Tuesday

It's been jeans-and-jacket-weather for a while now in Austin [not to be confused with jean-jacket weather, which is where it's the perfect temperature for denim jackets]. Though people from Chicago and Washington DC and Minnesota continually tell me how not-cold it is here, it still gets cold enough at night and sometimes during the day for you to see your breath and for your exposed skin to sting and ache when the wind hits it. Apparently that's not cold in the north, which leaves me with even less of an urge to go up there again than before. 


Today was not cold. In fact, it was actually quite warm -- warm to the point where those people from Chicago and Washington and Minnesota who have a better grasp on the weather than I do wouldn't even be able to argue otherwise. Less than two weeks from Christmas and it was in the mid 60's practically all day, even climbing to the 70's for a few hours. The rain came for a few hours too and after it had left the entire city felt damp and humid and all I could think about was what Ellie's hair would look like if she stood outside in it for a few minutes and I decided it'd look like the curly hair I draw on stick figures. 


I wanted to put something on facebook about today's unseasonably warm temperatures proving the existence of global warming, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. People who believe that a cold day in summer [or a warm day in winter] somehow validates or disproves a theory based on decades and decades of impartial scientific data -- those people should be quarantined. 


These are the same people who call our President a muslim [he's not] because his name sounds foreign, the same people who call him a socialist/communist [as if those are synonymous, which they're not, and even if they were, still wouldn't be accurate] because he supports universal healthcare, the same people who quote the Bible as they protest homosexuality [usually Leviticus] and scream about how gays are destroying the sanctity of marriage,  yet never mention the fact that over half of all "sanctified marriages" end with a divorce in part because the average American spends more time in front of a tv than they do talking with their kids and their spouse. These are the same people who believe that dinosaur bones in museums are tests of faith from God, the same people who can name more American Idols winners than Supreme Court justices. 


Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. 


When people find out that I'm a bartender full-time they tell me how jealous they are, ask how fun it must be always getting to meet new people and be social, as if constantly being around people -- most of them drunk or close to it -- is a perk of the job.


"Always something different, right?" they'll also ask, and I'll nod because it's much easier than explaining that a lot of what I do is actually mindless repetition. A vodka-soda is always the same, the wells and the liquor bottles are always wiped at the end of the night, and you'd be surprised at how most people blend together and act when alcohol's involved so that they're really not exciting new people but rather one mosaic of drunk assholes. 


I even make the same joke when people ask me where the bathrooms are [I point to a trash-can behind the bar].


But the bar has its moments that you can never prepare for. They just happen and you react and then think about them for the rest of the night. You can go a week without having a single moment like it and then one night you'll have nine. I guess in that sense each night is different, though hopefully you can see why it's just easier to nod than to try and explain all that. 


****


I came into work in jeans even though it wasn't jean-weather. A guy who used to be in the bar all the time was there and we shook hands. He was with a woman, which was nice to see, though in truth she wasn't much to look at, but then again, neither was he so you felt happy that they'd both found each other. They were both drunk, which was the only way I'd ever seen him and I could smell the Jager on his breath. When the time came for him to close his tab, he realized he'd left his debit card somewhere. He patted each of his pockets about fifteen times, pulled all the cards out of his wallet a dozen more, and then he finally looked at me and shrugged.


-"I don't know what you want me to do," he said. "I'm dead in the water here."


He went through the whole pocket-pat, wallet-emptying routine again. The woman even checked her purse.


-"You know me, man... Can I come by tomorrow and take care of it? I probably left my card at home or something. I'm always doing stupid shit like that, he he he. But I'll come take care of it and tip you really good... I just don't have have my card right now.


I looked at him again, not quite sure of what I was going to say and what I wasn't going to. Finally I said something about the tab being too big, that his word, while appreciated, wouldn't cover it. He handed me a few cards. They were declined. He handed me a gift card to some store I'd never heard of and asked if I wanted to give him some cash for it, though he wasn't exactly sure how much was left on it. After I'd refused his kind offer to buy the gift card [you'd be making money off it!] I asked if he had anyone who could come down and pay it for him and he told me his brother was out of town. I asked if there was anyone besides his brother and he pretended not to hear because I think it was easier than answering. 


His girlfriend's card was declined, too. 


