BEWARE THE DEVIL.

For reasons I'll discuss later, I haven't been a huge fan of Halloween for years now. Yet on Friday night I found myself in a hot dog costume, accompanying my roommates on a one-block bar crawl. This consisted of six bars that are within one block of my apartment.


Things were going well until we entered Julep, stop #2 on our tour, to find all of the patrons standing about three feet from the bar. There was a woman in a devil costume on the bar, presumably bartending. Pleased that there was no crowd, I ignored the warning signs and made my way to the bar to order.


What I said was, "one PBR, please." But what the devil-woman must have heard was "please pull my head toward the bar, straddle my shoulders, and begin to wildly buck up and down in an attempt to snap my neck."



The shock of almost having my face bashed into the bar and the focus I had on keeping my teeth in my mouth distracted me, enabling her to spin me around, rip up my hot dog costume and like a hell-tiger wearing clothes too tight for its body, scratch at my tender belly. Notice my glasses have been smashed down so they are now on my upper lip and I'm holding out my wallet, which originally had been removed to purchase one lonesome can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.



Then, perhaps to cleanse the wound, the wannabe-sexy satan poured an ample amount of vodka down my stomach and into my pants. Exactly what I don't like. I had now decided that this was no longer fun. The devil proceeded to pour a large quantity of vodka into her own dirty mouth, grab my cheeks and spit the vodka into my mouth. I didn't want the vodka; in fact, I immediately felt my stomach turn and my mouth began to water in a pre-vomitous manner. At this point, I was actively trying to escape.



But the devil was not finished. I was still stunned and ready to throw up, but the crowd was cheering and about 5% of me thought, hmmmm, I bet she thinks I'm having fun, I should go with it. She spun me around, bent me over the bar and began to whip me with her belt. The first one or two strikes hit my ass, which hurt a little, but were nothing compared to the final lash, during which she somehow extended her reach, allowing the belt to wrap between and under my asscheeks, snapping violently at the back of my balls. If you've never been whipped in the back of your balls with a belt, pray you never will be.


In pain, shock and shame I broke free of the devil. In passing I informed my friends I was going to throw up and made for the bathroom, where I retched so violently I broke blood vessels under my eyes.


It was the most memorable, most horrible thing that has ever happened to me involving a repulsive she-devil, a belt and a hot dog costume. It's possible that I threw up my soul into the Julep bathroom and that the devil now owns it. I can only hope the alcohol in the vodka killed whatever form of hepatitis and herpes were spit into my innocent little mouth.