A Saturday Night Tale

Originally Posted Sunday, August 10, 2014

Oy!  Q wrote to me yesterday wondering why his comments on this blog were not getting posted.  I went to look and there were about twenty comments waiting approval.  I hadn't told blogger to email me when the comments came in, so I didn't know they were there.  I just thought everyone had gone away.  It is all fixed now.  I think this extends back a couple weeks.  Much love. 

I was antsy last night.  After the gym, I stopped at Starbucks to get a couple pounds of coffee and then walked over to the liquor store to get some. . . liquor.  That is what the gym does to me, of course.  When I'm done, I just want coffee and liquor.  I was thinking about getting some cigarettes, too, but I know they are bad for me.  No, I thought, I'll just stick with the medicine.  No sense in undoing all the healthy benefits I'm getting from them.  I am nothing if not a careful, reasonable man. 

At the liquor store, I ran into a friend who said his beautiful, tall, blonde daughter was turning sixteen and they were having a birthday party at their house that night.  He rolled his eyes and so did I, but we were definitely thinking different things. 

"Hey, what time?  I can help, you know, chaperone and all.  I'm good with kids." 

"Yea, I know," he said.  I wasn't getting an invitation.  Just then, his wife drove up.  She was going to the liquor store, too. 

"Jesus," I said, "how much do you think those kids can drink?"

I thought that maybe I'd just wait until all the girls got drunk, but as usual, I was thinking wrong.  Apparently there were going to be parents there, too.  So much for that. 

Maybe that was what did it.  I don't know, it could have been the beer or wine or the rum drink I made when I got home from the gym, but I wasn't keen on staying home another Saturday night alone, so I poured myself a go cup and left the house for a bar where they serve craft beers.  It is a hipster place, of course, but not quite, for old people like me go there for the beer and kind of fuck up the atmosphere.  I hate when they do that.  They should either stay home or go to one of their bars for the aged.

When I got there, the place was already pretty crowded.  It's a big place, too.  I found a stool at the bar and asked the barmaid about the strong, high alcohol beers they were serving.  Those usually have an alcohol content of about 12% or higher, and they serve them in eight ounce glasses at outrageous prices, but you can't buy them anywhere else in town.  I think about going up to get them often, but I rarely do because there are not a lot of pretty girls in the place (heavy hipster girls with tattoos and older women in their thirties and forties who only god knows why they aren't at home) and when I suggest it to my friends, they don't want to go.  I asked the barmaid about the beers like I knew anything about them and finally asked her to pick one.  It was a fruity Belgian ale with a solid beer taste underneath. 

The woman sitting next to me asked me what I had.  I told her I wasn't sure, but it was good.  She was Persian and was with her Indian (dots, not feathers) boyfriend.  She was a special ed teacher, and he was a mechanical engineer who designed turbines.  I liked them, the idea of them.  She told me that her father was a devout Moslem, observed Ramadan ate at the Mosque and hated Jews, etc.  Her boyfriend's parents were Hindus and worshipped all the gods.  Neither of them were religious, they said, she taking a sip of wine, he a gulp from his very big beer.  I love to see it, people of all races, creeds, and colors, brought to the table of god by his special gift to humanity.  There are few barriers that alcohol won't lower. 

Just then, a woman came up to say hello.  I couldn't place her at first and smiled my best political smile, then it came to me--she was my across the street neighbor.  She was very drunk, I think, as she kept saying the same thing over again. 

"Hey, how are you?"

"Great, how are you doing?"

"Oh, I'm fine.  How are you doing?" 

Etc. 

I had run into her husband a few weeks back (at the liquor store of course), and he told me that she had moved out about seven months ago.  I had asked him if that was a good or bad thing, and he had told me both.  The bad thing was that there were no women, or that there were only young women.  I couldn't understand a thing he was saying.  That statement made no sense to me.  But what I got out of it all was that she had moved.  So to break the cycle of "how are you"s, I said, "I heard you were living in Meizel Park."

"Where'd you hear that?" she asked. 

"Your husband told me." 

She looked at me for a moment then pointed behind me.  Standing against the wall was her husband. 

"Still dating," she said. 

Oops.  I think I fucked that up.

"Oh, yea, that's great, right?  Really great.  More fun. . . ." 

And then she was gone. 

"So you know people in this bar," the Persian said. 

"Unfortunately.  Old people.  Why don't they stay home?" 

The irony wasn't lost on my two clever new friends.  We talked about bars and restaurants, and they told me they were looking for a house to rent, so I gave them advice as one should always when sitting at a bar, and I told them I would be their spiritual counselor if they wanted.

"Obviously you two have strayed from the flock." 

I didn't want them to flounder. 

And then it was time to go, at least for me, so I took my hand off the best part of the pretty Persian girl's thigh and shook hands with her boyfriend hoping he hadn't seen, stood up painfully, my knee needing a few minutes before it could bear my weight, my back even more time before I could stand upright, and I limped my way through the crowd like a broken boxer who'd had three too many fights. 

"What fun," I thought when I finally reached the car.  "I don't know why I don't go out more."  Then I looked around the car for something a sixteen year old girl might want.  I saw the "Chant" CD that my boss had given me.  I could stop at a 7-11 and get some wrapping paper.  It wasn't that late.  They'd be glad to see me. 

Of course they would.