February 01, 2005
He led me into a quaint Irish pub with a long, wooden bar that stretched from the door down to the dining area where we would be seated. The atmosphere was perfect; dimly lit with a soft, amber glow and a well balanced grouping of patrons. Not too raucous and not so silent as to hear your own echo, just right. We ordered our food and drinks from a waitress with a thick, Irish accent and contentedly chattered until our meals arrived.I ordered the beef barley and vegetable soup with a side order of chicken strips. The soup was savory and surprisingly remedial; exactly what the doctor ordered and John delighted over what I recall to be a plate of meat and mashed potatoes. This was our first meal of the day and therefore I could feel each spoonful of steaming soup slide down my throat and into my stomach, warming my body through and through.
We had basically finished our meals when I happened to look down at a stack of napkins to my right and noticed a medium sized insect resting on the top of this pillowy pile. At first, I did not think much of it, but since I had stopped listening to John, I decided to interrupt him in order to inquire if I was correct in my suspicions.
"John, that's not a... cockroach, is it?"
He followed my glance and laid his own eyes on the dark, stoic creature. I watched wide eyed and stiff as his hand made a slow motion toward the insect and, in the blink of an eye, it scurried over the napkins, slipped onto the table and over the rim, right where my legs were located. I let out a small gasp and quickly brushed off my legs while John insisted that I crush the damned thing.
"I'd crush it if I could see it," I exclaimed while hastily standing up.
"Well, don't sweep it toward me!"
"I'm not sweeping it toward you - I'm trying to make sure it's not going to freakin' crawl up my leg and eat me!"
"It's long gone by now anyway, I'm sure."
"Yuck..."
Leaving our respective baggage on the table, we headed outdoors to indulge in an after dinner, 'oh my God, there's a disgusting bug at our table,' cigarette. Naturally, we each began to exchange stories of our creepy, crawly cockroach experiences. Luckily, this was only the second cockroach I had ever seen in real life, but that fact did not seem to soothe the slight disturbance tingling through my spine. It also didn't help that John's way of consoling me was to explain that this was New York and "you don't have to worry unless there are more than one of them." Although I wasn't too alarmed by the situation, I still say that even one exceeds my gross out limit.
John paid the bill and soon we were off. We popped into a few establishments that John had visited before and soon found ourselves on the subway. While we were listening to a number of comedic cowboys on his i-Pod, John bumped into the Button Man, a man he had run into on the subway before. He was an older man with shoulder length white hair, hunched inside a long, dusty trench coat that matched his long, drooping face. John had a couple of buttons missing on his trench coat and the Button Man was supposed to be the recourse for such a dilemma (hence the moniker). Though I kept the small ear phone implanted, I could just discern the Button Man's voice as he explained the arrangements of a Benefit he was planning to raise money for the Tsunami victims. He supposedly had a modicum of bands lined up and thus he went through the process of naming each one and displaying their respective CD's. I went back to concentrating on the Ron White jokes echoing into my ear.
We found a small bar that was, as I recall, not too far away from John's regular hang out and proceeded into a back room where a vacant, red felted pool table sat. John did a delightful job of breaking while I went to the bar to order a drink. Low and behold, the Button Man was sitting there, right next to me, slumping over the bar with a small glass of beer before him and an expression fixed upon his face that could have made me cry. His solemn and sagging eyes turned toward mine and I could not help but grant him a sympathetic smile. This was something of a mistake. He apparently did not remember me from the subway or, it simply did not matter, as he went on with the familiar description of his plans to raise money for Tsunami victims. He pulled out each of the same CD's as he had done before from somewhere in his jacket and carefully opened them up, showing me pictures of the performers he said he had already contacted.
"And here's Marilyn Manson. See? He looks a little scary in this picture, but he really does have a beautiful voice."
"Oh, yes, um, certainly, he sure does," I replied, while trying to disguise the look of 'what the HELL are you talking about??!' from my face.
"And here is my business card. If you need more to pass out to your friends, just feel free to give me a call," he said slowly and handed me a card from his pocket.
"Oh, thanks. Yeah, ya know, I have to get back to my pool game, but it was nice talking to you," I replied, while carefully backing up.
He kept talking as though he had not heard my words and he never once looked up to see if I was still in his presence. He merely went on mumbling to himself, opening and closing CD cases and putting his hand around the glass of beer before him, without taking a drink, as though he just wanted to be sure it was still there. I took this opportunity to swiftly sprint over to the other side of the bar where John was patiently waiting.
We played a couple mediocre games of pool until a couple who had been occupying the couch in front of us inquired as to whether or not we would like to play against them. John and I simply stared at each other for a moment, rather uncertain about the entire idea of embarassing ourselves in front of a couple of pool sharks. I still wasn't feeling the best and felt mostly confident that a five year old could have walked all over me that night. I sized up the pair in a brief gaze.
"Just a friendly game, right? Not for cash or anything," I asked in an over suspicious tone.
"Oh no! No money! Just a friendly game of pool," the girl assured me.
"Great 'cause I have no money."
And thus we began. John and I watched on as the girl set up for a shot that was to be hit from the middle of the table. Her stance was remarkable. Her feet pointed dramatically inward, forming the most perfect pair of pigeon toes I had ever seen, and she concentrated whole heartidly on the ball before her. She then proceeded to hit the ball with such a ferocious force that I truly feared she was going to send it sailing into the face of one of her friends that remained on the couch ahead of the table. This did not happen, luckily, that I can recall.
Naturally, we lost, but it was a fun game and both the girl, and what I supposed was simply her male friend, shook our hands. Her male friend asked me for my phone number and I had to refuse the offer based on the fact that, well, number one, I live 800 miles away and, number two, because he had a been kissing a girl on the couch earlier. The nerve of some people, I tell you! I always feel somewhat offended under such circumstances and can only consider that bold man entirely fortunate for the reason that I was no longer gripping my pool cue...
At any rate, we made our way back to, you guessed it, John's usual hangout. I was more than willing to spend the rest of the night in familiar surroundings where I would not feel entirely obscene while coughing up a lung. Not only was I armed with plenty of airborne germs, but I also had the foresight to bring my favorite camera into the midst of all this action. I absolutely adore toting this weapon of mass flashing around with me. There is a sense of power, art and genuine exuberance that goes along with each 'click.' I can give the command to smile and, nine times out of ten, that person will indeed smile.
Ahhh, the perfect world - one in which everyone obeys me and smiles while doing it.
At the bar, we met John's friend Seth. He was quite the character, or so was my first impression of him, with a half cocked, knowing smile and a direct gaze. He was about John's age, a few inches shorter with a 'Newsies' type hate atop his head and relatively quiet demeanor. Whenever he would look at me, it seemed as though his eyebrows would tense as though he were questioning my being. I would return the gesture, wondering why such a fact would be up for debate in the first place and then revert back to John whose eyes felt more sympathetic.
We had acquired a table in the back area of the bar when Seth's girlfriend, Rebecca, joined us. She matched Seth for height and seemed to bring the perfect balance to his side of the table, brightening him with her alluring and cheerful smile.
*** To Be Continued...