Tag Archives: bars

Springtime in Prague

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Spring is here! It has nothing to do with the weather, although it is warm enough today for me to wear shorts. There are other signs, the subtle indicators that the season has changed. I was too wide-eyed last year to recognize the signs for what they were, but now I am a savvy veteran of the seasons.

It is road destruction season. Some bureaucrat in an anonymous building somewhere in the city pushed a button on his desk and thus did spring begin. Across the city piles of stones have appeared next to the patches of sand that used to be sidewalks. Entire streets have been dug up, creating larger piles of larger stones. Trams are diverted from their normal courses while crews stand around watching one guy with an arc welder work on the tracks.

I walked through downtown and the number of tourists has jumped dramatically in the last week, as well. Old Cars, tops down, slowly move through the crowds while tourists in the back seat snap photos. Crowds gather on the hour for the crushing disappointment that is the astronomical clock. Even in Strašnice you will find befuddled-looking folks holding maps of the city. There’s not much to see out in the Haunted City, but there they are. Some of the tourist traffic may be related to Easter holidays; we’ll see if it keeps up.

And here and there the signs are appearing in the windows of bars and pubs: Garden Open. Once more beer is available outdoors, and the city celebrates another winter endured, even as they turn a wary eye toward the river. The water level is high and still rising, and there’s a lot of snow in the mountains this year.

Thanks!

Tired… so very, very, tired

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As any regular here is no doubt aware, I do much of my writing outside the house. This is especially true now that I have high-speed Internet in the home. I have a nice routine: tend to the media empire and do some coding in the mornings (online references are indispensable when programming), then head out somewhere to escape the Unlimited Information that is not conducive to creativity.

If there is a flaw in the plan, it is that I spend a lot of time in places that serve beer. I like beer. Even drinking slowly, over the course of an afternoon it adds up, and the writing suffers and the next day is not as swell as it might otherwise be. Still, I have to be drinking something while I sit there, so I have been ordering tea at first and drinking that until my movements are twitchy and birdlike, then switching to beer when I’m almost done anyway.

I’m not sleeping much at night.

Thanks!

Fresh Snow

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It is snowing this morning, here in the Haunted City. The flakes are light and fluffy, falling gently in the still air, covering the ground with several centimeters of pure white. (Note for Americans: centimeters is Czech for inches.) The old men and their wiener dogs are having a tough time of it this morning – the fluff is up well past weiner dog belly level and traction is tricky. Still they are out, doing what must be done. True Czechs, they know that snow comes and goes, but they will endure.

It is late enough, this morning, that others are out as well. Here at U Kormidla the joint is jumping in the very low-key way this place has. I am upstairs, and I’m trying not to stare as I figure out if one of the girls at a table I can see downstairs is one of my favorite bartenders at Cheap Beer Place. My eyes, it seems, are not what they were.

Ah, time. If I could just be like the older Czechs seem to be—somehow reconciled with its steady depredations, stoically enduring the everyday aches and pains of life as a side effect of not having died yet. Instead I spent yesterday stopped by a headache, unable to write anything that wasn’t pure poop, and turning for shelter from thought to a place where mental activity is optional and likely to be painful as well, headache or no. I went back and played online poker for fake money.

I described it already, the other time I tried it, so I won’t go into detail here, except to say that the only thing worse than playing poker with people who bet completely irrationally, seemingly without looking at their cards, is playing against those people and losing, which is what happened yesterday morning. That afternoon I had a mission: win back more fake money than I had lost. It took a while, and then I found myself playing with other players more at my level, my own mental acuity was recovering from its migrainal body-blow, and the shimmering in my vision went away, and I had a really good time. I ended up with a nice big pile of fake money and the ridiculous fantasy that maybe I should play for real money—I mean heck, I just made fifteen hundred bucks! Right?

Income thus assured I now must turn towards making at least a token effort to be a part of the world around me. I am behind on correspondences of all sorts, emails from nice people who are patient enough not to have written me off yet, people I haven’t seen in a long time, even phone text messages.

Yet all I really want to do right now is sit, sip my tea, and watch the snow drift down in the courtyard outside my window.

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A Night of Dark and Light

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Let’s go backwards tonight. We’ll start with now, and see if I can move backward faster than time moves forward. If it’s a tie, you will be stuck reading about the same moment until my fingers fail.

