The Barstool

 The barstool’s broken seat was just annoying enough for me to start to think about leaving. Or at least moving to another spot.

But damn it, the game was on right in front of me, and the place was packed. I looked at John, the barkeep and winced just enough for him to wander over. I was a regular, and most of these folks were tourists. In the sense that they came here two times a year – St. Patrick’s Day and Super Bowl Sunday.

“What’s bothering you now,” John said. His goatee jostling up and down with each word.

“Damn seat’s broke,” I replied.

“Tough shit, man,” you want another?

“Sure.” John clicked a new Shiner for me, plopping it down on the bar with a rap of his knuckle. There are certain things that are good about being a regular.

I look up at the TV. It’s awful how long the pre-game for the Super Bowl is. It used to be just a few hours. Then all day. Now, it’s the entire weekend. Who has time to watch all of that? Any of that? I wonder to myself. But maybe not.

“Capitalism, baby!” some 45-year-old doofus with a backwards baseball cap says to me.

“Fuck capitalism,” is all I can muster. The guy looks me over, shrugs, and walks away. Score one for me. I take a swig of my beer. It’s cold still, which is great.

I relax a bit. Then I get bumped by someone from behind. I turn around, and I see her. A gorgeous, long-haired woman. She’s about my age, as the eyes always tell you. But she’s beautiful.

“Hello,” I muster meekly. She looks at me and smiles. I guess I have to come up with more than that.

“I’ve never seen you here before. Are you a tourist?”

She shakes her head no. Still not saying a word.

“My name is Randy,” I say.

“Anita,” she says with a smile. I look at her shoulder and see a Lucero “L Star” tattoo. I wonder if that is a good sign, bad sign, or not a sign at all.

She sees me looking at it, probably a little too long and touches my forehead with her finger.

“I’ll tell you why, if you show me yours.”

“Don’t have any,” I say with a shrug, taking a sip of Shiner to calm my nerves.

“None?”

“None.”

“Well, that’s a surprise.”

“Why?”

“The amount of times you’ve put money in John’s jukebox to play them, I figured you were a member of the club.”

“I almost got one in 2009,” I said. “But, I changed my mind. I had even shaved off my shoulder.” I cringed when I said that.

She looked at me, then my back, and smiled.

“Hell, we’re in our 50s, nothing wrong with that.”

I smile, wave John over, and order a couple of Shiners.

“You want to share with me,” I say.

“Sure. Let me go tell my girlfriends that I’ll be hanging out with you for a bit.” She winks and walks over to one of the booths in the back of the bar. Near the game where you punch the punching bag to see how strong you are. I’ve never punched one of those.

I watch Anita saunter over to her friends. You can tell she’s one of those people that is always happy on the outside. I stop myself from digging too much deeper into my experiences with women you meet in bars. It’s self defeating, right?

The group of ladies all look over at me at the same time. I smile my crooked tooth grin. They all wave at me and laugh. I take that as I good sign. Especially when Anita wanders back over. I watch her, but I also watch the rest of the bar. A lot of people are watching her.

She makes it back to the bar just as Pedro, my former boss, gets up to go pee. He asks me to save his seat.

Anita sits down in it. I don’t say a word about it.

“That guy coming back?” she says.

“I’m sure he wants to,” I reply with a swig of beer.

“Well, I should…”

“Nah, I know him. Well.”

She cocks her head to the side when I say “well.” Maybe she should have listened to that voice in her head telling her there was something to that “well.”

But she didn’t. And today, 7 years later, I’m glad she didn’t.

St. Patrick's Day

“What are you doing for St. Patrick’s Day?” she asked with a smile.

“Working, like always,” I replied.

When I chose to be a journalist, back in the glamour days of the early 1990s (Ha!), the thought of never having holidays off, being dirt poor and single never crossed my mind.

Some days I wish it had, others not so much.

But hindsight is a bitch and life is for living. Every day I try to remember that. Keep plodding forward instead of looking backward. It’s tough, and many times needs the help of an alcoholic beverage. Except on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s been a long, long time since I had one of those off – except for the year of unemployment, when I actually had two.

There was this girl I dated, she liked to think she was Irish. She wasn’t. Yeah, she had red hair and pale skin and was full of sass. But what she wasn’t was Irish. She was German.

I do miss that gal, though. She was the world to me. Until the day she decided I didn’t try hard enough. Or she didn’t care enough. Whichever. See, there I go, following the downward staircase instead of taking the elevator up.

I watch the girl who asked me about St. Patty’s Day walk away. A few months ago she was 30 pounds heavier and unhappy with her life. Now she’s sexy, and I believe still unhappy with her life. You can shed the pounds, tone the muscles, get a higher paying job, but those things don’t fill the void. That’s up to you, my friend.

The pollen covered my car as I got ready to leave for work. My allergies are funny. They don’t bother me too much outside. But inside they’re a bear. It’s probably the mold that this place has. And the fact I don’t dust. I saw my stereo today before playing some music to get me out of my mind funk and it was slathered in dust and God knows what else. I wiped it off with a pair of dirty underwear that was lying on the carpet and put in a CD. The notes and words and beats just keep me going. For someone who is tone deaf and completely too lazy to learn how to play an instrument, music really keeps me going.

I was lucky enough to go to Ireland last year. My best friend and his wife paid for me to tag along with them. It was a bit of a strange trip, but I fell in love with the place. Much better than the UK, for sure.

If I could be anywhere today, it would be there. Out in the middle of nowhere in a country I am not from, surrounded by people I can understand when they talk. I didn’t see too many redheads while I was there, which disappointed me, but was told simply I was in the “wrong part” of the country.

Maybe one day I’ll have the money to go back. It’s sad that I have to be saddled by that problem. It’s self-created, so I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’ve never done enough to pay off the mountain that I have. I’ve made small gains every so often, then I get a woman in my life and I forget what I was doing for a while.

The stink of the morning is a funny thing, too. I like it when it’s cold. Hate it when it’s warm. I’m the complete opposite about the actual weather, though. Give me a hot, sweaty, sticky day over a cool, breezy and damp day any time.

“You sure you don’t want to play hooky with me?” the girl asked me after we bumped into each other again.

“Darling, I’d love to, but duty, as always, calls me …” I trail off a bit at the end.

“You’re in the military? I thought they didn’t allow facial hair like that?”

“They don’t. And I’m not,” I replied stroking my soon-to-be-shaved beard of about 10 inches in length.

We smiled at each other and she kept walking away. It’s a different perspective. It seems I’m always the one driving or walking away at the end. Looking in the rearview mirror at what I’m leaving behind. It’s enough to get you down if you let it. And I have let it.

I know one thing, I will have a beer before St. Patrick’s Day is over tonight. It may be hellishly awful to go to the bar later. Everyone will have had their “drink on” for the entire day and I’ll be just off the road. But damn, sometimes you just have to do the right thing…