I Work At A Bar

Cast of Characters, part 2: Julio

2009-11-25T13:35:00.001-08:00

Julio is the cook, and Julio is awesome. I wish as many people thought I were awesome as think Julio is. My problem may be that I speak English. But enough about me: Julio is awesome.

Julio is 25, has been in the States for about three years, and looks, in any official photo ever taken of him, like a stone-cold murderer. My favorite unofficial photo of him shows him sitting in a large kiddie pool, wearing goggles, surrounded by 10-year-old cousins, looking like a hairy pool toy. The way he normally looks is somewhere in between.

Julio is working here, sending money home to build a house for himself and his family, current (parents, brothers) and notional. He's from near Actopan in the state of Hidalgo. His family does all right at ranching, selling enough animals and vegetables to buy what they don't raise or grow, and they have a small business delivering gas. So they get by, but there's not a lot of capital floating around--someone had to come to the States to raise the house-building money. It was apparently felt that Julio was perhaps the best to skip town, being the most capable of his brothers as well as having a habit of getting in lover's quarrels with young men from the adjacent burgs. Now, Mexican lover's quarrels involve lots of ancient family grudges and by the way everyone carries guns all the time, so there may have been some wisdom in this decision. I'll tell you what--my pansy ass feels a lot better with Julio around the bar, and he holds what I believe to be the record on the punch-it-as-hard-as-you-can machine.

Julio claims to be a changed man--a lover, not a fighter. Again, the truth lies somewhere in between. He did borrow my truck once, and leave it parked in front of the apartment of the married woman he was seeing, which, while technically the act of a lover, is also the act of a man asking to have a fight brought to him. Or to me, should the cuckold see me in my own truck and make an incredible leap of faulty logic.

People, particularly girls, tend to think of Julio as kind of a teddy bear--and there's no mistaking it, the man is bashful and rotund. But there's nothing soft about him. This is a guy who, after six other tries, packed himself into the false bottom of a truck with a half-dozen other people so that, if he was very lucky this time, he could spend years away from the only people on Earth that he knew, in a country whose language he didn't speak, working his ass off and always looking over his shoulder. I know he looks to me for advice and help, and he has frequently said that he holds me in high esteem because of my evident education. What I hope I've successfully communicated to him in my textbook-sounding Spanish is that he's the one to be admired. I've never done anything half as ballsy as what he's done just by being here. Julio is awesome.

Wanna see some barfights?

2009-11-23T03:27:00.001-08:00

The thing about barfights is that they're rarely knock-down, drag-out brawls. Usually it's a lot of bro-ing, one punch gets thrown, people get in between them, and the bartender, if he's smart, runs everyone and his cousin out of the place. These are no exception--blink and you miss them. Now, I'm having the damnedest time getting the video (a) converted and (b) embedded, so you'll have to click on the links rather than view it on this page. I know. It's difficult. How quickly the world owes you something.

Orville v. Dan

Yes, Orville. You can see Dan give him the "you son of a bitch" point, and it looks like Dan actually shoves him first. Orville cuffs him about the ear and gets in a pretty good right to the jaw before being heroically taken down from behind.

Result: Orville is 86'd, Dan is not. Why? Well, Orville is an asshole and doesn't tip, and Dan is the world's nicest guy and does tip, generously. All present agreed that the fight was Orville's fault. My favorite part: the high-five that Wayne gives Dan after everything calms down. Also note the fellow in the white cap and shirt entering from the right: that's Julio the cook, about whom more later. The bartender, being a female of slight build, called him over--though by the time he got there, there wasn't much to do other than for him to stand around being large.

See it.

2 Native Chicks v. TJ

I hate to indulge in base racial stereotypes, but Indian women are mean drunks. In the parking lot one day, one nasty regular punched her husband right on his stitches just days after his emergency appendectomy. These two jumped a nice guy named TJ, pulled his hoodie over his head, drug him out to the parking lot, and started beating on him until his friends interceded.

Result: TJ got beat up by a girl, hahaha.

See it.

