Jesus Christ Sherman

Jesus Christ Sherman was not a person or a thing, it was a place, a incredulously specific place. Today, a generally-agreeable man named Sandy woke up and found that one of his boots had changed colors.

“Jesus, what’s happening here.” He remarks. His tone of voice is understandably confused, but also somehow-immediately-accepting.

“Boot changed color.
Overnight.
I guess”

Sherman looks immediately around the area of the boot, “Nope just the one boot, the other boots’ right there”

Like it had been from when he shore his boots the night before. He had been walking his dogs outside previously and it had rained even more previously to walking the dogs. Which is mostly why he had taken the boots off at the front door, because they were wet, instead of taking them off near the couch, where he usually takes them off.

“Just like when I took it off last night” He gestures towards his other boot, the dog follows the motion of his hand towards the boot, but makes no judgement on the mismatched colors. Sandy initially suspects that maybe the dog is the perpetrator, maybe the dog had peed on just the one boot.
“Ronny, did you do this? Did you pee on my boot?” he questions the dog while picking up the boot. “Nope, nothing. Smells more like boot than pee.” Unfortunately for Sandy, the boot was not a simple case of pee-pee boot-boot, it wasn’t wet, and especially didn’t feel artificial.
Sandy walks over to his table and examines more than just a glancer-over. “Let’s see what we got here” he shawshayingly mutters to himself.

The mysterious boot was, as it appeared, to be his boot. Not a replacement, not someone elses boot that was switched over in the night like a benevolent but chaotically neutral cat burglar whose only object of desire was the mental stability of his victims.
The boot was his boot, just changed. The sole had worn in the usual spots, high on the outside in the rear; he had ‘flat feet’ as his mother had told him. It was actually just ove-pronation that is caused by general rotation issues or lack of muscle density near the muscles of the arch. This issue can be fixed by 20$ inserts, running shoes designed for overpronation, or even custom designs that map and mold heels to perfectly capture the differences in the individual consumer. Sandy had none, because they were, “Dumb as Fuck.”“

A quick examination about the boot – The color had a patina, as if conditioned and then let to dry and buffed and polished and reconditioned and worn and carefully brushed, exactly like how Sandy would, except for the color.
The laces however had the same fraying, he had gotten caught in his car door and instead of opening the door to release the laces, just decided to yank them free. This had not worked. “Fuck” he had said. The laces tore and he lost a fair amount of length from the overall lace size.
Even the way the boot had worn, the same bend metal speedhook, the tongue – wrinkled where Sandy’s calfs didn’t exist, all the same.

Except the color, slightly lighter than before.

Sandy played back the events from last night, hoping that maybe he had missed something obvious. Maybe a drunkard had spilled some drink, over his boots. A drink with the name ‘Cosmic Stallion’ or ‘Nutters paradise’, the drinks name didn’t matter as much, but it had a non-standard color, maybe it was sweet, sweeter than usual. Like drinking an alcoholic lemon or pamplemouse; Sandy does not know what a pamplemouse is. “HEY WATCH IT, YOU’RE SPILLING PAMPLEMOUSE OVER ME” he would say if someone spilled pamplemouse over him.

He loved going to Jesus Christ Sherman on Saturday mornings. Before the clubbers, before the happy-hour students, before the barflys, and especially before the brunch type. Just him having a cocktail, hopefully at 8am, but anytime within that hour is fine. He always thought to himself “Why doesn’t everyone drink in the morning, it makes so much sense.”

Jesus Christ Sherman wasn’t actually the name of the bar. A few years prior, an especially aloof man named Sherman had frequented the bar. The same single order, multiple times a day, all throughout the day. Meaning, that he would appear, order the drink, drink it, pay, leave, repeat. All throughout the day, recognized by all, the clubbers, the students, the barflys, and of course, the morning types – all knew his one drink.

“Excuse me Mr/Maam.”
Sherman would always graciously start “Can I order a shot of Jaegermeister and OJ.” The reaction from new bartenders and eavesdroppers and sometimes even locals would be the same “Jesus Christ Sherman. That’s disgusting” Sherman would always reply, “well what’s good for the conversation is good for the body.”Eventually somehow, the bar was known for the “Jesus Christ Sherman.” Tourists and hardended bar-types would try the Jesus Christ Sherman, and all those who would try the Jesus Christ Sherman would have the same response “Jesus, Christ, Sherman.”

Sandy was examining the boot, it was lighter somehow, not chemically lighter and not lighter from a cleaning, as in, someone spilling their drink over the boot, saying “Hey sorry, I spilled my drink over your boot, I’ll clean it” and then cleaning it. It was lighter as in, the light refracted off the boot at a different angle. Like how some buildings have windows with specific refraction angles, as to not reflect 1pm summer sunlight onto nearby plants, essentially creating a magnification error which may or may not result in flames and lawsuits. The boot, as it were, seemed to exist in another plane of existance.

Sandy’s workbench light was shining onto the boot at one angle, and instead of refracting at Snell’s Law: the ratio of the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction is equivalent to the ratio of phase velocities in the two media, or equivalent to the reciprocal of the ratio of the indices of refraction, the boot seemed to absorb the light and redistribute the energy at an area which was the darkest; creating a strong juxtaposition of dark, and boot light.