Now: Listening to a cover of “I’m in Love with a German Film Star” by Linoleum at volumes that may not be healthy. This is good. Got the nice headphones on, so the neighbors are safe. I went looking for the original, a spacy, ethereal bit from around 1980, but this cover does justice.

Just as it was starting, Soup Boy withdrew his head and closed the door to my room. He had just come back from a quest to a bar/archery range. Yes, you read that right. Alcohol and deadly weapons. Of course it is not their policy to put the bows and arrows into the hands of dangerously drunk people. (I wasn’t there, mind you, but someone I knew once went there, and while they were going through the formalities he sat down and missed the chair, and after reassurances from his comrades the manager put a lethal weapon in his hands. Tonight, however, Soup Boy reported that the archery range was closed (hours are notoriously erratic there), so they were shooting pool instead.

I got a response back from fuego – he was home. We fired up Skype and discovered our favorite three words. He sent me a really cool tune called “Belladonna”. We unraveled bits of life and poked the decaying corpse of civilization with a stick. Or maybe I just complained that someone had consumed 2/3 of my hard-earned beers.

Soup Boy’s phone chimed on the sofa where it lay, to indicate it had received a text message. I unpacked my computer, plugged it in, and checked up on the ol’ media empire.

When I got home tonight, the place was empty. I wondered where everyone had gone, so I sent a message to Soup Boy and fuego.

I got off the metro just a little after midnight, and knowing that my beer supply at home was severely compromised, I turned to a haven I have not sought in a long time – Hanka’s Herna Snack Bar. The door was locked. It seems the place closes at midnight on Sundays. There were still people inside, and I might be mistaken, but the bartender may even have seen me and headed for the door as I turned my feet up the street. It’s hard to see into the place. I tromped toward home; the only other bar I knew was open between me and the domocile was a glitzy sports bar that is not the kind of place you sit alone with only your pivo for company and mutter to yourself in a vaguely insane manner. I decided to head home.

After Belladonna got off the metro at JzP and the doors to the train slid shut, I wondered if I should have offered to walk her home. Prague is a pretty safe town, but she had definitely wanted me to ride with her on the metro.

The three of us retired to a nearby café/club to discuss the movie and to just hang out. It was a pleasant time; the caffeine from the tea I drank combining well with the beer to make me jolly and chatty. Belladonna continued to try to hide the hole in her sweater, but I never did get the chance to suggest duct tape. Neither was in a position to stay out late, which was OK by me, although the conversation was pleasant. We spent a lot of time comparing cultures, and I would smile and nod as they discussed various med school classes. I was disappointed to learn that Firenze intended to return to El Salvador – Europe’s just not for her. I tried to talk her into running away to Shanghai with me. I don’t think she thought I was serious. I got a message from fuego saying he was at my place and had drunk some of my beer.

We got out of the movie and spent a moment looking at each other, wondering, what the hell was that?. I think the reasons we disliked the movie were not all the same, but the overall we agreed. Hostel blows. The movie starts with breasts and moves on to dismemberment; it is a movie that you would expect a group of fourteen-year-olds to write as they sit around a table at the pizzeria whacked out on Mountain Dew, each one trying to outdo the others: “You know what would be really, really sick…” All would laugh at the fingers-on-the-floor gag and then move on to the next shock-for-shock’s sake schlock. The writing was bad, the acting was poor, the editing was shit. There were points where the dancing and the music were so disconnected that the audience laughed. Continuity was a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t disaster.

One bit player put in a very good performance.

We settled into our seats while the ever-longer sequence of advertisements played. I am not exaggerating to say that movies here start twenty minutes after the projectors roll. Belladonna smelled good. I thought about the garlic soup and wondered if maybe I didn’t. She was fiddling with her sweater to conceal a hole in a not-too-embarassing area on her upper chest. I began to compose a duct-tape joke about it.

Firenze showed up and we bid farewell to Sophie. I gave Sophie a hard time because each time I’ve met her she’s left almost immediately.

I put away Kundera’s essays on the art of the novel when Belladonna and Sophie arrived. They sat down and I finished my Pilsner as we waited for Firenze. We talked about this and that, nothing earth-shattering. I reflected on my good fortune to be there, then, in a movie theatre lobby, sipping a beer, sharing conversation with two pretty and intelligent girls.