It's a hard-knocker life

2009-11-15T03:07:00.001-08:00

Woman, apropos of nothing, grabbing and jiggling her ample bosom: Do these look fake to you?
Me: I'd have to get a closer look, but offhand I'd say no.
Woman: [some stupid story about some guy thinking they were fake]
Me: [looks at her breasts]

Beats a desk job.

A licky boom boom down

2009-11-08T04:56:00.000-08:00

Today, someone put on Informer, by Snow. I was very, very happy about this.

You are fooling no one with your mohawk

2009-11-06T18:49:00.001-08:00

You are going bald in front. No amount of punk rock can save you.

You want to WHAT?

2009-11-04T03:47:00.001-08:00

Tonight it was a slow-eyed Mexican playing weepy country songs on the juke while frat boys played pool and a stripper told me stories.

"So this guy comes in and he's all decked out and I'm thinking he's some kind of mobster. He comes up to me right away and he says, 'I know what I want, and when I decide I want something, I get it.' So I figure I'm going to take this guy for a lot of money. I'm giving him lap dances wearing clothes and he doesn't even care--he just wanted to get busy with his hands, but he kept laying down so much cash so I kind of let him.

"So at one point he says to me, 'Baby, I'd like to take you out and rape you,' and I said, 'What?' and he says, 'Oh, not like that. Just show you a good time and then maybe we fuck.' [Ed.: This is when most guys are kicked out of the club, maybe even handed over to the cops.] So I figure OK, I'll play him a little longer, let him think whatever he wants.

"He says he's running out of money and he'd like me to come out to the car with him. I shoot the bouncer a look so he comes with me. This guy takes me out to a nice Expedition, rented, and opens up a suitcase that's just full of sex toys, KY jelly, and plastic bags full of money. He asks how much more he owes me, and it was only $200, but I said $320, because, well, yeah. He ended up dropping, what, $1,200 dollars on me. I mean, I barely made $14 today. $1,200. Me and Gary were about to not make rent, and I paid rent and I got new contacts. I made sure they kept him in the club while I left so he couldn't follow me home."

Yes, the glamorous life of a 44-year-old stripper in Southeast Portland.

Portland's leading manufacturer of rape and rape-related accessories

2009-11-01T18:58:00.001-08:00

Quite a sensitive palate

2009-10-30T01:50:00.001-07:00

Guy: "Yeah, I had to get a Coors Light because the only other beer they had was Bud, and I didn't want something heavy like that at ten in the morning."

A Hilarious Series of Events

2009-10-25T05:58:00.001-07:00

The sister and niece of one of the cooks, at what I believe is the niece's baptism.

Finally

2009-10-25T05:43:00.001-07:00

Got a text from a friend hoping my night was going well, and wrote back, "Hot bisexual chicks making out in my bar," a phrase that has the virtue of being both awesome and true.

You shall know my sword for this insult to my person!

2009-10-22T03:36:00.001-07:00

People take getting cut off so personally, like it’s a moral judgment rather than a legally-mandated response to the natural effects of alcohol on the body. Now, I understand it doesn’t feel that way from the other side of the bar, but Christ, have some perspective. (Me, I’ve actually never been cut off. I’ve been shoved by a bouncer who then took both of my drinks away, but I pretty much had that coming.)

Tonight, the lady was just horrible. She was screechy, obnoxious and generally rude, and that was before we got into it. After I cut her off, as politely as I knew how, she started in on an attempt to destroy me personally. Of course, it began with “why?” which I generally try to cut short by saying it’s the law, I’m not getting into it, once I say it there’s no going back, etc. She demanded an explanation, though, so I rattled off the first half-dozen applicable reasons that came to mind, leaving off, “because you’re a fire-breathing hose-beast.”

She volleyed, in rough order,

• “Asshole.” It is, I wrote in the logbook, so satisfying when someone who's been annoying you all night finally gives you an excuse to run them. She then demanded a container for her food, which I gave to her with two lids, saying, “and one for your mouth.” Pretty happy with myself for that one.

• ”What’s your name? I’m going to get you fired.” I told you my name six times—in fact, I even showed you the pronunciation guide I keep under the bar. The fact that you don’t remember is part of the reason I’m cutting you off.

