For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

—traditional

“Hey buddy, what are you doin’? Are you gonna kiss ’em or not?”
“I can’t!”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I ain’t got twenty bucks!”

—Road House

This concludes “The Agreement,” a seven-part special Valentine’s Week series. Thank you for reading.

Part Six of “The Agreement,” a special Valentine’s Week series

The Agreement is as follows: For the price of twenty bucks (specifically ten a kiss, though the phrasing of The Agreement implies that each breast is to be kissed once rather than one breast kissed twice), Gawker may kiss the breasts of Well-Endowed Wife, with both her and Sharing Husband’s enthusiastic consent. Gawker’s consent to The Agreement appears—appears—to be no less enthusiastic. On the contrary, it’s possible that at the moment he says “ARE YOU KIDDING?!?” no one has ever been more enthusiastic, about anything.

The Agreement brings forth a spirit of joie de vivre in all who participate in or observe it. Gawker, hands full of Well-Endowed Wife, is happy. Well-Endowed Wife, liberally coated with Gawker, is happy. Sharing Husband, by name and by nature, is happy. Heckler…well, Heckler looks like he’s watching The Agreement be fulfilled primarily to keep himself from sliding off the face of the Earth, but whatever part of his brain still functions certainly seems to be happy.

The Agreement is not only happy, however. The Agreement is sweaty. Get the most high-resolution copy of Road House you can find, get a good look at our cast of characters in this scene, and you can smell the salt of physical exertion, the alcoholic tang of beer-induced perspiration, the slightly acrid pit-stink from Gawker’s sleeveless underarms, the how-about-this-heat hail-fellow-well-met forehead dew of a jocular neighbor who seems to be more barbecue grill than man during the warmer months of the year on the noggin of the Sharing Husband, the chemical (or alchemical, if you happen to swing this way and be moved by this kind of thing) interaction between Well-Endowed Wife’s perfume and hair product and moisturizer and makeup her own body’s barely perceptible production of its natural coolant.

What I’m trying to say about The Agreement is that they’re not just having fun, they are into it, man. The absurdity of the whole situation masks this somewhat. My advice? Don’t let it.

Enter the Double Deuce on its own terms. Treat the concerns of its patrons and staff as valid and real. It’s what unlocks the whole film, turns it from “so bad it’s good” to, to, to this. It’s like knocking down some drywall and finding a whole other room, or like finishing The Hobbit and discovering the existence of The Silmarillion. Road House can be enjoyed in any number of ways but the rewards of this approach are—I was gonna say immeasurable, but all of us can count to 365. I know I can. And here, on day forty-seven, you can read the rewards of The Agreement all over its participants’ smiling faces.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the success of The Agreement, there’s only one measurement that counts: twenty American dollars.

Remember these moments, friends. Remember this sweathog happiness. Remember what we had, and could have had, before the bill comes due.

There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time

Then it all went wrong

Part Five of “The Agreement,” a special Valentine’s Week series

I’m sitting in a bar writing this. The bar’s name is Duggan’s. Duggan’s is one of five Irish pubs within a one block radius of my apartment. (Jameson’s, McCarthy’s, Cork & Kerry, and Fallon’s are the others. Arps Tavern too, if you wanna get a little creative with your geography. This does not include the five non-Irish non-pub restaurants with a liquor license in the same area.) What you’re seeing above is not a scene that takes place at Duggan’s, young and dumb and full of cum as its clientele often is. On the kinds of nights when people who are young and dumb and full of cum go out and socialize, anyway. It’s otherwise the province of the shrieking Irish-American racists whose every breath is a betrayal of the Irish liberationary socialist tradition they all believe they support, sans the socialism. Anyway. Duggan’s boasts a relatively genteel crowd even at its most raucous compared to McCarthy’s, the bar whose parking lot abuts my apartment building. I’ve stepped inside there a grand total of once, to see if anyone belonged to the car in the lot with its headlights on. (They did not. At least not that they could remember.) McCarthy’s produces a nightly brawl like Kander & Ebb. I wish I were kidding. Every single night there’s some…what is the Long Island Irish equivalent of the word “guido”? because there really should be one, and “paddy” doesn’t quite cover it. Anyway—every single night there’s some moronic Hibernian, some bog person whose great-great-great-grandma snuck past Ellis Island despite Thomas Nast’s best efforts, screaming “HOLD ME BACK BRO, HOLD ME BACK BRO” or “MY FUCKING SISTER BRO, MY FUCKING SISTER” or “COME BACK COLLEEN, COME BACK COLLEEN” at the top of his lungs about fifteen away from MY HOME where my wife-to-be sleeps and my children play with their toys. McCarthy’s is the kinda place that they sweep up the eyeballs after closing. That’s not where I’m, currently, at. The distinction I’m attempting to draw is that what goes on at the Double Deuce during our first visit to the Double Deuce is intended to be unique to and representative of the Double Deuce. So let’s revisit the image above, and let’s do it from right to left, like we’re reading manga or the Torah. You have Well-Endowed Wife, eyes closed and smiling, thrilling to the sensation of a gormless stranger’s hands on her tits and her husband’s attention and affection resulting from same, I mean she’s transported by it. You have Sharing Husband, cackling with glee, simply could not be happier and more entertained by the spectacle of other men enjoying his wife’s body and his wife’s body enjoying other men. You have Gawker, now and forever Groper just like Donald Merwin Elbert became now and forever The Trashcan Man when he blew those oil tankers in Powtanville (Hey, Trash, what did old lady Semple say when you torched her pension check?), as riveted by this woman’s tits as the first men on the moon were by the earthrise. And—and this is key—you have Heckler, played by Charles Hawke, previously remarkable in this film for hollering “HEY YA PAID TA PLAY PLAY!” AND THROWING A excuse me and throwing a beer bottle at the Jeff Healey Band for the crime of announcing they’re going to take a brief break to urinate in the bathroom rather than piss themselves on stage, and throwing it with sufficient force to shatter it against chickenwire looser than Steve the bouncer’s ID requirements, and saying this with Noo Yawk accent that makes about as much sense in its Jasper, Missouri setting as the idea of famous bouncers, and I’m sure we’ll return to him eventually, but for now let’s look at this miserable bastard, transformed by the spectacle of the tripartite Agreement between Sharing Husband, Well-Endowed Wife, and Gawker/Groper from a belligerent cut-up to fucking Saul on the road to Damascus, transfixed by the sight, blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce another runner in the night, just completely fucking poleaxed by watching one idiot feel up another idiot’s wife. You don’t see that—you might still see it in the desert—but you don’t see it at Duggan’s, and you don’t see it where Dalton is at work. Beautiful in its idiocy as it is, the world Tilghman is building has no room for it. The Elves sail West and the Gawker and Heckler and Sharing Husband and Well-Endowed Wife disappear and so help me god the bar as I sit here writing this the bar is playing “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” by Dropkick Murphys and where is Dalton and Thomas Nast when you need them.