I think that is where I will begin the story for tonight.

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I’m a trendsetter…

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There are six tables in the little café near home. I was sitting in here, all alone, when suddenly the hordes descended. I was on a roll, word-wise, however, so I held my ground.

There is a very pretty girl who spends a lot of time here, and her boyfriend often brings his laptop when he eventually arrives. So I am no longer the only guy with technology who spends time here. I was pretty absorbed in my work, so I wasn’t monitoring the ebb and flow of humanity through the joint, but when I got up for a brief urine break I noticed a third laptop in action. Six tables, three laptops. Not bad for a place without WiFi.

But while the third laptop was interesting, the operator was arresting. Seated at the glowing screen she has the librarian look — blonde hair pulled back, glasses, printed material laid out next to the keyboard, a look of intense concentration on her face. And lips. Then she got up to select what tea she wanted, and, well, dang.

Amazingly, it has happened. Not to my benefit, I think, but I have seen someone who makes the computer an accessory that is downright sexy. There are some accouterments that not everyone can wear. I once saw a pretty girl, late at night, outside an all-night auto parts store, poking under the hood of her Mustang, face lit by the glow from the flashlight propped on the fender. (Honestly, I don’t remember if it was a Mustang, but if it wasn’t, it should have been.) While she remains the sexiest woman I have ever seen, laptop girl tonight was up there.

Lets face it. You’ve got your supermodels, who make a career of simply looking good, and then there are the truly sexy women. Granted, the most successful models are capable of exuding some intangible force of personality, but like a chain restaurant, they are constrained by the need to appeal to the widest possible audience. You are not going to see the woman I saw tonight in any fashion magazine. She wasn’t selling that. Women who fix cars, or work on laptops in cafés, women in the act of resourcefulness and creativity, thinking not about how they look but about how they’re going to get the job done, those are my kind of folks. On the right face, concentration can be very sexy.

She’s gone now – the time you are moving through reading this is much different than my time. Gone forever, probably. I’m not sure she did me any favors tonight raising the geek chic bar the way she did. Before I was an exotic foreign writer. Not bad. Now I’m a scruffy writer. I’m OK with that – it’s certainly true, after all, and my laptop, beat and battered, fits the look well.

Thanks!

At the Helm in Strašnice

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U Kormidla is a new place (I think). It is a longer walk to come here than it is to go to Little Café Near Home, but if today is an indication, there are definitely times when the extra walk is worth it. The bar has a nautical theme, celebrating the Czech Republic’s long and highly regarded maritime tradition (‘Ahoy’ is, after all, the most common informal greeting.)

I made my way down the stairs from street level, and my immediate impression was highly favorable. Two pretty girls sat at the corner of the bar, not smoking. There was a large group filling the back of the place, all dressed in black (we’re in cemetary country, out here in StraÅ¡nice), also not smoking. I made myself comfortable, enjoyed the smoothness of a Kozel dark, and communicated easily with the waiter with his nice, slow diction.

It is not a big place (although it dwarfs Little Café Near Home), dim but not dark, filled with rich wood and occasional brass highlights. It tiptoes dangerously on the borderline of kitsch, but overall it works. All these non-smokers in here is probably a fluke, but even when someone does light up the fumes are whisked away from where I sit. There is a staircase that leads up to a few more tables and the kitchen. My Bora-Bora chicken was heavier than I would expect from an island delicacy, but hey, this is the Czech Republic.

It is time for me to mosey along, now, but I will be back.

Thanks!

Sunday Morning

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It is a balmy morning, well above freezing, easily the warmest day of this year. The sun was shining brightly as I made my way through the quiet streets of Strašnice; the only others out at this time on a Sunday morning are the old men and their wiener dogs.

What is any right-thinking non-wiener-dog-owning person doing out on a Sunday morning, no matter how bright and shiny it may be? What Siren song drew me from my home, my fortress of solitude, my haven in the hurly-burly world that is Strašnice? Fast food.