• ”No wonder your girlfriend broke up with you.” I had previously mentioned that I was wearing a shirt given to me by an ex-girlfriend. Who, for the record, I broke up with.

• “All those people out there are right. They’re all saying you’re a shitty bartender.” Yes, all four of them. Particularly the Chinese guys who barely speak enough English to order Heinekens.

• “No wonder you have no customers.” This is a fair point. We do have no customers.

• ”I’m never coming back here.” Thank you.

• “I’ll see you in court.” You’ll what now?

Whippersnapper!

2009-10-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

Last night, a cranky old bastard named Orville (who, incidentally, claims to have been a gigolo in his younger years) angrily called someone a "son of a sea cook."

Not out of guilt, but...

2009-10-13T15:13:00.001-07:00

As I look back and reread my post about Evelyn, it strikes me that I was a bit harsher on her than I intended to be. I really do have a true, if occasionally inexplicable, affection for the lady. At first I found her so ridiculous as to be unbearable, but over time I developed a Zen-like appreciation for her chatter: just lie back, let it wash over you, and think of England. She's helped me out a few times by standing up for me with my boss when I wasn't there, and she has about a half-dozen people she calls her kids because she more or less raised them when their parents dropped the ball. In short, everything I said stands, but she's good people.

It is also the case that she's been in and out of the hospital for the last two weeks, so I may be motivated by some sort of karma-like thing on this one. My life would be a lot less interesting without Evelyn in it.

I don't know, it's perfectly dim up here

2009-09-23T02:58:00.001-07:00

Lady: Why's the light so bright in here?
Me: Yeah, it is a little brighter than normal. I think someone replaced some bulbs.
Lady: It's too bright. It's making me tired.
Me: Um...
Lady: You should make a suggestion to your boss. Bars should be dark.
---

The above conversation, though ruder in actuality than I've managed to convey here, was mostly notable for the fact that I had it with a Mexican midget who came to about halfway up my thigh.

I much preferred the attitude of the fellow later in the evening, who described his job as a zoo landscaper thusly: "It's not bad. I get to be outside, I get to build stuff, and whenever I get the urge to feed a giraffe, well, I can do that."

I believe the kids refer to this as liveblogging

2009-09-09T19:12:00.001-07:00

It is supremely annoying to say to a bartender, when he cards you,
"You must be new here."

Tonight, my reply to that smug remark was, "Nope. Been here, let's
see...nine months longer than you've been 21."

Little prick.

Cast of Characters, part 1: Evelyn

2009-09-09T16:19:00.001-07:00

Evelyn has a face like an old boot and a voice like sharpened sandpaper. Evelyn is extremely from Texas. She's 69 years old and has far, far more energy than me. Every morning shift begins with her walking in minutes after I open, if not before, declaring "Hoo-ee, did I have a hell of a time last night!" She finds and patronizes the crappiest bars in town, which I suppose is why she hangs out at ours. Evelyn believes that if it ain't country, it ain't music, and if it ain't Bud Light it ain't shit, although I occasionally pour her a Coors Light when she's not looking.

She's fiercely loyal, though her affections can turn on a dime. I fell into her good graces early, and she never fails to remind me that I'm her favorite bartender. Ironically, I don't think she actually knows my name--she calls me "Arms," which I at first took for an affectionate nickname. It's how she introduces me to people, though, so I think I'm stuck with it.

She's an incredibly social being, spending most of her waking hours in bars. She's not a drunk, though--she mostly drinks coffee, and will nurse a beer for hours. Her passion is karaoke, and the thought of her doing raspy violence to "I Love This Bar" is one of the reasons I quickly abandoned the idea of agitating for a karaoke night in an effort to drum up business.

