at work last night a group of brisbane boys came to sydney

they hired our function room to celebrate their friend's bucks night

they had been at the races all day betting on horses and getting drunk

they hired a topless waitress whose job it was to walk around and ask the boys what they wanted and then to giggle no matter what

i stood behind the bar and watched things happen

i watched the topless waitress remove a hand from her bottom

i watched the topless waitress get told her name was "tits"

i watched the topless waitress say, 'do you want a beer' and the guy say, 'love, I'd smash a hundred' and the topless waitress say, 'a hundred, hehehehe, how long would it, like, take you to drink a hundred beers?' and the guy say, 'bout an hour,' and the topless waitress say, 'hehehehe, reckon you could?' and the guy say, 'fucking oath'

i watched the topless waitress walk towards me

she told me she'd been topless waitressing for 20 years

she said, 'but now that i have a kid and i'm 40 i don't want to do it anymore'

i asked her what else she was gonna do and she laughed

the groom and the groom's father and the bride's father walked toward us

the groom and the groom's father were very drunk but the bride's father seemed fucked

someone looked at the bride's father and said, 'that old guy's cunted, hey'

the topless waitress said, 'he's okay. he just had a stroke'

the groom and the groom's father and the bride's father reached the bar

they started asking the topless waitress if her tits were real

they asked if they could touch them

the groom's father said, 'we're bloody paying for them so we better be able to touch them'

i poured beers for the groom

i poured beers for the groom's father

i poured beers for the bride's father

a stripper arrived

she told the boys they had been bad boys

she told them she was there to punish them

she put a small dildo inside her and then a larger dildo inside her

the boys cheered

the grooms father yelled, 'destroy it'

i thought: destroy it

referring to myself

i don't know

the topless waitress knelt down behind the bar

she began rolling a cigarette

then she looked up

she was smiling

and i was smiling too

these were smiles i'd seen before

on the faces of cattle strung by their feet to the ceilings of slaughter houses

spinning

waiting

watching

the smile you make when everything's about to tear apart