Everyone yelled when Amanda and I came in. She had her Red Lobster group and I had my Steak House group, both of our groups knew each other because we drank there every Sunday.
I looked around the bar to see who I knew and wanted to talk to first.
There was The Big Smooth.
He was wearing a Steelers jersey and completely drunk. He was a big man. He was six four and 260 pounds. His hands were huge monsters at the end of his arms. He was daunting in size. But when you got to know him he was polite and sensitive. He read war books all the time, The Naked and the Dead and Flags of our Fathers. We would often trade books back and forth. We would sit on our smoke breaks from work or at a bar and discuss the books and the wars they were about.
The Big Smooth was kind of homeless then and living with friends. He was in his early 30s and his dad wouldn't stop yelling at him about drinking every night and not getting a good manly job that paid 40,000 a year and had benefits. His parents were hard working people that lived in a nice neighborhood, paid their bills and had enough money left over to buy things they didn't need. The Big Smooth only bought things he needed and lived simply. There are some people that don't need much, which contradicted many people's version of how people should behave. The Big Smooth held an old philosophy of living by what one needed, being friendly because courtesy made the best outcomes and created the quietest, and simplicity because an excess of desire for objects and prestige led to an excess of responsibilities that people could actually live without. Of course it wasn't that simple. He had spent several nights in jail for fighting and had several DUIs. He could get out of hand. I had never seen him out of hand. He had always been peaceful in my company.
I went over to him. He gave me a big bear hug. Wrapped his large arms around me and said, “The Steelers won,” then he hit the bar with his fist and yelled, “Go Steelers!”
He was drunk, slurring his words. He could barely move. He was clumsy.
Then he pointed at a random guy with nicely combed hair and said, “I threw a dart at that guy last time I was here.”
“That guy over there.”
“Yeah, that guy.”
“What he do?” I said.
“He was pissing me off.”
“What he do though?”
“His hair was pissing me off, it was so nicely combed.”
“He puts gel in it,” I said.
“What kind of man puts gel in his hair?”
“He looks like he shaves every day.”
“I can't drink whiskey. It makes me want to hurt people.”
“Men want to fight when they're drunk and women want to fuck, that's what happens.”
“Women become sluts when they're drunk.”
“That's true.”
Then Linda came over. She was a server from the steak house. She was a short, slightly pudgy girl with dark brown hair. I didn't really know her. She was a new hire and we had never really spoken. The only thing I knew about her was that she was very open. One day she talked about how she had a boyfriend and he would ask her to fuck him in the ass with a strap on all the time. She said they broke up eventually and she told people about it. The guy then got mad. She told him that if you want to do things like that, you better be prepared to have no shame. She didn't seem to have any hobbies or love anything but drinking and sex. She wasn't interested in life at all.
Linda yelled at me, “Where have you been all my life?”
She would always yell that at me and other men, I responded, “Waiting for you.”
“Here I am baby.”
She started touching my belly. I felt no sense of arousal from it.
She went over to The Big Smooth and started on him. I don't think he’d had a woman in a while and he was very receptive to it.
I went over to Sarah. Sarah was the queen of the steak house. She had been there for over six years. All her friends were steak house people. She had a long story. She grew up poor with a father that abandoned her and a mother that didn't really care. The deadbeat father got sick, called her once on the phone and then died. Her brother ended up in prison for killing somebody. She got drunk one night and got pregnant by a man eight years older than her. They were going to get married but he eventually left and got married to somebody else. A daughter was born. Sarah grew to love the child. She had been going to college for seven years, had switched her major about twenty times. Had about five boyfriends in the last two years since the baby daddy left. Each relationship lasting about five months. After one would end, she would immediately start another. She wanted a daddy but had the complete inability to commit to a relationship because she was convinced that all men would eventually leave and break her heart. So she decided to start relationships and end them before they could end them. She had become a master of this game and everyone that knew her knew she was endlessly playing it. And we would watch one man after another enter into her life. We would stare at the new man knowing that at any time we would never see him again.
Sarah was leaning on the bar drunk as a human could get. All her words came out sluggish and blurred. Her movements were clumsy. Her eyes barely open. At times tears came from her them. She had just broken up with her fiancé. She was planning to get married to a really good guy named Dave. Dave was a college-educated man who worked helping juvenile substance abusers get back on track. On the weekends he would do carpentry with his dad to make extra money. He was a very responsible person. He finished school in less than five years, paid his bills on time, had good credit. He owned a newer motorcycle, had a newer car. He was nice. Always courteous and polite. He was what anyone would call “a nice guy.” Dave tried to get Sarah to love him for over a year before she relented and started dating him. When they began dating, things went quickly. Dave moved in with Sarah and the kid. Dave was a sweetheart to the kid. The kid loved Dave. He would always play with her. He would take her out. He babysat and spent money on her without complaining. But Sarah didn't want that. Her father was irresponsible and shiftless. Her mother dated men of the same character. She knew the logical choice was Dave. Rational self-interest notified her that a responsible man was best for her and her child. But she was confused by responsibility. The shiftless male made sense to her. Women were supposed to love shiftless men. Men who lacked courage and self-control she viewed as optimal mates.
I stood next to her while she sat in a barstool, Sarah said, “I'm drunk.”
“I can see that,” I said.
“The Steelers won.”
“Yes, life is good. You broke up with Dave, they said you fucked someone in the back seat of your car?”
“Yeah, in the back seat. I was drunk.”
“Like you are now?”
“No, not so drunk.”
“Dave was a good guy.”
“I wasn't happy.”
“Wasn't happy, he has money and an education.”
“I wasn't happy. I'm drunk. Shut up.”
“Are you crying?”
“You've seen me cry like 50 times, what makes this different.”
“I guess it doesn't.”
Then she hit me in the dick.
I bent over and held my dick.
“You punched me in the dick.”
“That's true.”
“You have issues.”
“I'm so drunk.”
I punched her in the arm really hard.
She said, “Oh, my god. I need a new boyfriend.”
“Do you want a drink?”
“Okay.”
I ordered a rum and coke.
She didn't say thank you. She put her drunken fingers around it and then pulled it close to her face. Slowly put her mouth around the area of the straw. She was so drunk the straw went up her nose the first time. But then she was able to get the straw in her mouth. She slowly sipped the drink. Sarah had forgotten I was even there. So I walked away.