You've never heard someone talk herself up quite as much as she does. Most of her stories begin or end with how happy everyone was to see her last night, how everyone was buying her drinks, or how great someone else said she was. At first blush it comes off as conceit, but after repeated exposure one realizes that anyone who actually believed these things about herself wouldn't feel the need to constantly advertise them. The speed at which she can turn a conversation back to herself is truly stunning. Her best friend Laura can be practically in tears over her imprisoned son, and Evelyn will listen sympathetically, nod, and as soon as she can get a word in edgewise, start in about how she had better get down to such-and-such a bar tonight because last time she was there, everyone made her promise to come back and croak out "All My Exes Live In Texas."

So

2009-09-04T16:50:00.001-07:00

Rather than try to paddle comprehensively through the enormous backlog of my mind, let's just summarize some of the things that have happened in the last month. Further elaboration as motivation warrants.

• My phone was stolen off the bar, and then returned once I reviewed the security footage, saw who did it, and sent a text to my phone asking him, by name, to give it back. Before doing so, however, he texted "fuck you" to my dad, posted "fuck you bitch I fuckin hate you" to my Twitter* account, and took the following two pictures:

Say what you will, but he's got a good-looking dog.

(*No, I do not "tweet." I use it only to update the fantastic beer search engine Taplister, a truly Portland innovation if ever there was one.)

• Charlie was put on a 5-drink limit after storming out, flipping off the whole bar, and telling the bartender that he was never coming back and that if he did, the bartender should run. He was back two days later. Why we haven't permanently 86'd him continues to pass comprehension.

• The SWAT team surrounded a nearby grocery store thanks to a couple of bright young lads deciding that the rafters would look better with some bulletholes in them. No one was hurt, but Alex said it really put a crimp in sales that night.

• Me, knocking on the window of a red Ford Explorer with two people in it: Excuse me.
Lady, hastily stuffing a baggie of pills and some cash in her purse: Oh, uh, hey, look, I have a prescription for this...
Me: What am I, your fucking pharmacist? Get out of here.

• Young guy sits down at the bar, having just moved here from the coast. Orders a beer and asks what the good bars are in the neighborhood. The natural reply would be, "Well, you're in one of them, ha ha," but that would be a lie. So I say, well, let's start with a list of bars to avoid. First, the joint across the street. Yeah, he says, I was in there last week and a guy pushed me up against the wall in the bathroom and pulled a knife on me.

My point exactly.

Military preparedness

2009-07-10T17:56:00.001-07:00

"I think you'd do well in Louisiana," said the Army bomb-squad team leader, around 10 am. He and his boys had gotten into Fort Lewis the previous night around 1, and had been drinking since 3. They'd been training in Louisiana for the last two months ("It's only about 105, but the humidity makes it worse than Iraq,") and were full of money and testosterone.

Grunts, it turns out, signify, "yes, I'd like another." "Titty bars!" is a self-explanatory request for me to draw out a map to some of Southeast Portland's finer gentleman's clubs. Their drink of choice was Irish Car Bombs. I wasn't sure what to think about this. On one hand, well, obviously, but on the other, the first member of the group to arrive in the bar had turned deadly serious and warned me against mentioning the movie The Hurt Locker. I am not and will never be a member of their club, so I just eschewed mention of all things military, period. Turns out I mostly know jokes about boobs, anyway.

So guy says I'd do well in Louisiana, and I'm not sure exactly how to take it. He's saying it in a friendly tone, but I'm preparing myself for damnation by faint praise. I mean, look at Heath: he did well in Louisiana, and now he's getting run out of Iraq for insufficient patriotism. So I ask him what he means, exactly. What he meant was a better summation of how I try to act as a bartender than I would have been able to come up with myself.

"Well, you're wearing a good shirt, so you're a professional, but you've got the sleeves rolled up, so you're ready to get down to business. You keep your bar squared away, because we're here getting sloppy drunk and it's still clean. You laugh, but not too hard--like you're saying, "I may be friendly, but I'm still in charge.' You can take a joke, but you don't take any shit."

It sounds too self-congratulatory to be credible in one's own blog, but that's what he said. They eventually stumbled out ("Titty bars!"), avoiding the potentially unpleasant collision of my legal responsibilities with the realities of having a bar full of active-duty bomb-squad boys on leave for the Fourth of Fucking July.