After even more pocket-searches that produced nothing he said this:


-"So what now? We wait here until the bar closes and then you call the cops?" He was becoming more firm, wanting to show himself and his girl just how in control of the situation he was.


I've found that talking to drunk people accomplishes very little. So I didn't respond. I just looked at him.


-"Well, I'm not staying here all night, ok? I'm going to go home, and I'll be back tomorrow and I'll pay the fucking bill once I find my fucking card... This wouldn't even be an issue if she'd asked for my card after the first round of drinks. I wouldn't have started a tab then, because I couldn't have given her a card. Why would she start me a tab when I didn't even bring my card? Look, I don't have it. I'm going now and I'll pay you tomorrow." He got up to leave.


Before he got too far away I leaned over the bar towards him, did my best Clint Eastwood stare and explained that he wasn't going anywhere while the tab was open, that the bartender who had started him a cash tab was only guilty of assuming that he'd come into the bar capable of paying for the drinks that he ordered, and then I ended by telling him that if he ever swore at me again, especially after all the drinks I'd bought him before and how nice I'd tried to be about the whole situation, if he swore again he could get the fuck out of the bar and I'd help him get out. I meant it and I think he could tell I did because he became much nicer after that.


In the end, the girlfriend left a card that she promised would have funds transferred into the account by midnight. I took her license as well and they both left the bar a little wobbly and  sore at me. At two, when I was closing out the drawer I ran the card and it went through, which I wasn't expecting. I thought about adding a 20% gratuity on top of it all, but I didn't want to push my luck.






While this search for a card/some form of payment was going on there were other people at the bar, though not too many because it was Tuesday. One of the few bar guests was a younger woman, 27 at the most, who I'd seen in the bar a handful of times before. She was a bigger girl, the kind who drank Stella because it was healthy. She was friendly enough to smile at you every time you looked at her. From every little conversation I'd ever had with her, I knew her to be perpetually depressed, so I'd secretly nicknamed her DumpTruck because not only was she kind of built like one, but she'd also unload all of her burdens onto you in an impressively short period of time. Once it was that her boyfriend had cheated on her. A different night, her cat hadn't been doing too well, and she guessed it would be only a matter of days.


Tonight, I handed her a beer and she thanked me by saying that she'd been fired from her job. She had a friend with her, thank God, so I only had to listen to all of this when the friend went to bathroom or when I tossed her a new beer, but that was still more than enough. I looked over at them -- DumpTruck and her friend -- and I'd see the friend's eyes briefly wander to the televisions behind me or to the other people sitting at the bar and it reminded me of the pleading look you see sometimes in the once bright eyes of caged animals. 


When DumpTruck handed me a card to pay for the drinks, it was declined. She smiled the kind of smile that borders on insanity and handed me another card, talking about how it all made perfect sense. 


The card went through, thank god. 






On the far left side of the bar were three lawyers. They were young -- young enough to still be talking about passing the bar -- and they kept using big words that sounded forced. There wasn't much else to listen to so I pretended to look busy but really just eavesdropped on their conversation, hoping to pick up a few impressive legal phrases I could recycle later in conversation with Joe. It turns out that one of the lawyers had a girlfriend whose father had just passed away. The father had a sizable amount of "stuff" to leave behind, and the stuff was being fought over by the girlfriend and her step-mother. He was having to get involved and apparently the girlfriend wasn't making life easy because she was stealing things that she felt entitled to, like diamond necklaces and handguns. 


I had to make some drinks so I missed the rest but I couldn't help but think how sad it must be to lose a father, and how much sadder it is to fight over what he left behind. 




Not surprisingly, somebody's birthday was on Tuesday as well and he was out celebrating with his friends and they were all getting drunk. You always know when it's somebody's birthday because the birthday boy/girl and/or their friends mention it at least five or six times in the hope that you'll buy them a birthday shot. But the birthday boy was loud and his friends were the kind of people Malcolm Gladwell talked about in Blink who you looked at and instantly didn't like even though you couldn't quite explain why you didn't like them. So they kept talking about his birthday and I kept nodding and eventually they got the hint that there weren't going to be any birthday shots. 


One shot they ordered and paid for was called "The European", which I'd never heard of before. It was an 1/8oz of vodka, which you snorted, instantly followed by a full shot of tequila, which you drank. They took it and both sneezed and grimaced for a while afterwards. Then they high-fived. I tried to remember if I'd ever heard a story about people in Europe snorting vodka, but nothing came to mind, so I just decided that the person who named the shot was an idiot and was probably picketing against gay marriage somewhere, quoting a Bible he hardly ever read. 