It was late when I got home last night. Really late. I was at Roma with fuego, and we all know how that can go. It was a night of Pirates and hockey. Pirates of the White Sand, I’m happy to report, is making progress. The version fuego brought back from the secret underground laboratories of North America is good enough we can actually show it to people, and many of the tweaks to make it even better are quite simple. Last night we worked up a list of improvements, and except for one really stupid bit that fuego seems to find delightful we’re in good shape. The last hour of the evening was dedicated to me finding new ways to explain how stupid that bit is.

I staggered home as the wee hours of the morning were growing up. I mounted the stairs and when I opened the door I was not hit by the blast of tropical air that Soup Boy prefers. He was still awake. Well, moving, anyway; awake might be a bit of a stretch. “Heater’s not working,” he managed to mumble. “No hot water, either.” I tried pushing the reset button on the heater, just as Soup Boy had already done, but you never know. He might not have pushed the button correctly. In this case, my button-pushing was no more effective than his, so I shuffled into my room and flopped into bed, too tired even to plug in the electric heater in my room.

This morning I awoke, perhaps a little later than usual, but usual is difficult to define. I shuffled around a bit, found a valve on the water heater to allow more water into the radiator system, and groped my way to the kitchen for some tea. Ah, tea, the leaf that built an empire, where would I be without your magical alkaloid? As the kettle hissed and burbled I stood, semi-conscious, contemplating the paper bag on the counter. Slowly the friendly logo and happy marketing slogans sank in. McDonald’s. As I looked at that bag the craving started, the conditioned reflex born of forty years of exposure to relentless marketing. I wanted some of that.

And so now I sit, far from home, tired, muddled, sated, nibbling the last of my fries, watching parents struggle with children who are not yet finished crawling through the giant hamster tubes. Man, I wish they had those when I was a tot.

Thanks!

Dancing ’till Dawn

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I was sitting at the Little Café Near Home, writing, when the message came. There’s some sort of Olympics Thing going on right now, so the TV was on, directly over my head, and the few other patrons were all turned in my direction but not looking at me. The two dogs in the place seemed indifferent to the sports, but were very disappointed that their owners were not allowing them to play. Such is the life of a large dog in a small café.

My phone chimed and when I got to a good stopping point in the prose, I hauled it out to find two messages from Belladonna. “Reserved Stones tickets”, one said; the other read “We’re going out tonight. Wanna come?” I slowly typed out a message to respond to both her texts, left out an important word, and sent my confusing reply, which was supposed to say that I was interested in the Rolling Stones in June but tonight I was working and would not be coming out to play.

Work was going well; I had thought of a very good nuance to the way Hunter is messed up in later chapters of The Monster Within. (Man, I’ll be glad when that book is published so I can get it out of my head.) Except for a brief stint of Internet access at the bowling alley I had been writing for 13 hours, but I wasn’t tired. When it works, you run with it. I was scruffy and wearing the same clothes as the day before. It was after 9 pm when Belladonna and Firenze finally convinced me I should come out. It was, after all, Saturday Night. I figured if they were going to stay out late enough I could scrub down and join them.

Stay out late enough? Hah. They weren’t even going to get started until midnight. The style here is to get to the club district before public transportation shuts down, and party until it starts back up again. So, at a time I would ordinarily be considering sweet slumber, I was heading back out the door. I found the designated place, was soon joined by the ladies, and after answering a few questions (“What do you mean, ‘the evening ended awkwardly and uncertainly’?”) we danced the night away.

It was fun. Toward the end my poor small-talk skills began to show — I’m good at listening but not so good at sustaining a conversation. I’m comfortable with silences; unfortunately the interesting things going on are all inside my head, where they stay.

The evening ended with a walk through silent cobbled streets, snow falling gently around us.

Thanks!

A night on the town.

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I have long thought it would be fun to go to a bar with a vast whiskey collection, throw down credit card, and have a knowledgeable bartender pour me a Tour of Scotland, providing wee sips of a wide variety of single malts and telling me about each one. Last night I came close.

There is a bar here in Prague, a copy of one in New York, apparently, called Books and Bar. Or was it Bar and Books? In any case, it is a bar, and shelves of books (mostly in German for some reason, and obviously not meant to be read) adorn one of the walls. It is more upscale than the places I usually find myself, but sometimes it’s fun to pretend I’m sophisticated, and since we had invited Belladonna to join us, it seemed like a good time to try a place that Soup Boy had been encouraging me to visit anyway. Soup Boy (storyboarder for Pirates and now my roommate) had invited some of his friends out as well, but only Little John was free. So we set out for the city center, hoping that Belladonna would also bring friends.

