Six Minutes to Happy Hour

I was drunk early again, pissed at myself that I was drinking early because I was pissed at myself. I was in the second week of vacation away from my job, but I didn’t go anywhere besides the back corner of a local college bar. It was easier to drink during the day on a Wednesday when there were students doing the same thing. Although, they had their life laid in front of them, and even though I was only the better part of a decade older than they were, my life was over. I was nursing my sixth beer, not wanting to finish and buy another until I could get two for one once happy hour started in about 40 minuets, although I know I will buy another, if not three, before the time actually came. I would be much deeper in to the bag if I could’ve convinced myself to get out of bed and face the day before the afternoon sun chased me from my half asleep dreams of what was destined and now could never be. Those visions were better than the disgust and pity I had with myself I had sometimes, but only when I looked in the mirror. The old t-shirt was on its 5th straight day and matched the sweatpants I had on sitting at the back table, not able to bring myself to look at the bartender with my 10 beard, untrimmed and patchy. The waitress seemed to understand I didn’t want to talk, just drink, something she picked up over a week ago, the second time I came in. My drinking was not a call for help or a plea for attention, but rather a reservation to a life not worth anything to anyone. I had come to the realization somewhere between the first half of my drinks yesterday and while I was trying not to finish the one I have in front of me, that I was not returning to work on Monday. They would drop the paycheck for these two weeks paid vacation into my bank account and then a notice of dismissal into my mailbox after I didn’t answer my phone over the next few weeks. I ca probably life this life for a few months then start selling my shit until I start checking into homeless shelters. This type of future projection has become my hobby of choice, even though I know I will end up back at my desk on Monday, fielding questions about how great it was to get away. I’ll tell them I went to visit some old college friends, HA! That laugh was the first sound I made since I muttered “Budweiser” when I first came in. Since then I have just pushed the bottle towards the waitress when she came around, as I will do in a few when she walks by again. She comes by when she notices I am getting low, she checks in on me from time to time, and I will show my gratitude on the line where it says gratuity when I finally close my tab. My tab will be even higher today than it was yesterday, which had been the highest yet on my two week vacation to visit some old college pals, Auggy and Johnny, Busch and Walker. I often think about buying a couple cases and a few handles and spending my day with Maury and Montel instead of in the back corner of a bar, but grocery stores are too bright and their cashiers are too friendly, and liquor stores too depressing, to much of a resignation even for me, one that would make my hobby too real, too likely. With only six minuets until happy hour, I break down and buy the second beer since I tried to nurse the one that seemed both so distant and so recent. I even told her to bring two, well, signaled with two fingers as she left with my empty. I wanted Johnny walker on the rocks, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to her after our silence has nearly become sacred. I down the first with what can only be described relish, even though I felt nothing like that as the cool liquid squeezed past my throat and into my stomach, where it will wait with the other beers until the alcohol has seeped into my blood stream, taking me not away from the ennui and dissatisfaction with my life, but to a place where it can be viewed from a different, more scenic angle. The next thirty minuets pass by much the same as the thirty before them, and the thirty before them, stretching back to getting off of work the Friday before last. I was passively startled by the sound of a text message, thinking it to be one of the other “young professionals” at my job inviting me to play racquetball with the “boys” but as I checked it, it was just my phone company letting me know the great deal they were offering on ringtones this month. I closed my phone, my eyes not even registering the great early spring deals AT&T was offering to me, their valued customer. Wait, I told myself, I know this song. Most of the music played by the bar during happy hour was geared towards the interests of the bars more appropriate patrons, and the fluctuation of the scene had left me behind some years into my career. But this was an oldie, a song I remember from my time in college, when these kids dreamed of scoring the winning touchdown for their future high school team and I dreamed of happy life. It wasn’t a song I particularly liked, but the bolt through my spine upon recognition alarmed the waitress who had taken to watching me during downtime. She searched my face to see if I wanted her to come over and take an order, and something she read must have indicated that I did. “Johnny Walker, a splash of water and rocks” I said, and her face seemed to represent that my voice sounded exactly how it she thought it would. “Right