After work—fuck that bullshit job—I get home and give in.
Sometimes I can’t get back up off the couch all night. It’s not any one thing. I just don’t know what duties matter, what obligations I care about, or how much to let myself be exploited by these assholes who think one person can do six peoples’ jobs. American dream. Are you freaking kidding me? Who the hell makes it happen? I don’t see how it’s possible. A house? Marriage? Kids?
I’m tapping the base of the entertainment center with my shoe and slouch down. My neck’s bent against the back of the couch and my butt’s hanging off the cushions. I’m glad I don’t have a girlfriend. Dating’s too expensive. One dinner and a movie and I can hardly pay my rent.
There’s not crap on TV anymore. I throw a frozen French bread pizza in the toaster oven, go back to the couch, grab the remote, flip around for a while, watch some news, maybe a little SportsCenter, but what’s the point?
The Brewers suck right now. They’ll never amount to anything with Davey Lopes.
The timer reminds me to get up. By no stretch of the imagination is this pathetic pizza a supreme. There is one shaving of sausage and a layer of cheese I can see through on top of the thin slab of bread. Flakes of red and green pepper placed at statistically optimal distances from one another seem to repel the tiny cubes of pepperoni that dot the top.
Still. They don’t cut corners on packaging. Some dude stares up at me from the pizza box in the trash. He’s supposed to be a fighter pilot, an ideal. His red scarf is blowing back in the wind. His eyes are cast to the heavens beyond. Dashing. Dude’s got a fucking mustache and a tousled animated haircut. He’s wearing goggles on his head. And his stylized WWII garb would still get more women than I ever could.
I look at the clock. It’s almost eight. Whether or not I show up, Judson’s always got a shot of Tullamore Dew sitting in a glass on the bar for me at eight o’clock. To have a drink waiting for you at the bar when you get there is a great sign of significance.
I don’t really care that much.
But I usually go. Some people put on a new shirt to go out at night. I never do. I’ve never really understood it. I just go in my work clothes. The bar on the corner is brick, has a cracked set of curved cement steps that no one’s ever gonna fix, and has too many neon signs for the size of the windows. There are two small Harleys parked on the sidewalk. Who the hell parks on the sidewalk?
I open the door and camel bells slap the back side. A few other regular patrons look up from listening to the bartender read out loud. He does that sometimes. Seems to get a kick out of it on slow nights. He holds a book and says, “And I am dirty with its satisfaction.” I rattle the door, like applause maybe, like I’m sort of making fun of him, too. Nothing crazy. Nothing out of control. Just enough to bring him down a peg. The camel bells smack the wall once and Judson shuts the book. He doesn’t look pissed and sure enough, my drink’s waiting in front of my seat at the short end of the bar.
He looks me in the eye, “‘And I am dirty with its satisfaction.’ Isn’t that great? So much in it. All the guilt. All the pleasure. All the social constructs and guises and norms and repression. I love it.”
I drink slowly. “I’ll love it when you get off the literary kick.”
“Just waiting for Monday Night Football so the library card can go back in the closet. I can’t stand baseball. Won’t have it in this bar.”
The Brewers suck anyway. “You got anything to eat back there?”
He starts to dig through a little fridge and produces half an egg salad sandwich, three jalapeno-pickled green beans that go in the Bloody Marys, and a fistful of pretzels stale from the humidity. He plops everything onto a paper plate that bends with the weight and shoves it over to me. “A little gold, frankincense, and myrrh for you, right there. How’s that?”
Better than that crappy pizza. “I’m dirty with its satisfaction.”
He turns his back, picks up a bucket, and heads for the ice maker. I watch him digging down into the chest of fused ice cubes. What the fuck is he using? Some kind of red plastic thing. “Is that a sand shovel for kids at the beach?”
“Yeah. It is.”
I don’t want to ask. But. I can’t let it go. “Why the fuck are you using a sand shovel?”
“I don’t know. I bought it last week. Thought it’d work pretty good. I hate those stainless steel scoops. The handles get too cold. And I don’t like cutting ketchup jugs to make scoops either. Too much trouble. They bend and crack. This is sturdy.”
“But it’s a kid’s toy.”
“So.”
There are two women playing pool. They don’t talk too much but enjoy the game. One wears black leather pants. The other’s in a black leather vest. They must account for the two Harleys outside. Nebraska plates. Nice bikes. But I don’t know too much about bikes. I look at the woman in the vest a little too long. She smiles. She cocks her hips. She leans on the pool cue. She opens her mouth and touches her tongue to the tapering length of the wood.