The best worst thing ever

2009-07-05T23:35:00.000-07:00

Jeri, another one of the foul-mouthed old ladies who just love me (“Honey, if I were 20 years younger I’d jump your bones,”) earned herself an 86 the other day. She had been somewhat loudly berating her son and his girlfriend, and had said something kind of bitchy to the girl who came on after me—who, it bears noting, is pregnant by her steady boyfriend, who, as Jeri correctly points out, is not her husband.

Jeri: Hey, another round!

Coworker: Are you going to start being nice?

Jeri: Fuck you, I’ll act how I want.

Coworker: Not if you want to keep coming back here.

Jeri: You know what? You can go fuck yourself, and your unborn illegitimate child!

---

Dang.

Would you like to buy an O, so round and neat?

2009-05-20T03:47:00.000-07:00

Shady little dude: Hey, anyone here want to buy a watch?

Me: No. No one wants to buy a watch.

Shady little dude: How late are you open?

Me: Tonight, we're open until get the hell out of my bar.

Shady little dude, on the way out the door, to one of my regulars: Hey, the bartender's kind of a dick--want to buy a watch?

In related news, on Sunday I ejected two tweakers from behind our dumpster. They had just finished what was clearly some horrible sex act, which fortunately I didn't have to see. Seriously, the hot weather has doubled our tweaker load.

According to this, your name is Suzy and you're worth two cartons of Pall Malls

2009-05-09T00:24:00.000-07:00

Me: Hey, lemme just make sure you've got your ID on you.

Dude: [Hands me a prison ID, which is a piece of laser-printed paper run through the laminating machine. You could make it at Kinko's.]

Me: Yeah...I can't take this.

Dude: OK, how about this? [Hands me a valid Oregon driver's license.]

Me: You should really lead with that. Just a thought.

In which I smoke a cigarette in the middle of the day

2009-04-24T02:46:00.000-07:00

I had had about enough of Charlie's Jekyll-and-Hyde act. He gets away with a lot because he's so generally jovial and fun to be around, but you can't be as blatantly disrespectful as he had been the previous time, and expect to waltz right back in. I had to let him know before he started drinking that he couldn't act like that, but I had to do it in a face-saving way. There's a pack of cigarettes just kind of sitting in the drawer under the till, so I stuck that in my pocket for my next shift, knowing he'd be in.

He walked in as I was getting back from the bathroom. "Charlie, come have a cigarette with me," I said. I couldn't give him a talking-to in front of everybody at the bar--he's older than my dad.

We went outside and lit up. "I didn't know you smoked," he says. "I don't, really," I replied.

We talked about his truck for a minute, and I launched into my spiel.

"So here's the thing, Charlie. It may not always seem this way, but I'm a professional. I like what I do; I'm good at what I do; and hell, I'm licensed by the state to do what I do. I have responsibilities, and sometimes those responsibilities mean that I have to say that you're done for the day. I like you, man, I really do. You're one of the most interesting people who comes in here. But when you pull shit like you did the other day, it makes it really hard for me to do my job. I know you only live three blocks from here, but it only takes one kid running out into the street after a basketball, and not only are you in trouble, but I've lost my job and I'm probably getting sued."

And to my light-headed surprise, he took it beautifully. Said he knows that when I cut him off, I'm doing it for his benefit, he doesn't mean to be an asshole, and that it's something he needs to work on. And damned if he hasn't been having three or four drinks and leaving peacefully since.

No es tu dia

2009-04-24T02:05:00.000-07:00

The shift began with one of my regulars, Evelyn, having what appeared to be a heart attack. (The day crowd in the bar is white and geriatric-bordering-on-dead, the night crowd younger and more diverse.) I called 911, and they took her away. Whew. OK. Stressful. Everyone has another round of drinks.

Now Charlie's drunk, and he lights a cigarette, which you can't do inside anymore. I shoo him out, and everyone has a laugh. No one's laughing the second time he does it, because this time he does it intentionally, at me, because instead of another drink, a glass of water appeared. (Charlie doesn't take getting cut off very well. The previous time, he had seen someone drinking without tipping, and he had commented as to how he hates that. So when I say, "I think we better not if you're driving," he goes "Well, THIS is for YOU" and slams a decent tip down on the bar, "AND FUCK YOU!")