away, you want a refill on the pretzels?” Her voice sounded musical, startled, but musical. I nodded my approval, but I could see she wanted to hear my voice again. As I watched her walk away, I could tell she had the same walk as my college girlfriend. When she came back, I gave her what she wanted, and asked what song this was that they were playing. “’Blame It’, by Jaimee Fox, I think, my older sister loved this song when she was in high school” she had belied her age, this song came out in my senior year, and my girlfriend, a junior at the time, often teased that she used this song to explain why we were together, as Jaimee “blames it on the alcohol” in the chorus of the song. I did not tell this to the waitress, although the idea of talking to her became more and more appealing as I noticed she cocked her head the same way my ex-girlfriend did when she was trying to remember something. I sipped on the Johnny Walker, not wanting to seem to not enjoy the fine Blue Label as it should be enjoyed. I thought more about Jen, Jenny, Jennifer, and as I did, I cursed myself for ordering something I couldn’t mainline straight into the part of the brain that forgets college memories. The waitress had been hovering, a few steps away, getting a better look at my eyes as they gazed off into the past, and we both realized she was still there at the same time, almost prompting me to talk to her as she hurried off. I looked back on the table where I set my phone, forgotten since the offer, and my hands, on autopilot as my brain looked on in amusement, found Jen in my phonebook. I set it back down, not closing it, letting her name be highlighted in blue against the white background of the screen. My waitress brought me my second round of Johnny Walker, and I motioned for her to bring another before touching it. Her face seemed to go a little downcast, the same way the highlighted one’s would when she thought I was pushing a little to hard on the booze. I couldn’t help but to pound what turned out to be a least 4 fingers of the amber fire, no doubt a special present from my new friend, who unfortunately saw her gift go to waste from her position behind the bar. She looked down and away as she brought the new round, and I felt my heart go out to her, the words of Wilco ringing in my head, from the last track of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which started, “How can I convince you / it’s me I don’t like.” Fresh off disappointing a new coed, I picked up the phone and pressed call, sending signals to space to put me in contact with the last one. I caught her at home, remembering as I heard the voice of a child in the face that she had a family now. “Hello, Jen?” “Yes, who is this?” “Jen, it’s John, from SLU” “Oh my GOD! John! It’s been so long, I can’t believe I lost your number! How are you!” her voice went a mile a minuet, a trait she apparently hadn’t shaken since I said good-bye forever oh so many years ago. “I’ve been well, just plugg-gg-g plugging-ing a long at work” I had forgotten how drunk I must have been. Without talking or moving, it was hard for me to gauge my sobriety. I attempted to cough to cover it up as a frog in my throat, and she believed it, the first sign that we had grown apart, she always used to be able to tell. “How are the kids?” I gasped as I tried to cover up the silence, move the conversation anywhere but on my slur. “Just great, although Tommy’s allergies have caught up with him again, you know how kids are, they just refuse to take their pills” she started to laugh before realizing that, unlike her PTA friends, I did not, in fact, know how kids are. “How’s your relationship status?” I could tell she immediately regretted the question, it is often thought to be taboo to bring up new loves with old ones. “Well, I met a girl, she’s a bit younger than I am, but she is great” I said, trying to be upbeat, attempting to convey my lack of acknowledgement of her faux pas, for her sake, and as I continued to describe her to my old flame, I found myself referring to my waitress for inspiration. “That’s great, I hope she’s smart enough to keep up with you” apparently by excusing her of the relationship question, I opened up all the doors. She was referring to a joke we had, one that revolved around the fact that I made obscure references about mundane things. “Haha, she is fresh off of her college career, so facts about Russian painters are fresh on her mind.” The laugh seemed more forced than I had intended to let on. The conversation lulled again, and I pushed into a new direction, one I had never intended when I pressed the button, and couldn’t believe as it came out of my mouth. “Well, Jen, the reason I called is that I am going to be back in St. Louis for a few days to visit Chris and Joel, you remember them, well they—“ I was cut off by her motherly duties, as it seemed another kid came in, and she gave instructions to wipe his/her feet and get ready to start homework. The way she lovingly, yet forcefully, instructed her children made me flash to a place only ever dreamed of, where together we raised our children to be the little smart asses I always thought we would raise. I was silent, lost in a dream of coming home from a job I enjoyed to a house full of smart, confident kids, the youngest in trouble for stealing his oldest sisters diary and reading about boys, just another