In my younger days I was a pretty avid player of coin-op arcade games. I was in several tournaments, one of which was for the Aerosmith game "Revolution X".
I was doing very well, climbing the brackets rather easilly, and saw little competion other than a young Asian man named Jin. He was good - very good - but I was better. We both advanced through our brackets and were in line to have a showdown in the final round to determine a winner. We both knew who it would be. Hessian doesn't lose at Revolution X - EVER.
I was outside smoking a clove cigarette when I saw Jin's sister Sun walking up to me. I smiled, wondering if she was going to try to seduce me into throwing the match. Fat chance of that, though - my pre tourney regiment consisted of a balanced breakfast of cloves, Southern Comfort, and gamer-groupies. HOT gamer-groupies.
"Hey, Hessian," she said, "Do you like cartoons?"
"Baby," I replied, "I pretty much am a cartoon. They call me Bam-Bam, because of all the Bedrock(ing)." It's very difficult to sound suave while verbally adding a parenthentical suffix, but I pulled it off. I pull most things off.
"Well how do you feel about Quck Draw McGraw?" she purred, a smile playing at the edge of her lips.
Just then I felt the tickle of danger run down my neck right before seeing a refelection of movement in Sun's eyes. I whirled around like a cat or a snake or a cat-snake, but as I did Sun kicked me in the back of the legs, and I fell forward onto my knees.
"EL," I heard the shout begin, and I knew that I had been beaten after all. The last thing I remember is Jin shouting "KABONG!" as he brought an obviously finely crafted Korean guitar smashing down on my head. I woke up in the parking lot hours after Jin's victory by forfeit and the first thing I saw was the name on the headstock of the guitar that laid me out. That name, of course, was Carlos. I will never forget it. I will never forgive it. But most of all, I regret that I never got to play that beautiful guitar.