After shots, most of the birthday party found a table and started playing Jenga, but a few lingered around the bar and chatted as they danced to the music. A couple was among those that hung around the bar and it became apparent that they weren't a happy couple when the girl stepped back and said quite loudly "don't you ever call me a FUCKING WHORE again!" It was the beginning to a conversation that everyone's embarrassed to be a part of except for the two people actually in it. 


-"I didn't fucking call you a whore, Ashley!"


-"I don't like it when you call me that!"


-"I didn't call you any-thing!"


-"Then why'd I hear it?"


-"You tell me!"


-"I'm not a whore."


-"I NEVER SAID YOU WERE! JESUS!"


-"You think I'm making this up?"


-"I don't know what you're even talking about!"


-"I'M NOT A WHORE, ALL RIGHT?"


It kept on this way -- saying everything with an exclamation mark -- until the guy said he wasn't listening anymore. A few minutes later he was kissing her neck and she was laughing.  


The same girl fell off a table later and hit her head quite hard. She'd been standing on the table, wearing a ring on her middle finger that had flashing lights on it. She was standing on the table, flicking people off with her light-up ring. Clever. 


I saw it all happen before any of it happened, but I didn't say anything because I was tired of them, especially her. It's not an excuse, but it's all I've got at this point. I just watched and waited, though I didn't have to wait too long. The table shifted and she came tumbling down like those giant wooden blocks of Jenga, making just as much noise. She got to her feet a few seconds later, rubbing the back of her head. "I'm a FUCKING SOLDIER," were her first words when she stood up. The birthday boy agreed with the whole soldier part and decided to celebrate it with a round of shots, which I heavily underpoured. 




The last round of shots the party took were the most memorable. No Europeans this time, just straight whiskey. I poured them and they all clinked glasses and the birthday boy shouted "IT'S MY FUCKING BIRTHDAY, NIGGERS!!" and they all knocked it down. A black girl who I'd bought a drink for earlier because she was so friendly was sitting one stool away from him and the look on her face was horrible and I wished she hadn't heard it just as much as I wished the guy hadn't said it. 


The only thing I heard him say to her was "oops" and the only thing I could come up with was "sorry", but she didn't really buy it and she closed her tab and left a few seconds later. 


I look back on it all with a bit of shame. I wish I would have turned off the music right then and there and told the guy and all of his friends to get out and never come back. But I just stood there, not quite sure what happened, not quite sure what to do. After the girl left I approached the birthday boy and told him that they needed to finish their drinks and leave, but even that wasn't what they deserved. I wish I'd have done something in front of her, as if that would have made the words sting any less. 




When it was time we closed down the bar. I put on softer music than normal as we cleaned -- it had been that sort of night. After everything was put away and wiped down and all the windows and doors were locked, I walked to my truck as a warm rain blew in. 




On the drive home, I stopped at a gas station along the way. I know the guy who works most of the graveyard shifts; I've bought him a few beers before when he'd come into the bar and we always talk about how both of our nights are going. He looks twenty-one, though if I had to guess I'd say he's probably closer to thirty-five, maybe forty. Couldn't grow a beard if he tried, and he's tall enough to see over the counter but not by much. 


He's nice as hell though, which is part of the reason I stopped. 


I walked around the store, shaking off the rain until I finally decided to buy one of those awful microwavable burritos mainly because I felt like something hot that didn't have egg. We chatted for a while up by the register and he told me how he wanted to go to bartending school and be a bartender because he's tired of working in a gas station and cleaning up vomit in the bathrooms. I didn't tell him about my night, I just told him you don't have to go to school to be a bartender. 


-"Is it hard? Bartending?" he asked.


-"You know how it is," I said. "Some nights are harder than others."


-"Oh, yes. I know," he said. "Some nights here, very hard. Very hard. Others? Not so bad."


-"Tonight been hard?" I asked.


-"No. Not really. Just boring," he said. "What about you, buddy?"


-"It's over. That's been the best part of it so far."


He smiled and nodded in a way that meant he didn't understand fully what I'd just said, but I didn't bother explaining or repeating it all again because maybe it was better this way.