Anyway, I'm watching Charlie light his cigarette as though he's daring me to stop him. The cook, leaning against the bar and eating a salad, looks at me and speaks the title of this post, laughing sympathetically because it's not her problem. I let him light his cigarette and storm out, although I'm having second thoughts about my cool-as-a-cucumber approach as his pickup swerves out of the parking lot in full toddler-killing mode. He's only going three blocks, but still. (Incidentally, the bar I hang out in after work is three blocks from my house, and I've managed to figure out that if I park my truck at home and then walk, things go much smoother.)

So it's shaping up to be a slow night when all of a sudden, a 4-way 21st birthday party blows through, and I'm mixing fancy drinks, doing tricks with my shaker, flirting with cute girls, and for once not cursing this shitty bar. Then Evelyn shows back up, just fine, and damned if one of the birthday girls doesn't buy her a shot. (This, by the way, is the second time Evelyn has come directly from the hospital to the bar. I'm pretty sure her picture is in the dictionary next to "Tough Old Broad.")

Then all of a sudden the kids are gone, leaving behind only subpar tips (21-year-olds never know how to tip) and a dishwasher rack full of shot glasses.

Oh, and a turd in the urinal.

Curse this shitty bar.

In other N-word news...

2009-04-24T01:35:00.000-07:00

Homey 1: Hey man, look! Crown's on special for 5 bucks.
Homey 2: Nigga, I ain't drinkin' no Crown! Every time I drink Crown I go to jail.

---

I love the way that people blame different types of alcohol for their behavior, as though the process of metabolizing Jagermeister ethanol into acetaldehyde is a way crazier process than metabolizing vodka ethanol into acetaldehyde. One of my regulars swears off of whiskey because it makes him fight, but happily throws down a half-dozen screwdrivers before noon; another blames tequila for his 1998 standoff with the SWAT team. To the extent that they seem to not be getting in fights/armed showdowns, I'm happy to indulge whatever theory is keeping them in that mindset, but the reason you take your shirt off for tequila poppers and not for tawny port has everything to do with the difference between Señor Frog's and your father's study, not some magical wet-T-shirt-inducing chemical found only in the agave plant.

Probably not Obama voters

2009-03-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

Today I had to tell not one, but two Vietnam-vet types to stop saying "nigger."

Please don't burn it down

2009-02-27T20:30:00.001-08:00

By far the strangest patron we have is Scott. He looks kind of like the Village People biker guy, all leather and a droopy mustache, though skinnier and much less gay. He claims to have invented a device that improves a car’s fuel efficiency by twenty percent, and to have turned down an offer from Detroit for $12 million dollars, though he’s currently broke because gas is so cheap.

This claim was my introduction to him, and although I only believed him to the extent that I’m sure he has some sort of black box he will sell to you for $1,000, it was more a line of bullshit than actual insanity. (Although I will say this: he had business cards.)

His other assertions are a bit less, well, grounded.

• Member of the French and Italian royal families
• Born on a LearJet in international airspace (although his age clearly precludes this)
• Among scores of other mob tales, once told John Gotti to go fuck himself—and Gotti just took it.
• Once saw the feet of God’s throne. He was able to look at the throne, although his girlfriend was blinded for three days and was so unable to process the experience that she left him three weeks later. (God, by the way, has two dogs.)
• Is himself the Fourth Horseman of the apocalypse, although when asked what the other three were, parried by demanding a Bible and saying I wouldn’t really understand it without textual reference. This was the part where I started to get a little worried, since he capped this one off by saying that he’s seen the future and “everything burns, man. This whole place [expansive gesture] —it’s all in flames.”

The interesting part is how he’s roped me in to his bizarro world. Early on, I decided to play along, initially one-upping him by saying that although he may have been born in a LearJet, I was the first child to have been conceived in space. He seems to also have accepted my claim that I’m a member of the Armenian royal family in exile (“I made a few phone calls. I wasn’t sure at first, but you checked out.”) and once refused to let me out of a conversation until I put the size of the army I could raise at just under a million people.

