"Stay In Position"

Every now and then a man or woman walks into the bar and I look at them and I just know. I can't exactly explain what I know, but I just do. It's the uncannily accurate intuition that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in Blink; you're not sure why you're so certain, or why this person elicits such a reaction, but you are certain nonetheless.


One of my first nights I ever bartended, a woman came into the bar at 1:45 am. We close at 2, and I do last call at 1:50. So she walks in at 1:45 and right away I know. After a few minutes of walking around the bar she hasn't ordered a drink. Finally, she finds a seat at the empty bar and then proceeds to tell me about a crack pipe a homeless man left in her truck and how lucky she had been to find it before the cops did. She then talked about her dead cat and how it had been murdered by an employee at one of the bars and she was determined to find out who. I joked that I was allergic to cats -- that the cat had a better chance of killing me than I did it -- but she didn't seem to get it and somehow she segwayed the conversation back to the planted crack pipe. She left at 2:10, which is when we ask everybody to leave. She still hadn't ordered a drink, though she had asked me for a cigarette. It was a bizarre encounter, though completely expected. 


Tonight, When Duffy came in, I knew. There was something in his unsteady walk, in the way his eyes opened a bit too wide. The unkept and graying five o'clock shadow. The t-shirt tucked into the jeans; and the jeans were about three or four inches below his nipples. It wasn't any one of these by themselves. It was all of them together. But it was more than that. It was the way you felt when you looked at him and when he looked at you. Not a sense of fear, but rather one of reluctance, of oddity. That you could both look at the same thing and be worlds apart, and that in fact, as you looked at each other you were already worlds apart. 


Duffy came in and was kind enough to order a drink -- "whiskey coke, though I wouldn't mind if you went heavy on the whiskey and light on the coke, hehehe," -- and I made the drink to his liking, which prompted him to call me "a gentleman and a learned scholar," which is much different than being a gentleman and an unlearned scholar. Even though I have conversations every day with people I've never met before and I routinely see people on their worst nights, I knew almost instantly that the conversation I was about to have with Duffy would be a special one. And I was right, although in truth it wasn't much of a conversation because Duffy did practically all of the talking. He had this amazing ability to keep a conversation alive by throwing a "yeah" in after he'd completed his thought, and then it was as if I'd agreed with what he'd just said so he felt obliged to tell me something else that he could help me agree with.  


After he'd taken a strong sip, he dove right in.  


-"Yeah man, I love clubs like this... Yeah. I live around here, so I walk everywhere. Never worry about parking and all that crap. Only thing you gotta worry about are the damn criminals who'd rob a nickel off you if that was all you had. Not like they care whether you got a nickel or a million nickels, they'll take it all the same and buy drugs and whatnot with it. I mean, me, I'd buy another drink he-he-he..Yeah, I was at this joint the other night [he says the name of a gay bar located four or five blocks east of my bar], and man, they pour strong drinks down at that club... Wooh!... After I'd had a few, this guy came up to me and told me he wanted to have sex with me, and I mean, this guy was big. Bigger than a bear...Sorry, I'm talking too much, aren't I?"
-"Not at all."
-"Yeah... So I tell the huge guy, and I mean, he's bigger than you are, probably twice as heavy, and he's got a beard too, real big guy, I tell him, 'I got the best urologist in Texas and he can't fix what I got.' I tell him that the urologist said that my dick's broken. The big guy looks at me and is like 'c'mon, man!' And boy, would you wet yourself if you saw a man that size begging. Like a kid who wants candy, ya know? He-he-he... And I keep telling him that I got a broke dick and... Yeah... I guess I forgot what the whole point of the story was. Just funny I guess... Sorry, I'm probably annoying you..."
-"You're not annoying me, I promise... I'm Ed by the way."


I extend my hand out. He takes it, though applies little to no pressure in the squeeze-part of the handshake. What else should I have expected?

-"Ed? That's my middle name. Edmund. But my first name's Duffy."
-"You've got a fine middle name."
-"Yeah. It's not bad."
-"Not bad? I can't think of a name that's much better. Besides Duffy, of course," I said.
-"You know what you are, Ed?"
-"A gentleman and a learned scholar?"
-"You're a guy that gets it... Yeah, I mean, I get it too, if you know what I mean. Just some people do. And other people don't. Most people don't."
-"I get it," I say, to validate his estimation of me.
-"Yeah... I've been having a rough time of it recently. Seems like I'm the only one, ya know?.. Yeah, so I been smoking hash. You could say a fair amount of it, he-he-he."
-"How's that treating you?"
-"The hash?"
-"Yeah."
-"It makes other things easier...I mean, I'm not selling it or anything. I just came in to a good quantity of it, good stuff too, and I just keep it. No plans to distribute. No. Thank. You. I been in trouble with the law one too many times to try stuff like that. Only thing I try to do with it is smoke it, and I do a good enough job with that, he-he-he... I'm a musician, or I was before you know, so I studied under the symphony. Played six instruments."
-"Six instruments?"
-"You bet."
-"Which one are you best at?"
-"Oh... Probably recorder. I play piano well, and guitar I can do well... And I have drums but I don't have sticks, but if I had sticks I'd play 'em about as well as the guitar... Sorry. I'm probably keeping you from doing things you oughta be doing right now, aren't I?"
-"Not at all, Duffy." 
-"Yeah... When I was learning guitar, my teacher, he was classically trained and all that, and he charged two bucks a session, can you believe that? Two bucks a session?.. Yeah. He used to hit my knuckles with that stick they conduct symphonies with. I think his was a little wider, though he-he-he. He used to hit my knuckles and say "stay in position!" because if you're out of position, then you can't play like you can when you're in position. I used to ask him, "what'd you do that for?" and he'd say "because you're out of position." I still remember that. "Stay in position."... Yeah... He taught me pretty much everything I know about the guitar, and if I was to bring my guitar in here, you'd see what I'm talking about. I might be a little rusty, but my position would be perfect."


It went on and on like this. He finished his drink and bid me farewell, constantly apologizing for how much he was talking, but then consistently continuing to talk until he needed to apologize again. 


-"Goodbye," he said.
-"Duffy," I said, "Nice to meet you."
-"Ed, right?"
-"Yeah."


I reached out and shook his hand. Having learned from the first time, I applied little-to-no pressure against Duffy's hand, which he seemed to appreciate. 


-"Stay in position," I told him.


He looked at me, smiled and nodded.


-"Stay in position," he echoed.  It was the last thing he said before he turned and left and disappeared back to wherever he kept his recorder and hash.