The locals were getting restless. Over the past six hours I’d continued to sink deeper and deeper into the abyss as I downed yet another scotch and became increasingly belligerent. They’d managed to bite their tongues for most of it –oh he’s just a drunk, ignore him- but now, as I shifted my rant toward critiquing what I offered to be such a joke of a President I could see I’d hit a nerve. Here we were in an allegedly ‘blue’ state; a real liberal enclave within the United States and safe, safe territory for Bush and Republican haters no doubt, and yet there was something that really irked these barflies about a foreigner roaring so freely and unchecked of how much a retarded –and elected and then re-elected- leader had fucked up their country. As far as they were concerned, hating the President and everything he’d said and done to date was just fine and dandy –as long as outsiders weren’t so upstart as to bring it up.

God damn it, this is still the land of the free and no fucking alien is gonna’ tell us how it is!

“Shudthefuckup” someone muttered from behind me. I smiled in drunken delight as I saw them exchanging glares of growing distaste that only fuelled me on further. The empty misuse by Americans of words like ‘liberty’, ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ next took a hammering but it was when I may have perhaps mentioned something about wanting to wipe my ass with the Bill of Rights that the folks had well and truly had enough.

The first sign was when the pretty blonde thing who only an hour before had been running her hand along my inner thigh and whispering that she wanted to offer me a hand job in the toilets had moved to a booth in the corner of the room. She could now be discovered face-sucking with a bearded trucker in his 50’s who had somehow charmed her with his tales of hunting wild pigs back home in Arkansas. He was a real Valentino, to be sure.

The second, more significant sign was when the fat college kid with acne and the pseudo intellectual in the tweed jacket that I’d just called “A dumb Septic cunt” for offering that “at least Condoleezza Rice actually means well” had grabbed me by the shoulders and tossed me out into the alleyway.

“Fuck off back to your own country. Or even better, go live in France. They love terrorists like you” screamed Mr. Tweed.

“France? Didn’t they fucking save your ass in the revolution?” I asked. “Where’s the gratitude?”

“Since they said no to freedom after 9-11 they can eat shit, just like you, shit eater”, replied the fat kid.

“Shit eater, eh?... Fair enough, then”, I muttered with approval.

Pulling myself together I straightened up, bowed for the angry eyes leering at me through the bar door and, whistling the Le Marseillaise staggered off down the street. I paused briefly for a few seconds to vomit -emptying out the contents of my stomach on this sacred Land Of The Free- and then continued on my way, lost in the ether of another surreal night in the United States of Self-Righteousness.

Ezy Reading is out every week- but our apologies for the irregular appearance of this column of late. We were on the road and are now back!