He now claims to have been hired to work personal security for the owner of an Armenian dance club and prominent member of the local mob scene. The club, at least, certainly exists. Frankly, I’m hoping the whole thing is true, because he’s promised to put me in touch with the guy. Finally, my ethnicity could pay off in a manner other than making it OK to tell Holocaust jokes since my people got genocided, too.

You’re not a fucking Arab, are you?

2009-02-11T01:17:00.000-08:00

Now, I let a lot of things go. I have to; it’s part of the job. Most of the time people aren’t talking to me, they’re just talking near me. They say all kinds of stupid shit, and I usually just hold my tongue, and sometimes even make like I agree—or at least do that “Hey, yeah, what can you do?” noncommittal gesture. This, though. I didn’t like this.

Three old white guys, drinking Hamm’s and well scotch and bullshitting each other like old friends do. Fairly agreeable fellows, actually. Now, one of them had made a crack about how Air Force One should have been painted like a watermelon for President Obama, but seeing as how there weren’t any black people within earshot, I figured it was worth a “Dude, seriously?” look, but little more.

So one guy calls me Art as he’s ordering the next round of drinks, and I politely, casually, correct him. And I’m turning around to ring it up as he says,

“You’re not a fucking Arab, are you?”

Now, he’s joking. I know this. I’m also not Arab, though my friends have been known to call me A-Ram the A-Rab and dance around in a circle, just as I’ve been known to call them cheap Jews and wetbacks. But this guy is not my friend. I don’t particularly like his tone, and at this moment, I don’t particularly like him.

Now, I’m not going to, like, start anything. But I would like him to squirm a little. He’s in my bar, after all. So I turn around on him, cock my head sideways, look at him for a minute, and say, “What if I were?”

His buddy gives a wide-eyed chuckle. “Damn, I think you got to him!”

“No, I want to know. What if I were?”

Defensive. “Well, are you?”

“Actually, no. I’m Armenian. We’re not Arabs. Do you have a problem with Armenians?”

Now he's backpedaling. “Never knew any. Now I do. But I bet I know more Arabs than you do.”

Oh, for chrissake. The “but some of my best friends are black” argument. Well, all right. I’ve had my fun. I give him an ambiguous smirk and turn around to ring the drinks in.
---
Like I said, these guys weren’t total assholes, they were just kind of relics. He realized he had crossed some sort of line, and spent some time trying to get my name right (with the help of a pronunciation guide I keep pinned underneath the bar), eventually settling on something a little easier to remember: Mr. A.

Suits me just fine. You’re goddamn right it’s Mr. A, and don’t you fucking forget it, you ignorant old cracker.

Longshoreman: actually still a job

2009-02-02T22:55:00.000-08:00

And I had a couple in the bar the other day. One was really fat, and the other had a huge walrus mustache and a glass eye. After a few drinks, they headed over to the video poker machines, where after a bit I heard some raised voices between them and one of my regulars who's a real sweetheart. They thought she was hogging her machine or something (video poker people are crazy superstitious about machines running hot or cold) and they started giving her shit.

At first, I thought it might have been a bit of teasing that got out of hand, but the look in everybody's eyes showed otherwise: they were pissed and she was scared. I backed everyone off to neutral corners, and things were simmering down when one of them (I think it was One-Eye) muttered "bitch" not particularly under his breath.

I paused, hoping, I suppose, that the moment would pass and that no one would notice. No such luck: she heard, and as she cried out "What did you call me?" one guy turned and started staring at me, like he was daring me to do something.

"All right guys, time to go," I heard myself saying. Crap. Now I can't back down.
"Say that again."
Sigh. "You can't call her a bitch. Time to leave. Now."

This did not go over well. One-Eye moved like he was going to hit me, a posture he took several times over the next few minutes. Fatty, though positioning himself between One-Eye and me, was none too pleased, either--though the rapidity with which his manner moved toward conciliatory had the mark of a guy who didn't want to deal with police again--not for this, at least. He was more concerned about his $19.40 payout slip than about the insult to his person. I grabbed him a 20, and started maneuvering them toward the door.

