[The Forlorn Grammarian]
The unfocused byproduct of
www.simulacri.com's incisive brilliance

Friday, July 11, 2008

Bar Dregs, Volume I

In my continued effort to keep personally disparaging stories off the page I proudly display to employers, I'm going to try to restrict most of my bar anecdotes to here. Most of my rambling typically involves bars, and this series in particular is a little sensitive, because it's laden with jokes about fat people and Ecstasy.

Whatever you've been reading here, chances are I was sitting in a bar when I wrote it, drinking alone and looking suitably miserable. Since I'm usually off by myself and doing something on which people can comment, I tend to attract every musky, wild-eyed loner who staggers through the door and wants to complain about the CIA. Here are some of my recent encounters.


The Unbefriendable Drink-Buyer

There's a really old guy who wanders around my neighborhood in search of people who will tolerate his lengthy, rambling, entirely fictional war stories. He doesn't confine himself to bars. If he sees you in the street or on your porch and he suspects that he recognizes you, or that you resemble one of his nephews, he'll stumble over--drunk regardless of what time it is--and engage you with tales about some battle in which he never took part.

This is his modus operandi. I have it on good authority that he's never seen any combat in his long, long, exceedingly looong life, but even if people who know him loudly declare this when he's within earshot, he'll just pretend nothing was said and continue telling stories.

The complication in this little plot is that he buys you free drinks while he's making up his stories, and also that he has no concept of social propriety or personal space. He will bellow about (imaginary) amputations toward your date as she eats her dainty salad. He will unexpectedly walk over and interrupt other diners to begin relating an anecdote which he'll eventually confuse with an episode of M*A*S*H. In his methodology--from the seduction of the drink-buying, through the slowly-dawning horror, up to the final realization of the gravity of your error--he is rather like Dracula. Once you've let him in, you've ceded your ideological barrier, and he's free to wreak his havoc.

Like a mythical creature in a young adult horror reimagining, if you ignore him without accepting his premise, he will suddenly be gone. Also like a mythical creature, his legend is met with foolhardy disdain by some of the rowdier townsfolk; they accept his free drinks, and in doing so doom the bar to his obtrusive storytelling.

I know all of this because I was one of those oblivious townsfolk. If you imagine that we are sitting around a campfire, I just turned on the flashlight and shined it under my face.

I happily, even graciously, accepted his initial free drinks as I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, regular patrons glancing in my direction and quietly filtering out. Eventually the bar emptied entirely, solely because of the Story Golem I'd unwittingly welcomed, leaving just him, me, and a very unhappy bartender.

The self-aggrandizing stories went on interminably, organized in such a way that I couldn't possible contribute anything, and I eventually fled like a coward, making my excuses and leaving the young, pretty bartender to deal with the guy on her own. She'd later tell me that he continued long into the night, inventing tales of heroism and following her around until the bar finally closed. And it was all my fault.


EDIT/UPDATE (7/13): Tonight I spoke to someone who also once indulged this Bar Golem with a group of friends. He had to leave almost immediately to pick up some other folks, and ten minutes thereafter received a simple text message from the people he'd left behind:

"HELP"

2 comments:

Thomas said...

God damn but I love bar horror stories. That's about 2/3rds of a bar's appeal to me, their potential for ridiculous, skeezy conversations a hairpin turn away from a fist fight. That potential seems to be inversely related to drink price too!

Jon said...

I enjoy ridiculous bar situations too, honestly. I only get pissed when I'm actually doing something important and the crazy person involved steadfastly refuses to leave me alone no matter how rude I get.