day in the life of a happy family. She snapped me out of it by excusing herself, “Sorry, JL,” I was shocked she used her old pet name for me after all of these years, “Sally just came in from girl scouts, what did you say about being in St. Louis?” I couldn’t believe that I didn’t retreat from my previous line of communication, that I continued the compound lie. “I am going to be in town, and I would love to get together while I am in” “Oh that’s great! It would be so great to see you and introduce you to my kids, I don’t think you have ever even met Rodger, have you?” Even as I was practicing my hobby of fake future molding, I realized I was moving it out of hobby and into lie, and lies don’t always go as planned. “ . . . you could even bring your new girlfriend, that is, if she is coming down with you” she finished, unaware that I missed the middle of her sentence in my inward gazing. I needed to come up with something for this curveball, this unexpected twist on the fate I wrote for myself. “She can’t, I me—ean-an, she won’t be there, I mean, well, it might be too early for that,” the awkwardness in my voice must have tipped her to my emotion, and hopefully she missed my second slur of the conversation. “Oh, well, that’s fine, I remember that first thanksgiving you came back to meet my parents, that might have been a bit soon, too.” At this point we were past the invisible lines that should not have been crossed, there was not even a hint of regret in her voice for calling up so startling a memory. It was that night we first had sex, a fact I know she did not forget. Alarmingly, with the relish I had lacked earlier, I launched into a full scale blow by blow of a future that would never come. I talked to her about how I was looking into a business venture in St. Louis, how Joel wanted me to meet the girl he was thinking of proposing to. The conversation went on for 10 more minutes, and I did not say a single true thing the entire time. She went a long with it, and our rapport was regained all to quickly, all too familiarly. Was there a chance she had been looking to escape the paradise that had turned prison? “Alright, Jen, well I really must be going, I have to get ready for a poker game over at the president of my company’s house, just a little informal thing we do about once a week,” I had never met the president of my company. “Oh, well you must let me know what night you will be free, Rodger and I would just love to have you over for dinner” “Will do, have a great night, tell Timmy to take his pills, the little rascal.” I sat there, the drink in front of me untouched for the duration of the phone call, excited for the first time in awhile. I pounded the whiskey and motioned to the waitress, who was spending a lot of time taking orders as it got busier, but who still threw glances at me while I was on the phone. As she hurried over, I opened with a joke, in my mind just the way a cool older guy at a bar would make the pretty young waitress feel comfortable. She was taken aback, but laughed, and I knew I had my in, but I was going to play it coy. I ordered another drink, not seeming too excited, just energized to be there, and she got my meaning. It would be so great to get closure and meet Rodger, I know seeing Jen happy with her family would let me move on after all these years. I would see the not so pretty side of family life, surely nothing too overbearing, but enough to take me out of my idealized world. Rodger seemed like a nice guy, and I might invite him out to play a little golf over the weekend if we hit it off. Joel, Chris and I would need a 4th when we got our tee time anyway. My hobby was interrupted, it had gotten pretty late, and the patrons a little drunk. I looked up and saw two guys, big guys for college kids, getting in each other’s face a little. They were separated by the girls they were with after a short time, and the night moved on, all in a nights drinking for the young and easily insulted. I tried to think what the girl Joel wanted me to meet looked like, she obviously was pretty, but Joel tended to go for the alternative girls, the ones whose beauty came from a strange place. She had to be smart too, or else he would never think of popping the question. I almost called him and asked her name before I remembered with a back part of my brain that I hadn’t spoken to him in years and this girl was a figment of my imagination. He may already be married for all I knew, and there was just as good a chance he was in Anchorage, Alaska as St. Louis for all I knew. I was drinking whiskeys as fast as my beautiful waitress could walk back and forth to the bar. I was thinking about what the waitress and I would do for our first date, how our first sex would be, when I would tell her I loved her. I was looking over at her more frequently now, smiling when I saw the curves of her back, taking a fascination with her unique nose. When she came back around with another drink for me, I thought about asking her to sit down, but I remembered the poker game I had to get to, so I asked for the check. While I watched her walk away, her shorter brown hair swaying as she moved, I noticed the two guys had gotten back into it. I would probably say something on my way out, let them know this petty squabble wouldn’t mean anything when they were a few years out of college and doing well in your life.