Then, Bar Fight Douchebag started putting himself in the middle of it. He had already walked into the scrum and asked me to make him a drink as though I was just shooting the shit with these guys. Now, just as I'm getting these fuckers out the door, he lets one of them brush up against him and instantly takes umbrage. "I'll put your other eye out, dude." Christ, this guy is the last goddamn thing I need. He's trying to get hit, so that he can get in a fight without throwing the first punch. So I back him off while Fatty guides One-Eye out the door.

BFD later comes up to me and gets all bro-y. You know, he just can't stand assholes who start fights in bars, especially with women. He's not trying to get in fights. He's done enough stints in jail for assault that he knows better, and he's "really not a jail kind of guy."

File, "You know, once you've been in jail for assault more than once, I think you *are* a jail kind of guy," under Things I Really Wanted to Say.

Oh well. At least this time, being forced into chivalry paid off: she tipped me like $80.

Charlie get your gun

2009-01-15T01:31:00.000-08:00

Just found out that one of my favorite regulars, upon having his keys taken away from him some months ago by one of the other bartenders, came back later that evening with two guns, demanding their return. This was, as you'd expect, a problem, but not apparently something that gets you 86'd for good. I love this guy, he's great, but seriously: what do you have to do?

Licensed intoxicologist

2009-01-08T00:23:00.000-08:00

I've been mulling the distinction between drunk and crazy. The law says you can't serve people who are visibly intoxicated (VIPs, they're hilariously called), but what about people who spend their days bobbing up and down in that lake of not-quite-with-it, neither sinking nor swimming? The people who wake up with the gin already in them.

Today, the inconsistently mascara-ed 50-something with the compulsive wink and wardrobe picked at random from the hampers of three family members of varying ages turned out to be, shockingly, a goddamn mess. Abusive husbands, a son she claimed to have simply named "Baby Boy" so that he could never be convicted of a crime ("Because how could you ever be convicted of a crime if you were named Baby Boy? You just couldn't!" she said, with the conviction of someone who really thinks that's the rule), and both a mother and a daughter with schizophrenia. "It skipped me, thank God," she half-sobbed. "I just have high anxiety disorder."

"Well, you've certainly earned it," I said, trying to communicate the concept of, "boy, anyone with the kinds of life you seem to have might certainly experience a bit of anxiety from time to time."

"Bitch, you had it comin'" was, from the dismayed look on her face, what she heard, and I had to do a bit of inarticulate digging to get past it. Not that it mattered, because on her accelerated intoxication curve, she was already purring/hiccuping, "Well, it's VERY good to meet you, Arnold" every thirty seconds or so to me, a man very, very, repeatedly not named Arnold.

She works at the Rose Garden, and thinks that Channing Frye and his girlfriend, both being tall, must "have excellent sex together." The third time she said this, I couldn't stop myself from saying, "Well, they're not having it separately, I suppose," because what, eventually, can you say when someone keeps using the phrase "have sex together"?

I had decided that she was done about midway through her second drink, but then she started crying and I didn't have the heart to deny her a third. Call me a soft touch, but also call me willing to part with a weak vodka collins in order to keep her from collapsing into tears all over again.

I definitely could have been a better professional friend over the course of our hour together. I try be kind, but there's only so much sympathy/shock/grief you can muster for a story on its third increasingly needy telling. She left while I was taking a bathroom break to get away from her for a minute.

Yes We Can (not bust poolcues over each other)

2008-11-29T23:46:00.000-08:00

The following occurred on a Sunday night among a group of about a half dozen black guys in their mid-20s, playing pool and getting drunk.

Homey 1: [is getting worked up over the score of a basketball game. Not an actual game of basketball, but one of those moving-hoop arcade things. Really getting up in his buddy’s face.]

Homey 2: Hey man, calm down. BARACK OBAMA IS PRESIDENT. It’s all good. OBAMA. IS. PRES.I.DENT!

Truly, change has come to bar fights.