Jesus. Who wants to deal with all that? I’ve gotta work in the morning. I swivel on my stool, put both elbows on the bar, and watch Judson dump ice over the beers. “Those girls in for Summerfest, you think? I’m not going this year. Too many people. Too much traffic.”
“It’s Harley’s 100th though too. That could be it. Or just traveling.”
“The 100th was last year.”
“Right.” I can’t eat egg salad sandwiches. Shit’s nasty. “How’s their game?”
“Better than yours. What do you think about my egg salad? Never made it before, but I had a craving.”
“Not bad. Needs to be on toast though.”
“Toast? I’ve never had egg salad on toast. I’ll try it.”
He gets summoned to the other end of the bar. I pick up a paper and suck on a green bean. I flip slowly through the Journal Sentinel. After a while Judson wanders back and starts washing glasses.
I hold up the paper, turn an article toward him so he can see the headline and photo. “Did you see this about Kenny Chesney and Uncle Kracker on Saturday? Bizarre.”
“Yeah, the lineup’s fucked this year. I used to know more of the smaller bands. Now I barely care.”
We’re silent for a little while. It gets later. More people start coming in. They fill up the bar around me and the bartender gets busy. I read an article about zoning regulations. I read another article about various parking tribulations for Summerfest. I read part two in a three-part series about the zebra mussel infestation in the Great Lakes and its damaging effects on the ecosystem. I say to Judson, “Have you ever heard of an invasive species?” But he doesn’t answer. I keep reading. The mussels come from the Caspian Sea and other foreign ballast waters of oceangoing ships that come to port in Chicago, Detroit, and Green Bay. They make a hell of a mess of pipes apparently. I drink the High Life. The wet bottle makes rings on the newspaper. The bikers settle up and get on their way to wherever.
I move a coaster with two fingers like it’s part of an air hockey game. I say to Judson, “Whatever happened with Lacy?”
He rubs the back of his hand across his nose.
I’m hitting the coaster against the bottom of my beer bottle wondering if he’s going to respond when he says, “She decided to keep it.”
I look back at the red sand shovel left in the ice maker. “You gonna marry her?”
“Who? Lacy? Fuck no. I’m not marrying Lacy. Why would I want to deal with her shit for the rest of my life?”
“So what’re you gonna do?”
“Get a fucking lawyer, I guess.”
An hour goes by. Judson cuts the air conditioning and has me open up the windows since he’s busy mixing mojitos for some out-of-towners who had heard of them on “Sex and the City.” They probably aren’t great mojitos, but the girls seemed content to pretend. “They’re dirty with the satisfaction,” he mouths to me while the girls giggle together.
I tilt my head back and smile in recognition.
“When you get a chance, bring me a little more of this High Life, and those green beans. They’re great.”
He comes back my way, “I know. I grow the beans in an empty lot next to my house then I pickle them here. I use white wine vinegar, onion, garlic, about ten red chilies, some jalapenos, rock salt, and pickling spice. Boil it up. Two weeks in the cellar and they’re ready. My grandma used to make a pickle similar to it with all sorts of vegetables but not quite as hot. But I love these with a vodka or Bloody Mary. Nice offset for the flavors.”
“You should sell them to all these type of fucks, folks you know. They’d give you a fortune for ‘em.”
“Not my style. I like the Ball Mason jars. The lids especially. And I like the quiet morning making them couple times a year. I want a tradition, not another job out of it.”
Someone puts some money in the old juke box. Jimmy Cliff. Outside, a couple of guys tie a German shepherd to the stop sign and come in for a game of darts. I drink two more beers and watch the dog from the window as the evening moves on. The dog turns his head watching people walk by on the sidewalk. Then he settles down and falls asleep.
Conan has Emilio Estevez on as a guest. The TV’s muted so I have no idea what brought Emilio onto a talk show. But his chat washes by with the rest of it.
Then it is just me and Judson.
He says, “You think I’ll be a good dad?”
“You know you’re gonna be better than mine.”
He laughs.
I get off the stool, put the chairs up on the tables, shut the windows, turn off the neon signs, and check the bathrooms for anything vile while Judson cleans up the bar. He lays the stainless steel tools out on a clean towel to dry.
He sets a shot up on the bar, “For your troubles, man. Thanks.”
I drink the shot. “No trouble.”
He wipes the bar down. He wipes the tables down, wipes the metal work down, tosses the old white towels into the little stainless steel bar sink, fills the sink with cold water, and adds a splash of bleach. He swirls the towels and rinses his hands. “They’ll sit over night. You ready?”