Editor’s Note: Large Day today in the country- I am taking the momentous step of Leaving the Property to snag the Panzer, which is resting after repairs up in Arlington in the basement of Big Pink. This is also second shot of the vaccination week, so between actually leaving the Farm, there are all sorts of events impending. Meanwhile all the stuff you hear about is actually happening in this Great Nation, as if it was Dad’s Delta 88 convertible out for a fun drive with a bunch of pals. It evokes a new way of life, one in which someone is always listening. We will see how this all goes. It is exciting- add to it Marlow’s observations about changes of life and locale at a time when classmates are turning- a partially coherent 70 years of age. Wish I could still get my hands on that big Delta. That was a hell of a car!
More on all that later.
– Vic
Author’s Note: I didn’t mean to leave you readers with questions about how I came upon my last story about the two old men. Its source waters’re just an odd habit I found myself deep into during my heavy drinking, thinking and sinking days of sitting in my isle seat.
It’s sorta like listening to jazz . . . opening your ears to get the beat while off the melody, behind the notes, completely outside what’s expected, people are improvising off impulse. Nothing but “what’s next? . . . right now . . . in the moment” is what they’re saying. I just open my ears. Others may hear it as just jibber jabber, but the speakers’re “dialoguing” music with what’s in their hearts over a drink.
So, here’s a bit of context. Or at least some local color.
-Marlow
It’s Not Spying, I’m Just Listening
I have heard “kiting checks” referred to as “overdrafting” which made my cocktail enter but not exit my nasal passages. They weren’t complaining, mind you; just saying “there ain’t no pancake’s so thin it ain’t got two sides.” Was able to resist the sprayer urge there on that one as well. Other nights brought prison life tales about how it’s “very structured” — way more than most people care for or its surprising “spirit of camaraderie” — again another cocktail almost sprayed upon the bar’s polished wooden top. I caught myself before I could snarl as it shot out in the heat of the moment. I didn’t want my palette messed up when I was trying the late shift bartender’s latest new concoctions.
(I was a trusted but unremunerated taster and advisor.)
I always remember these narrators are individuals. Just like the rest of us. Each has had a day. Some of them have been good, some bad, but they’ve all have had one. Many, most, if not all are unmoored ships drifting down the big brown river two miles north of us towards the dark, open sea.
Each has a childhood, a body with aches.
What do I say? Nothing. Do I ever smile while listening? Not even a lip curl, a snort or snuffle.
I try for a blankness, while listening for what is special about each speaker and story — time here is limited by closing hours, inebriation levels, cash on hand . . . but to hear in these tiki and dive bars from speakers in Hawaiian shirts, fresh-from-the-diamond, red-clayed baseball t-shirts, chef’s coats . . .
“my fiancé left me”
“feminine wiles”
“now hear this . . . ah geez, nature calls”
“got my one call”
“a(h) missed homecoming”
“my friends call me Dim”
“I got family somewhere”
“sharp as a marble”
“boneheaded three-peater”
“got my Valentine’s Day drawers on”
“we just got married”
“heard the crickets chirp . . . beautiful”
“I got the most f*cked up thing I’ve been meanin’ to tell you”
“put it out of its misery”
“I was collaterally damaged”
“never been out of Savannah”
“I ran outta minutes during a 1-900 call”
“I got a pornographic memory”
In a vast expanse of a human desert sit these tellers, some are still wearing sunglasses, looking out at these bars’ dim neon lights. Maybe to hide their eyes, or bruises or scars, their delights or sadnesses or a mix of things.
Maybe it’s just me, but these soirees remind a lot of black and white photography from the 30s, movies from the 40s and TV during the 50s.
I get the same feelings from these high deserts that I got from riding my motorcycle into America’s endless western deserts checking out the Joshua Trees (not really trees) and sitting quietly and listening for nothing ekse but what’s floating on the winds.
These scenes are rarely suffused with a warm yellow light and voices — more like amber or even greyish duskiness. Sorta like stories’ moods and their shifts.
Rarely did I see them face on, mostly brief profiles of their lawlessness, their emptiness, their joyfulness, their checkeredness, their playfulness, their weariness, their hopefulness . . . None of them really had my practiced deadpan. Their talk-storying rendered their faces 100% accurate polygraphs. Some read like three-page rap sheets, many just plain exhausted after a long day and in need of some get-off-their-feet rest and relaxing beverages, some with rightful claims that biology and the prejudices of others conspired to keep them luckless, and the very lucky few other desert wanderers finally deep in the throes of endless luck and bounty. They were the ones who bought their listeners or the bar a round or two. Funny though, each and every one of them had pizzazz.
Some were messy in dress. None were listless or possessed of “the stare.” None ever had their palms up like two dead fish. Always knuckles up or around their beverages.
People say the most beautiful things about the shit they’ve done or had done to them.
Many of these stories were confessions — sins, foolishnesses, regrets, feudings, and, yes, crimes. Some very, very serious. With the benefit of hindsight maybe they might figure out that it wasn’t such a hot idea to talk about felonious stuff.
Some tales start off in beaters speeding down long, winding roads leading away from trailer parks, kicking up dust. Their genesis had little to no plan, yet their destinations seemed like the solution to all their participants’ problems, and to a few the answer to all their prayers.
Like buying a big ole dining room table but having no chairs.
Somehow, only the Lord knows why, they end up here, at this bar, with drinks in hand, sharing their life’s parts with us.
A few tales are so good that their audiences are seated staring from both sides of the tellers, lined up along the bar railing, like a small but distinguished panel on “Meet the Press.”
Some tale gatherings come with a normal family background, just a quiet evening on the town together with entertaining strangers sharing distant thunder-clapped tales.
What underlies most of their stories is the undeniable nonsense that “there’s what’s right and there’s what’s right, and never the twain shall meet.” That one caused me to spill my drink and laugh out loud.
Amazingly graceful and gracious of this river town to allow us all to be on such long, soft-collared leashes. And for a brief moment to be free of one’s chest feeling pressed down and suffocated — just a runnin’ and a gunnin’ endlessly turning left.
Story telling time
Taken as a whole, it reminds me of a spoof of Dr Benjamin Spock’s famous book retitled as The Bad Ideas Book of Adult and Senior Life – A Fools Paradise Guidebook.
PS: When the mood is right, some work them to retell their stories in the hopes they’ll share more details. These narratives are like routines, certain rituals we need. Like those of folks on the deep end of the spectrum — they’re things we use to protect ourselves. Any long break from them leaves more than a few of us terrified.
Time is fleeting. Life is short. Time is luck. One day it’s gone . . . you make it this far still out, about, and alive, you should go out and talk before your neon ceases to burn the bright sodium-lit magenta night sky.
PPS: Do NOT drive or walk yourself home after one of these nights. Whether it’s raining or not, a cab or an Uber will safely speed you home down past the dark, bumpy side-streets that await.
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