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KELLY'S BAR

  Seemly Sex Story

  by

  BobbyB

  This story, like all Seemly Sex Stories, is pure fiction, an imaginary concoction of the seemly but mischievous mind of BobbyB. Any resemblance to any actual person or situation is completely coincidental.

  Copyright 2017 seemlybobbyb

  Kelly's is a workingman's hangout and lunch bar. It's located in the middle of the industrial area of town, surrounded by the city's road maintenance garage and facilities, various trucking companies, repair garages for such companies' over-the-road tractors, small manufacturing plants and such similar kinds of businesses. It's clientele is drawn from the men (mostly) and women who work in these businesses.

  Few people today know why the place is called Kelly's. The owner is not an Irishman though most of its customers call him Kelly, even those who know his real name is Philip Lefevre. Overwhelmingly, customers don't give a thought to the name of the place. But if anyone asks, the congenial owner explains that his grandfather immigrated from Quebec around the time prohibition started and bought Kelly's from its founder, one Michael Patrick Kelly, who assumed that the new US liquor laws would make it impossible for him to continue operating an Irish pub. Grandpa Lefevre turned the pub into a lunch cafe for the people working near it. He also did something else which his grandson usually omits mentioning. Grandpa turned the backroom and basement into a warehouse and transit point for certain liquid goods clandestinely brought from Quebec for surreptitious distribution to various places of entertainment throughout the country.

  When prohibition was repealed in the early 1930's Grandpa Lefevre got a liquor license. He intended to continue ownership of Kelly's only long enough to legitimately sell off the remaining undistributed product in the backroom and basement. But to his surprise and delight he found that with a liquor license Kelly's became a profitable lunch bar. So he kept it as such. When the stock in the backroom was all sold, Grandpa Lefevre removed the partition between the bar and the back room and had three pool tables installed in the space that before repeal had stored contraband. Since that time Kelly's has been a workingman's hangout and lunch bar.

  Kelly's is open six days a week, Sundays excluded, from ten-thirty in the morning until right after suppertime at six-thirty. There never has been any possibility of adequate business earlier than this opening hour, but a couple of times, once when Philip's grandfather was still running the place and once when his father was, they tried to stay open after six-thirty. But on neither occasion did they ever get enough business in the after suppertime hours to justify the staffing and operational problems the evening hours created. Most of the workers who are Kelly's regular customers are at home after supper, so they didn't come in. Also, the industrial part of town is dim and dismal at night, so the usual after dinner crowd would not venture into their locale. But worst of all, those who did so venture tended to be drunks, barflies, pimps and prostitutes, troublemakers who created more problems than profits. So for decades Kelly's has closed after the supper hour.

  II

  Kelly's business hours enable it to operate with minimal staff. Lefevre himself is the manager-bartender-bouncer-cashier-bookkeeper. He has only one full time employee, Chico, who quite literally is the chief cook and bottle washer. These two are able to handle all Kelly's business except during lunchtime. For that Lefevre hires a part-time waitress-helper. She comes in at opening time and helps Chico get everything in the kitchen set up and ready to go for the lunch hour rush. Then as lunch customers start arriving she transitions from helper to waitress. At the peak of the lunch hour Lefevre himself has to scurry around as assistant busboy-waiter. Then as the lunch rush wanes the waitress transitions back from waitress to helper, assisting Chico run the dishes through the washer and clean the kitchen. She continues in this capacity till everything is cleaned up from the lunch hour, usually around two PM. After that business slacks off so much Lefevre and Chico can easily handle things till closing time, so the part-time waitress-helper's workday ends.

  As is the nature of part-time, the person serving as Kelly's waitress-helper changes not infrequently. Mostly the position has been held by the wife of one or another of their customers, women who are looking to supplement the family income a bit while the kids are at school. None of these ladies has held the job for more than a year or two. Changing family circumstances, a pregnancy or a new job for her husband always leads these women to move on after a while.