* * *

The guy in the sweatpants and t-shirt finally asked for his check, he made it much later then the other nights he had come out. He was cute in a depressed way, those eyes made me want to know what exactly had torn his soul up. “Really, Jake,” I said to one of our bouncers, “I think you might need too ask those guys to leave, my customers are looking at them instead of drinking, and a couple girls just moved tables out of my section because they were too close.” Jake and I are kind of dating, and he knew that if he wanted me to come over again tonight, he would do what I asked. I didn’t really like pulling that card on him, but those guys looked ready to erupt any minute. I put the bill down on the guy’s table, he was smiling at me in a drunken but nice way. He hadn’t shaved in days, but he looked really happy. He told his second joke of the day, there must be something in the way he enjoyed Johnny Walker that makes him happy. Hey, anything that makes you happy is my motto, especially if it’s something that I get paid for. He put his credit card in the bill and handed it back to me, not even looking at the bill. This was going to be a good tip, I could tell. The two guys had gotten into a bit of a yelling match, and Jake and our other bouncer were moving in. I knew one of them was a frat boy, but the other one I didn’t recognize. It’s a big school, I don’t know everyone. I dropped the check off at my lonely drunk’s table, and he stood up as he wrote the tip and signed his name, like he had to get somewhere and was waiting for me to bring him his card back. He hadn’t had anywhere to be for the last week and a half, and when he left, usually about the time the bar started to get crowded, he would just signal to the bartender to call a cab and paid the bill, in no hurry to be anywhere. His first step was a dangerous one, the ground wasn’t where he thought it was. I caught him a little bit, realizing this one was on me while Jake dealt with the assholes. He locked eyes with me and gave me a look I hadn’t had since my freshman and sophomore year boyfriend told me he loved me. It was pretty unnerving, but he seemed really genuine. He was either really drunk or he thought I was someone else. The answer was probably both. The bartender saw me and I signaled for him to make the call. The two guys were now yelling at each other over the backs of the bouncers who held them apart. Some guys just don’t know when to quit. I managed to get my new beau out the front door just ahead of the two guys being escorted outside, to settle things the old fashioned way. I propped my charge up against the wall, but had to wait to get back in while the two pugilists entered the ring. My new friend was having trouble staying upright, but when he saw the two guys start to circle each other, he yelled something out, I couldn’t make it out, but it made the two guys stop for a second. He cleared his voice and started again, his voice surprisingly clear against the dark night, the cloud of frozen breath coming out of his mouth with each word adding gravity to his words. “Gentlemen, stop. I know that what you are doing seems to be the most important thing I the world right now. But, this is not the way to go about life. The world has no place for men who ignore what could make them happy, who consistently punish themselves for sins of the past. “When you find something that makes you angry, upset, depressed, you cannot tie yourself to it by engaging whenever and wherever possible, but rather move on, leave it behind, and concentrate on something or someone that makes you happy, because that is worth fighting for, that is worth the effort it takes to engage.” He looked down at me, standing there, straight as a pillar, and then looked up to lock eyes with the two too surprised to move. We were no longer people, but rather characters in a scene. “And if you continue down this path, you will realize that you cannot beat what makes you unhappy, you cannot force it into submission, and if you tussle with it long enough, the only option is going to be numbness, bitterness and regret. “Gentleman, I ask of you, I beg of you, put down your fists and use your hands to go embrace those you came to this bar with, the ones that you came here to have a good time with.” When he was done, the look on his face was partial triumph and partial exhaustion for keeping the alcohol at bay. The guys kind of looked at each other, half bringing their fists up before thinking better of it, and in a bizarre turn of events, looked at Jake for permission to return to the bar, which he even more bizarrely granted. I filed into the bar with everyone else, leaving him to slump back down against the brick wall, I locked eyes with him one last time before going inside. I saw the cab pull up right after, and him get in the back. I looked down and realized I still had his bill in my hands. I looked at it, he had given a huge tip, yes, but he had also written his number at the bottom. I smiled, not a full smile, but a grin, thinking of the girl he was thinking about when he wrote down he digits.

* * *

The cabby pulled up in front of my building and I handed him a 20 for the 12.50 fare. I went around back to the garage and got into my car, I didn’t want to be late to meet my boss. I pulled out of my space and headed down towards the river. I stopped at the stoplight before the bridge, knowing he lived around here somewhere. I hope I can get a good story to tell Jen next week at the game tonight, I thought while waiting for the red. It turned green and I moved forward, now over the river. I caught myself in the rear-view mirror, smiling a kilowatt smile. When I locked eyes with myself, however, I saw deep into my own brain, and a little voice wasn’t fooled, but didn’t want to speak up, because everyone was having such a good time. I knew what had to be done, and the guardrail gave way easier than I thought it would. When the airbags deployed and the water started to rush in through the windows, I smiled a rye smile, the smile of someone who has just pulled a fast one on an unsuspecting customer.