“Dude! Who was that?”
“I dunno. Some guy.”
“What did he want?”
“Looking for someone. ‘bout yea tall, black mask, cape, rubber torso.”
“That guy in the back?”
“Yeah, I assumed so.”
“Oh, righto. Any idea what for?”
“Didn’t say.”
“Oh. Fair enough.”
I think he got kind of curious, coz he was looking back in towards the back room a fair old bit, and then he said “I’m curious.”
“Wanna go check it out?”
“OK.”
So we go through the little hallway and round the corner, and end up in what looks like a scene from some movie. There, in the middle of the room, are the rubber torso guy and the disfigured guy, dancing. Practically dirty dancing. But strangely, there are no homoerotic overtones. At all. It’s like the dirty dancing of death. And then it hits me. The Rubber torso. The mask. I’d seen it all before.
“Batman?”
“Err… kind of busy” he says, pointing to the disfigured guy, but keeping in character by sort of sliding the finger down the other guys chest and spinning away from him.
“What the **** man? I thought you were in the city?”
“Well, I was.” He says, bringing one arm up and looking down the length into the others eyes. “But I heard Two Face here was in town, and was up to no good. I had to do something!”
“Two Face? Doesn’t he have, like, minions?”
“Well, normally, yeah.” He says as he leans backwards, the other dominantly leaning over the dark knight. “But apparently there were some troubles with getting them into the country – criminal records, baggage issues, you know”.
“Err” someone in the crowd pipes up. “That’s not Two Face. That’s my dad. He was injured in a housefire several years ago – the doctors worry that the scars may never heal.”
At this Batman just goes ****ing ****mix, chucks a batarang at the guy in the crowd and starts punching the crap out of this guy’s dad, knocks him to the ground and sticks the boot in half a dozen times. I’m pretty sure I hear at least one rib break.
“Yeah. That’ll teach you.” He says, leaning over the groaning form of the old guy, “I’m not ****ing gay.”
At this point, I suddenly realize that the two girls have followed us back and are standing in the little doorway watching this scene of violence with the same sense of surrealism as the rest of us. As batman brushes past, he kind of strokes Jen’s chin and says “Hey, ever seen a bat roost?”
Now, I thought that was pretty cheesy, but apparently the whole rubber torsoed billionaire thing does it for chicks, because the last time I saw Jen she was getting into the passenger side of the Batmobile.
****ing Batman.