Another acquaintance of Soup Boy, who we will call Hole, spotted us entering the establishment and came in to say hi. We chatted a bit and then he went off to work out. The Boy and I sat, and soon after Belladonna arrived with two friends in tow, fellow med students. Conversation was pleasant and unforced, and when Little John arrived, adding his limitless energy to the affair, things were going quite nicely.

I ordered a flight of Whiskey – six small glasses of the good stuff. (I paid extra for the very, very good stuff, that cash from being an extra burning a hole in my pocket.) As I slowly made my way around the islands and the highlands I appreciated the variety of different flavors, how each achieved a different balance of Earth (peat), Air (vapors), Fire (alcohol’s ‘bite’), and Water (smoothness). Truly the booze of the gods, and I was hitchhiking through the pantheon.

Sometime while I was enjoying my travels Hole returned. Belladonna knew him, and did not like him—not at all. In a cascading guilt by association Soup Boy was demoted a few notches, and I took a hit as well. (This just after she had started to recover from learning my age. I am rather older than she thought—Firenze, bless her sweet heart, guessed I was 29—and Belladonna has about her an air of maturity that made me think she was older.)

A note about Little John. I’ve only met him a couple of times, but I’ve seen how his exuberance can really keep a gathering lively. There is a danger, though, that someone else can turn his power to the Dark Side, and that is what happened when Hole showed up. I don’t think Firenze was aware of the crude humor being directed at her, not at first anyway, but the evening’s vibe, which had survived a couple of bumps, was now deteriorating rapidly. A change of venue was called for.

So we went to another place new to me, called M1, where the seating, inconvenient for large groups, led to me having a very pleasant conversation with Firenze, Soup Boy chatting with Belladonna, and Little John and Hole hovering and getting bored. They eventually left, and the mood recovered, but the evening ended somewhat awkwardly and uncertainly. It was, overall, a lot of fun, and it’s (almost) always nice to get out and meet new people. Hopefully we’ll be able to hang out again sometime.

Thanks!

Wow

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I’m sitting at the Cheap Beer Place, my first time in this august establishment for a few months. As I write this I’m listening to a woman sing “When the saints come marching in”, slowly, in Czech, to the accompaniment of a single synthesizer. That in itself, is enough to warp one’s sense of reality.

At the table in front of me, her back to me, is a woman with a she-mullet. Curly hair towers over her head, and is pulled back behind her ears. I’m pretty sure this was a big style in the ’80’s. I can’t think of any specific actresses or pop stars, but I know I’ve seen the she-mullet before. It’s still not flattering.

There’s a guy punching numbers into the juke box now. He seems ordinary enough. In his non-number-punching hand is a plastic bag with a single roll and a tub of potted meat. This man came prepared.

So now, presumably, the songs he requested are beginning to play. Wow. It’s some sort of children’s choir, accompanied by electric bass and countless people whistling. Oh, and now an electric piano. Thank god, it’s fading out, giving way to We Are The Champions. Sing it, Freddie.

Time passes, the music changes. Now I think I’m listening to Blink-sto osmdesat dva (182, in czech). There’s no mistaking the rhythm, and the accordion is subtle.

***

Never did finish explaining what was so dang surreal about that day – the following day I had a fever and I now have recollections of conversations that could not have actually happened. I’m better now, but I won’t be able to finish the above episode today, either.

Thanks!

Accepted

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I spent the afternoon at the bowling alley, trying to get the upper hand on my squirrely media empire. Just as I was running out of electricity, I got a message from Soup Boy: “Little John is here, heading for bez in 45 minutes.”

Thursday already? Sure enough. Bez night. My computer put itself gently to sleep and I packed up, bundled up, and headed out into the cold. I beat Soup Boy and Little John to the bar and made myself as comfortable as I could.

Is now the time to explain bez? No, it is not. Bez is an interesting cultural phenomenon, but not the subject of conversation tonight. This night, it’s all about me.

I ordered myself a Budvar, known in czech as “the real Budweiser”. I sat back and waited. Soup Boy and Little John showed up not long after, and parked around the table. Hello, how are ya, and so on, then Soup Boy handed me a letter.

