Hangover Henry (Part 1)

    As Henry lay there with that familiar, heavy hangover, he reached over to his side table for a cigarette, hoping for a lighter, a match, or a woman passed out on the floor. At least then he could wake her up and tell her to light that last smoke off the toaster, or stove burner, whatever still worked, given he paid the electric bill this month. No fire on the table, no love on the floor, no electricity, poor old Henry was just that, poor. His shoes were a left 9 and a right 10 he found in the dumpster out back in the alleyway where the garbage cans were kept. At least they were the same colour, a dull brown, not many people noticed, but when they did, they sure as Hell shouldn't have spoken up. Henry had a temper, and if you could tell anything about a man by the shoes he wore, you could tell that Henry was a man not to be made fun of. The last guy who joked about his shit brown stained shoes got a mouthful of his white knuckled fist. The guy actually lost a tooth Henry hit him so hard. He almost felt bad for the guy, but couldn't help himself from further humiliating the harmless John by telling the drunk to buy another tooth from the tooth fairy, as Henry threw a dollar bill at the sunken soul of a man.Some nights Henry was hard, heartless and heavy on the bottle. Other nights he was just another drunkard on a stainless steel stool, waiting for a woman with an ass to walk through the door.
   Henry had a different way with women, he wasn't your average casanova so to speak. Well, half the time he made no sense at all to most women, but when he formed a sentence or two, in between a break in an empty bottle, a piss in the can, or rumaging in his pockets for a cigarette, he came up with a hook and sinker of a line. It was usually something he heard from the radio, mixed with whatever he was writing at the time, combined with direct honesty. Try to picture him saying the likes of "You there, with the long legs, you've been coming around here a lot lately. How about you come back to my place and we can both do some cumming of our own". Now don't get me wrong, he was a fairly vulgar man, and he took his share of slaps across the face, but that one in every so many dozen just looked him dead in the eyes and would say something like "I bet your place is fucking filthy, just like that shirt you're wearing. You digust me, but since everything else in this place disguts me, I guess you ain't half bad. How far is it? I got on heels and if it's more than four blocks, you're cumming alone tonight mister". Henry made sure he lived close to his favourite bar, two blocks tops. He knew for his own sake, and theirs if his words were working right.
   Henry had all kinds of nicknames, more like every bad name in the book, but the one that always stuck was "Hangover Henry". He sort of pride in it, because he thought it took guts to drink the way he did, guts indeed. Any given morning, be it crow piss passed out on a park bench, or the high hell afternoon layed out on his run down apartment floor, Henry could always muster up the strength to find his way to a coffee pot. He'd make whatever he had left in the cupboard, or pay for whatever he could get his hands on, if he had change enough to do so. As long as his feet and eyes were functioning, he'd make it.