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Stainless Tanks
Story by Joe Carli
The Tank Sisters were a couple of voluminous and weighty ladies (not related in any family sense) that hung around the front bar of the Seacliff Hotel..why, was anyone’s guess..as there was little prospect of linking up with any respectable males in that establishment..at least not this side of sobriety..which, of course led to this little tale.
Overheard conversations of lurid desires between the two ladies had been reported at different times, but the reproduction of those intimate details is best left to more scurrilous publications.. sufficient to relate that the general complaint between them was that if they didn’t get some sexual satisfaction soon (they didn’t say it QUITE like that!) , “It would heal up”…whatever the “It” was.
There were rumours that Little Johnny, the SP. (starting price) bookie was running a tote on which of the ladies would anally absorb a bar-stool first…such was the broad beam of their backsides!
My old mate , Mark..you have heard me mention him in that story of ; “To the Lighthouse”..well, Mark had a Saturday morning routine he would rarely swerve from, and that involved getting to the front-bar of the Seacliff Hotel just at opening time, claiming his favourite spot at the bar with an uninterrupted view of the television set to watch the days footy, open his copy of the Saturday paper at the horse racing page and settle in to a good days exercise.
This morning, rather than being the first to the bar, he had to share his place with Tim the plumber….who, Mark noticed was sitting sombre mood, slouched, arms crossed on the bar encompassing a pint of beer…further, Tim appeared to be in some kind of trance, staring at the rising bubbles in the amber fluid.
“G’day Tim..” Mark greeted “How’s it going?”
“Huruumph!..fuckin’ shithouse!” Tim growled out the corner of his mouth.
“Why..what’s the matter?” Mark inquired as he snapped open his paper.
“Well, I got pissed last night, didn’t I ?” Tim took a long draught of the’hair of the dog’.
“So..” Mark shrugged “You get pissed every Friday night”.
“Yeah, well..” and here, Tim tossed and fiddled with the coins on the bar-mat…he finally confessed ; “..I..I woke up this morning , at about one o’clock , on the beach , with one of the Tank Sisters hanging off my dick !”
Mark lowered the paper down , turned his head slowly toward Tim, wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the seriousness of the situation.
“JeEEzus, mate!…wadidyado ?…”
At this moment of reflection, Tim gave one of those involuntary spasm jerks of the arm..making his beer spill a tad.
“ Fuck it!..waddya think I did ?! ” he angrily spat..
Now, neither Mark , nor anyone else of that front-bar clientele has ever inquired to Tim for the answer to that question….nobody wanted to know…
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Blogging with a “common” voice.
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Oops!…silly me, I forgot the insertion.. https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2018/08/27/blogging-with-a-common-voice/ …BTW..I put this post up on The AIMN trying to give a different perspective to the regular expectations of posters there.
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Too much silence…we need a poem to chime against the silence..
Three blows on the church bell meant a child, twice three a woman and thrice three a man. After a pause the years were counted out at approximately half-minute intervals. The word teller in some dialects becomes tailor, hence the old saying “Nine tailors maketh a man”.
The Day.
I stare at the wet leaves
Of the Camellia bush,
In the patio..In the rain.
As I take in with my eyes,
I stir the cup of tea.
The spoon chimes on the porcelain;
I mind the strikes;
Tailors.
Three..Six..Nine..
“Nine tailors maketh a man”
So much to see out in the patio.
But nothing to absorb.
Just the everyday…
I will forget the vision,
But will remember the peace.
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Lovely work, Joe.
And thirty thalers betray the Messiah.
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Yes, TT’..although I do use a lot of “christian’ references in stuff I put up, I am in no way a religious person..and although having been brought up as a “mick”, I now see myself as a “rational atheist”…it being irrational to believe in ANY deity…and anyway..my studies of ancient Roman history tells me those Abrahamic religions stole everything they profess from the Pagans…and you must be aware of how much I despise plagiarism!!
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And if I may risk being a boor by extrapolating on the subject of atheism… ;
“Atheism is neither a “belief” , nor a “way of life”..I see it more as a shedding of clumsy armour, the relaxing of futile defence against a non-existing fear. For if there has ever been a power more condemning, more controlling and exacting of behaviour so that even natural human activity can draw cruel conviction, it is religious / canon law. There are ample and sensible civil laws legislated by sanity, put in place by unanimous consent and obeyed by the majority that do not require ecclesiastical condescension. So if we have laws to guide us, common sense to inform us and a wide world of wonder to both awe and amuse us, why waste time and temper on another useless chore like bowing and scraping to false Gods?