Before I even opened it I was excited. It was not one of the envelopes I had included with each submission to make it more cost-effective for them to reject me. This was a company envelope, with my address printed on it in full czech spelling, and a hodge-podge of stamps. I opened it and out came a letter and a check.

Now, I expected the letter to be a little friendlier, to share my joy and excitement, but in retrospect I don’t know why. It was all business, a contract and nothing more, and that is how it should be, because they are running a business. I’m supposed to be a businessman as well, but there in the Budvar Bar Near Home I stood and did a small victory dance, compact but intense. Then I did another. Soup Boy bought me a whiskey. For the rest of the night I have been saying, “Oh, did I mention? I sold a story.” (Did I mention? I sold a story.)

Now, selling a story and publishing a story are two different things, it seems. What I have is a check that gives the publisher the right to use the story in the next three years. If they don’t, the rights all come back to me. If they do publish it, I will be in one of the leading science fiction magazines in the world (just ask ’em). So let it be known always that The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction was the first to pay me for my work, the short story “Memory of a Thing That Never Was”. Dang, I hope they print it someday.

This is a huge moment for me, the biggest since I got my first piece published over at Piker Press. I have conquered the foothills (by my own declaration); the mountain looms ahead. A most heartfelt thanks to all of you who have boosted me on your shoulders to help me get even this far. You know who you are.

Thanks!

The Lodge, Minneapolis Airport

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I was glad I had a window seat as the plane glided smoothly over the prairie. I looked down on the small towns that dotted the land, surrounded by fields now dormant and covered with a light blanket of snow. As we approached Minneapolis the lakes became more numerous, frozen over, cross-crossed by whiter stripes resulting from a glacial version of plate tectonics. As we got lower I saw that the surface of the ice was scored with tire tracks from countless vehicles, and dotted with fishermen’s shacks, some in clusters, others off on their own. On islands I could see houses, isolated in the summer, in the middle of a parking lot during the months of ice.

I have three hours to kill here in the Twin Cities, and how better than to take out a loan so I can afford a single airport beer. Leinenkugel’s Red – a local better-than-awful brew. Sitting near me is a gray-haired man returning to Saudi Arabia after a cruise with his family. He is an engineer working as a contractor for Haliburton, where he specializes in drilling sideways. “Oh, like when you want to set up a well on the border and send it under your neighbor,” I said. “Exactly,” he replied.

Although he has dual Canadian-Saudi citizenship, he is not flying directly into Saudi Arabia, but into Bahrain instead. “When you fly into Saudi, they search you carefully, and confiscate all your porn and everything,” he explained. “Bahrain is just a whorehouse. Then you can drive down the causeway.” He is also planning to spend some time with the whores in bahrain, as lond as he is in the neighborhood.

His family, I take it, lives on this side of the Atlantic, as does he when he is not working. His daughter left a note in his suitcase asking him to stay home more.

He had enjoyed the cruise, but didn’t like how structured the trip was. “The boat won’t wait for you,” he said. “I wanted to golf, but there was no time.” Apparently there was also no time for prostitutes. On a cruise. With his family. We are certainly not of the same world, he and I. I made myself busy on my phone, burining off the last minutes on my account, in part so he would stop telling me things. Man, it’s going to be a long nine hours if we’re in the same row on the plane.

Thanks!

Ned’s, Albuquerque, NM

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I sit now, perched atop a wobbly stool at one of those tall tables that signify the bar section of a restaurant. I have put a lot of miles on today; this morning I awoke within earshot of the breakers in Ocean Beach, and now I sit not far from the Rio Grande.

Note: Wearing boxers and a new pair of Levi’s is not good if you’re going to be behind the wheel for thirteen hours.

I finally got all my chores done out in California, and most of my bases touched. I didn’t manage to see all the people I was hoping to see, and some of the meetings were terribly brief, but it was a good side trip. I’ll get up to Northern California on my next trip. The book tour – yeah, that’s the ticket. (Soup Boy reports that no rejection letters have reached my pad in Prague, which must mean that I’ve been accepted by everyone.)

Other than the pants thing, no great insights came from the day’s travels, no epiphanies struck as the miles slid past. I thought of a good setting for a story, but not the story to put in it. I had a green chile and bean burrito in Winslow, but while the sauce was satisfyingly spicy, there weren’t actual green chiles in it. Now my intestines are tying themselves in knots.

