Story Particle (An Experiment)

The Grass of China Spring

It seemed an ordinary Saturday night to Elwood Joss, except that he was face down in a bathroom stall wearing a green sombrero with his pants down to his ankles and clutching a cheap cigar in his left fist on what was supposed to be his wedding night.

Joss, as people called him, would have found this peculiar position normal when he a teenager, but he was now old enough to know better and that his wedding night had gone seriously awry. With all that had seemingly gone wrong so far, the only question in Joss' mind was where the hell was his Gideon's Bible.

"A lot a good that book's done. Damned hippie priest." Joss said disappointedly.

The hippie priest's name was Barry. A tooth-less man in his late fifties who always wore tie-dyed parachute pants and a pink polo with a rainbow cross on the left breast pocket. Joss always thought Barry should retire, that and the fact that Barry had no church or discernable flock to speak off other than himself made Joss feel that Barry might be a fake. Barrys advice on getting married before 30 apparently was a bad idea or a tough task, depending on which side of the coin Joss would find himself on.

"'You've now entered hell'. Ain't that the truth." Joss read on the stall's toilet lid.

Feeling warm and shaky, Joss pulled himself up to a cold, tan toilet and realized that he was, in fact, in the men's bathroom in a west Texas Mexican brothel called Mi Amigo. At least that's what the graffiti etched on the cheaply painted, chipped red stall door told him. He pulled the lime-green sombrero from his head in an effort to see why his hair was all wet. Joss felt lucky that his hair was merely sweat drenched considering his puzzling situation.

"Great. I'm back in China Spring." he barked.

China Spring, Texas was where Joss had lost his virginity to a 250 pound Greek woman named Salma on his training night as a teenage gigolo roughly six years ago. Joss angrily spat out blood and a lone black hair then decided he desperately needed two things, a breath of fresh air and a cold shot of mezcal. Finding one proved to be a great deal more difficult than the other.