Boozer

“Tell me if you heard this,” The burly man to my right tries to whisper in my ear, but only achieves spitting and yelling in his drunken stupor, “a chicken, and priest, and a… um… Damn! I used to know this one. Hold on a sec.” He starts tapping his finger on the side of his head and making a weird whishing sound.

“You sure you remember this?” I ask him repulsed by his presence. Why did this guy have to sit next to me in this nearly empty bar? I don’t think I was putting of a particularly friendly vibe tonight.

“Huh? Oh Yeah, the joke!” He seems to be very self amused at this point, “So the doctor was in on it! You get it?” He says slapping his hand hard against my back.

I wonder how I find myself in these situations regularly. I’ve been on this earth thirty-five years now, and every bar I go into recently seems to end up with some drunk wanting to be my best friend. It’s not like I’m rich or famous. I don’t even look like anyone important. I guess I just have one of those faces. You know the kind that says, ‘yes I want to hear all your problems, and oh don’t mind the fact that you just puked on my shoes. No, not at all, I get them dry-cleaned once a week; I’m a bit OCD about my shoes. Really? I didn’t know how much you miss your daughter. I bet it must be hard.’

Never fail, I walk in and order a beer, and within five minutes I have my own personal intoxicated new friend telling me all his problems. The worst part is I just sit here and take it. I listen and nod and agree with them. I console them as best I can. I have no idea why. I bet they would go ballistic if I tried anything else.

Once I did try to keep myself amused by cleverly mocking the tanked steward next to me, but plastered people seem to have a weird sense about that. He got real serious and offered to clean my clock. I plied him with a drink and all was forgiven. I will have to say that about the inebriated, no matter how badly you betray one, a drink in their favor fixes all. I decided to try a new tact with this one.

“So, why me?” I asked. This caught him off guard, not enough to stop him from swaying, but he did screw up his eyes and gave me a solid look.

“Why you what?” I could see the spittle fly at me as he desperately tried to articulate.

“Why did you sit down next to me to talk?” I could feel the pangs of anger in my bones.

“Oh, you just think you’re so high and mighty! The world revolves around you.” He turned slightly and started a discourse with the pillar holding up the ceiling. “This guy thinks the whole world revolves around him! What you think of that friend?”

In this moment I noticed I had an out. I dropped some cash on the bar and slid silently away. Perhaps it was time to stop drinking for a while. One of these days my luck with the boozers would run out and I didn’t need to push my luck.

-V-

Bar Scene

I sat at the bar staring at the drink in front of me. I was so tired of this city. Everywhere I went I was alone. It seemed impossible to make friends around here. Sure it had only been a few days, but I’m one to pride myself on being able to land on my feet no matter where I am. It seems this time I was going to have a few broken legs as well. Or was I already broken before I came here. I’m not so sure anymore.

I decided to play an old game I’d play when I got bored. Watching groups of people, I would write my own personal story for them. Like the hagridden man at the end of the bar, he looked to be in his late fifties. Three empty shot glasses sat beside him, each one a fallen soldier to his misery. By looking at him I decided that his good wife had died three years prior. No children between them. And this was their anniversary night. He would come here every year and add one more shot to drown away his sadness.

He has his wife’s dog to keep him company, a little beagle he never really liked, but it’s the only living thing connecting him to his passed wife. The dog would keep him up nights howling for his missing mistress, never really understanding why she would never be coming back home. And in this anguish they both found solace in each other.

Over in the corner, one couple was fighting at a table by the door. I imagined their conversation something like this:

“What do you mean, we’re breaking up?”

“Well dear.” He said this with a fair amount of venom and sarcasm, “You never really took the time to get to know me. And I think after all this time, I really did get to know who and what you truly are. What’s sad is that because of these two disparate reasons we are going to have the same conclusions. I don’t care that you won’t be part of my life because I do know what you are. And you won’t care that I won’t be part of yours because you have no idea what I am.”

She looked at him blankly, grabbed her drink and poured it over his head. I suppose that relationship truly was over. The only other person in the bar sat behind it, pulling out drinks. The bartender was in her late twenties and had jet-black hair. She had black ink tattoos all over her arms.

For the first time, I had no story to create for this person. I tried many scenarios in my head, but nothing would coalesce in my mind. I again felt tired of being here, in this city, without any friends or people to connect with. I found it was best to leave this bar now. Back into the streets I plodded, smelling the desperation in the air, I decided to head back to my place.

-V-