This is a peaceful bar, a local’s place, nice but not ferny. Not the kind of place people bring laptops, but none of the places I go are, until I get there to set the new precedent. Ben Folds is singing about his girlfriend the brick. People are laughing, and some of the people are pretty drunk. It is early yet, but I don’t feel like looking anyone up here in town tonight. I’m tired. Hanging with Amy wasn’t nearly as draining as it has been in the past, but now it’s time to hole up in an undisclosed location for a few hours. Tomorrow I have a bazillion things to do, and the next day I fly back to Prague, so this is my last chance for a while.

Addendum: While sitting here, working on a short story, I have finally heard “Bad Day” in the US. Regular readers know it as “You Wrote a Bad Song“.

Thanks!

New Years Eve at Lucy’s

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Oh, what a night. What a night indeed.

I rolled into San Diego early, before drivers were too drunk. Amy was bartending at a private party, so I was left to my own devices on New Year’s eve. I wanted to keep my activities close to where I slept. Amy said that Rose (rhymes with rocks) was having a New Year’s eve party in the neighborhood, but I felt funny about crashing it (I never hung around with Rose much except when she was behind the bar), so I went to Lucy’s, a friendly enough place outside the party zone in Ocean Beach. I found a barstool and appraised the beer selection and the beer slinger. The two graying barflies to my left and were flattering her with sincere hyperbole. She was good to look at, no doubt about it.

Her shift was soon going to be over, however, and the beers cost more than I wanted to pay. I began to consider a move to Tiny’s, just up the street, where Erica might be working. Then Christina showed up, and I decided to keep my butt right where it was. The new bartender was dressed to kill, and she had plenty of ammunition. We got to chit-chatting, and I learned that she was getting married in eight days. A pity, true, but her girlfriends were coming in later. I entertained the idea that perhaps the friendly barkeep could act as an ice breaker, overcoming my natural reticence (with all people except bartenders).

The final obstacle for the evening was cash flow. Lucy’s doesn’t believe in credit. No problem; there is a cash machine in the corner.

Um… big problem. I opened my wallet to find no card there. I was down to two dollars, and no way to get more before the banks opened on Tuesday. Tuesday felt a long, long, way away. I looked all over for the card, no luck. I called Callahan’s, where I had had lunch, and they reported no card there, either. Just bloody grand. Time to call the bank and stop the card. I walked back through the rain to Amy’s house. As I called the bank, my phone informed me that I was almost out of credit. “OK,” I said to myself, first call the phone company, then the bank. I dialed T-mobile, only to realize that without the credit card number I would not be able to add minutes.

Right then. The bank, and make it quick. I dialed the number (toll free but that didn’t help me one bit), only to wait and listen to silence. Getting more nervous, I called again and made my way through the menu system. (Note to any banks who issue credit cards – “put a stop on a lost or stolen card” should be right at the top of the first menu.) Next I needed to type in my account number. Quickly I punched in the digits. “Invalid Account number,” the soulless voice said. I started punching numbers again, only to hear the line go dead.

“Crap!” I shouted in Amy’s empty apartment. I checked my remaining time. Seven minutes. I dialed the bank again, and more quickly made my way through the menus to the “enter your account number” prompt. I punched in the digits again, and watched as my phone doubled up a number (my phone keypad has a very bad tendency to double-punch keys). Failure again, and once more cut off. I clenched my fists and looked up at the ceiling, jaw clamped shut, for the moment unable even to speak profanity. Four minutes left on the phone. I searched once more for the missing card, the one I knew would turn up as soon as I canceled it. No luck.

Out there somewhere, someone was buying the whole bar a round on my card. I called the bank one more time, and failed one more time.

That is when I did the pissed-off dance. No one has ever seen the dance before, and I have never mentioned it to anyone before. It is an unplanned and unchoreographed expression of primal rage, an anger that most of you who know me as a mild-mannered and steady kind of guy would not suspect. I don’t know what profanity I was shouting repeatedly as I jumped up and down, spinning in circles, in something like the Incredible Hulk’s posture.

The good thing about the pissed-off dance is that even as I do it, there is some part of me that knows how silly it looks. It is that realization that brings me back to earth.