  Chico, on the other hand, has been at Kelly's for a decade and a half. He's almost as much a fixture at the place as Lefevre himself. His name isn't really Chico. He uses it because his real name, Jesús, although a mark of devotion in the Hispanic culture from which he comes, is considered religiously inappropriate, even blasphemous by many Anglos.

  Chico is a small man with a thick Mexican-Spanish accent, a remnant of the fact that, although a US citizen, he was raised in Mexico and spoke little English till he came to the US at eighteen to assume his citizenship, a status which resulted from a deliberate and calculated act of his mother. She lived in the north of Mexico from whence she could easily see the disparity of living standards and general prosperity on either side of the border. So when she was pregnant with her firstborn she patiently waited until her labor pains began. Then she snuck across the border at a secret crossing place and presented at a US hospital in frank labor, or "already dilated" as the maternity nurses say. They delivered her baby, Jesús, then shipped mother and infant back to Mexico. But the Mexican mother returned home with a born US citizen baby. At a not inconsiderable risk to herself, Chico's mother had daringly won for her son a more abundant life than she could enjoy.

  When teenage Chico arrived at an official border crossing eighteen years later with nothing more than his birth certificate, the border officials could see he needed help and they wanted to provide it, but didn't know how they could. He was a legitimate citizen, but he had neither any place to go nor any family or friends in the US who could give him a place to stay. And his English was so bad it didn't seem likely he'd be able to find his way around or get a job. Finally, one of the customs officers had the bright idea of directing Chico to the US Army recruiting office where a recruiting sergeant, anxious to meet his quota, eagerly enlisted him, spotty English and all.

  Once in the Army, however, Chico's inadequate English was a problem which had to be considered. The realistic noncom in charge of the new recruit decided that no matter how politely the affable young man asked, in a battle circumstance it would not be feasible to repeat every instruction to him slowly and carefully until he understood. So the sergeant got Chico sent to cooks' school instead of making an infantryman of him. Both the Army and Chico profited from the assignment. Chico brought such a delectable Mexican flare to his cooking that upon completing cooks' school he was assigned to the Officers' Mess. And it was in the Officer's Mess where the sergeant in charge, a Southern Baptist who wasn't about to call anyone Jesús but Jesus, gave the young Mexican-American the name Chico.

  Chico served two hitches in the Army. During the second he married, but his wife didn't like Army life. Her uncle lives in the town where Kelly's is located, works in a small manufacturing plant just a couple blocks away and is a regular Kelly's customer. About the time Chico's second hitch was due to end, Lefevre needed to replace his cook. The uncle informed Chico's wife, and the couple came to town on a seventy-two hour pass, looked over Kelly's, and in turn were looked over by Lefevre. Both parties liked what they saw, and Chico had the job before his enlistment ended. He left the Army one week and went to work at Kelly's the next. He's been there ever since.

  III

  Kelly's clientele is an ordinary cross section of working fol
k. They are undistinguished in any way from any group of mostly men and the few women who might be found in any similar establishment. However, one customer who goes by the unique name of Stag is an exception. As Lefevre often says, there seems to be a law of nature that every bar must have at least one jerk customer. Stag fills that role at Kelly's. But he is much more than an ordinary jackass. He goes way beyond that. Everyone who knows him thinks Stag is a pluperfect pain-in-the-ass.

  There's nothing about Stag's appearance which would call anyone's attention to him. He's neither fat nor skinny; neither handsome nor homely. He is a couple inches taller than average and built accordingly. But he isn't so big as to be noticeably so. In fact, if he weren't always running off at the mouth, probably nobody would ever notice him at all.

  Stag is always bragging. There's nothing unusual about what he brags about: Sex. In any group of men, sex is bound to be a favorite topic. And in any male group there will be some men who claim to have more frequent sex than the others. Among these self-proclaimed frequent flyers there is always one or