You know, whenever I see those photographs of the Earth taken from outer-space and they show this cool, beautiful, green/ blue/ sometimes cloudy orb suspended serenely in the silence of space..it revitalises a belief within me that we are duty-bound and committed to extend ourselves to maintain and revitalise this luscious but lonely garden of delight! We can do no worse thing with indoctrinated discourse, than to deliberately lead the child (and the “child” within ourselves) from a world of innocent wonder, a world of curious discovery to a mendaciously manufactured shadow world of adult doubt and insecurity…. through a prism distorted…through a glass, darkly….”
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Awesome post.
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Your ( our shared) wonder at seeing the earth suspended like a lovely green, blue orb, bursting with life is something that many religious people never seem to experience. I mean, I understand the maths and physics of the whole thing, but it still amazes me that the earth orbits a giant fusion engine that chews through tonnes of hydrogen every second. It’s the same back here on earth. I still get great joy from watching the parrots cavorting around the bird bath, or the new blossoms that reappear every year. Yes, I too used be religious, yet had no joy, with everthing explained through a framework of tenets and beliefs. Yes, ‘ clumsy armour…’
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I “was religious” in my childhood life..I lost that religion at around fourteen years old..about the same time a girl in the back pews of the Seacliff Church turned her smile upon me…I saw ‘God”, man!
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Here, Big M…to a fellow “saved from a fate worse than death”…A little “religious” story.
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There’s nothing like a good root to shatter one’s faith.
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You have a way with words, Big M…
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Mate, just keep this conversation in the Gentlemen’s Bar, some of the Ladies have this idea that I’m a nice bloke.
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Fully sympathise..and I agree it’s best we keep that little secret to ourselves…….another beer?….
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Why not? Granny has a new IPA on tap. I’ll just give the kids another red cordial to keep ’em quiet.
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Indeed, why not!?…I think I’ll have another…just for the road…and since we’re here by ourselves..I’ll relate a couple of experiences with some wonderful barmaids I have known…: https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2016/08/24/barmaids/
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Of course he did.
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” Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. ” …The temptations of Christ ..from the gospels of Mathew 4:1…..
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Well the big question is how did he get into such an amorous position in the first place. No somehow I don’t want to know. Thanks for this Koep
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In my youthful working class drinking years, Al’…years spent, I might add, in a state of sometimes blissfull amusement and delight..there were essential and perhaps we can say : “Cultural” patterns….:
Friday night ; Blotto (to recover from the weeks work).
Sat’ night : Social partying (to create and maintain networks).
Sunday ; Recovery triage/ family.
Monday ; Regret.
and so than toward the end of the week and Friday once again.
I recall saying to my old mate Mark in a gleeful moment..; “Friday! yew-bewdey!”…to which he grumbled back…”Hrumph..so what..just that much closer to Monday..it’s depressing!”.
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There’s a lovely story by Eric Knight called ; “Never Come Monday”…you can find it among some other of his short stories here; http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800581h.html
I might suggest you read his preface to those stories as well..it is absolutely sublime…beautiful.
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These were times when pubbing was an endless party, from one side of the country to another…I shifted addresses between several capital cities and I have to say my time in Darwin in those times was an extraordinary experience of wild times and non-stop partying…where women played as hard and as long as the blokes…it was wild times all ’round!
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Here..a different example.. https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2016/05/02/toothless/ These examples are almost as I heard them…of course, I have claimed poetic licence to develop character in the yarn…but the yarns are as reported to my ear…
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Thanks for the link to dear Toothless. Priceless, I say (from a narcotic induced slumber under a table near youz).
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Fuck me! They sound like their arses ‘d be more than four pick axe handles across. Tim’s lucky he didn’t didn’t break a leg fallin’ into that crevasse. A tale only made better by the retellin’.
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I would ask any of those patrons to this establishment who find umbrage at the accurate “replaying” of the above “piece” to please restrain themselves from any inclination to “shoot the piano player”..HE is just the messenger and he has a family and old mother to support!
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I prescribe a cup of concrete. 😊
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