I went to a nearby pay phone and canceled the card. The next day, New Years Day, was Amy’s birthday (six years to go…). We hung out, did fun things, and she had to pay for everything. I sure know how to show a girl a good time. Today I came back into Callahan’s, and the first thing Diane said was, “You left your card here the other day!” Arrgh.

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Neto’s Passtime Bar, Gila Bend, Arizona

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I hadn’t planned on stopping today, but somewhere between Pistachio Rock and Gila Bend inspiration hit me head-on and I had to stop and do something about it.

It was one of those moments that catch you off-guard, although they seem to be more routine in the desert than elsewhere. I was driving into the sunset, in true western fashion, and let me tell you, it was one hell of a sunset. It started out subtle; the sky an ever-deepening blue, a few wispy clouds adding their own commas and question marks to the sky. I rounded a barren, jagged hill, and across the plain in front of me was splendor. Saguaros slid past, their arms akimbo in gestures of praise and wonder, standing in silhouette against the vibrant pinks and oranges that filled the western sky. Farther away the rocky hills became mysterious shapes, almost reminding me of things.

I spun the radio, and landed on a Spanish-language station without accordions. The next song that came on was achingly beautiful, a woman singing of sorrow in a language any human could understand. I will probably never hear that song again, and I will never know who the singer was. Like the sunset, it was just for that one moment and then gone forever.

The station fuzzed out on the outskirts of Gila Bend, but I decided to stop anyway. I found a hotel that advertised wireless internet and checked in. The signal doesn’t reach my room. The bathtub faucet was dripping — a sign of evil in this arid land — but I could not make it stop. I closed the bathroom door to at least shut out the sound, and realized I had a locked door between me and the toilet. The large Coke and 32-oz Gatorade I had consumed on my desert trek chose that very moment to make it known that their probation was up and they were ready to be released right now.

Back at the lobby to get a large paperclip to spring the door, I asked if there was a bar nearby, where I could sit, have a couple of beers, and maybe get some work done. The lobby staff exchanged a skeptical look. “Just down the street a couple of blocks,” the guy said, “there’s a bar. It’s the only bar in town.”

“Can I just sit in your restaurant and have a beer?”

“They don’t serve alcohol. There’s a circle-K across the street,” he added helpfully.

“Is the bar any good?” I asked.

The guy nodded, and got a confirming nod from the girl. “Yeah, it’s a good bar. I like it anyway.” Good enough for me. I had given him the opportunity to issue a safety warning and he hadn’t. Chances of getting beat up or knifed seemed low enough to take the walk up the road.

Now I sit in a long, narrow building constructed of cinder block, listening to “All My Ex’s Live In Texas”. There are no windows and no chairs that can be thrown in a fight. It is winter, and there is a large box fan set up on the table next to mine. Most of the light in here comes from neon beer signs (the only exception is a string of blue christmas lights), and almost everyone in here is sitting at the bar. The freight trains pass right outside the door, blowing their lonesome whistles through the security mesh and adding to the crooning of Patsy Cline doing a song I don’t recognize.

The only nice car in the parking lot belongs to a guy I assume to be the owner. Someone is wearing an obscene amount of perfume or cologne. I’ll sneak a picture once the locals have becomed accustomed to a guy being in the bar with a laptop. In a way, I feel like Diane Fossey with the mountain gorillas of Rwanda. They will accept me, but I can’t do too much all at once.

Beers are two dollars and everything comes in longneck bottles. I won’t tell you what I’m drinking, but rest assured the word “lite” is not in the name anywhere. An obscure Stevie Ray Vaughn song has just come on the juke box and it’s time to order a second beer.

***
Time has passed, just how much I’m not exactly sure. I’ve been here, trying to put a short story out of my misery. A few minutes ago a longneck appeared at my table. “It’s from that guy over there, Gary,” the bartender explained. I thanked her and sent a toast Gary’s way when he finally looked over.

This is a very friendly bar. I have spotted chairs that could be thrown, but I will not revise the above description because I like it, and reality be damned. There’s a good vibe here, the oasis-in-the-trackless-desert vibe. We come from different places, we’re going different places, but at this moment we are together, bound by a common need. And at the oasis there is an eclectic jukebox, and there is joy.

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