Three Guys At A Bar Somewhere

“Bro! Bro. Did you see that game last night? Tell me you saw that fucking game.”

This is Pat.

This is how Pat says hello.

Pat does not say hello like a normal person.

No, I tell him. I did not see the game.

I also tell him that I’m pissed at him.

Pat blew off work this morning, and I had to do lunch all by my lonesome.

But Pat is undeterred by such irrelevant details.

“Oh, bro. Bro. I wish they’d give me a chance. I wish they’d give me one chance to talk to management, because I know I could turn this team around.”

Is this basketball? I ask.

Or hockey.

“Bro,” he says.

“This is football,” Pat says.

Oh. Right. Football.

We’ve agreed to meet at a bar in the most recently gentrified part of town. It’s called Town Hall because—wait for it—the building used to serve as the actual town hall. The original red brick walls still stand, but the remainder of the interior is brand new, including a twenty-five foot marble bar, exposed brushed-aluminum ventilation ducts, a wall of coolers that hold hundreds of different kinds of beer, and a state of the art kitchen that pumps out everything from gourmet jalapeño cheese poppers to fifty dollar filet mignons. It’s beautiful. It’ll probably be closed in a year.

They have seventy-six different beers (India Pale Ales and stouts, mostly) on draft, but my order is the same as it is everywhere else: Jameson’s, neat.

“Jägerbomb for me,” Pat says to the manbunned bartender. 

I ask him if he still drinks them like a pussy.

“That’s what your mom said last night.”

My mom asked him if he drinks Jägerbombs like a pussy?

“Shut up. Bro. The game.”

The bartender brings over a shot glass of chilled Jägermeister and a pint glass half-filled with Red Bull. Pat pours the shot into the glass and sips his beverage like a sommelier sampling a 1982 Chateu Lafite.

And then, against every good instinct I have, despite the fact that I know I will regret this in a few minutes, even though I am screaming at myself to remain silent—

I ask him what happened.

Ten to fifteen minutes later, I have the recap: the quarterback can’t throw, the receivers can’t catch, the coach doesn’t understand clock management, and the defense can’t…do defense. (?) Not only is Pat able to identify these problems, he is also in possession of the solutions.

There’s only one problem.

“I know, I know,” he says. “I don’t own the team.”

Not only does he not own the team, he’s not in charge of any aspect of the team. And not only is he not in charge of any aspect of the team, he doesn’t even work for the team. Or for the stadium that the team plays in. Or for the city that the stadium is in. He’s like me—a line cook at a shitty downtown restaurant.

“But just hear me out,” he says.

Pat, as usual, has a plan.

“Here’s the plan,” he tells me. “Mathematically, we’re still not eliminated from the playoffs yet. So, we have a mid-season—”

Sorry, I have to interrupt Pat for a moment to point out that I love when he uses the pronoun “we” to describe his favorite team. As though he, a fan, is a part of this organization and possesses a tangible share of the responsibility when they win, lose, or draw.

And I by “love,” I actually mean it drives me fucking crazy.

“—meeting with the owner, the general manager, the head coach, the offensive coordinator, the defensive coordinator, the special teams coordinator, the four team captains, and me.”

And, I say.

You’re going to tell them what to change, and they’re just going to listen to you?

He looks at me like I’ve asked if the sun is bright and shines during the day.

“Of course,” he says.

“Why wouldn’t they?”

I sigh. Take a drink of my Jameson’s. Pat sips at his Jägerbomb, and I can smell it—the intoxicating aroma of licorice, college, poor decisions, juniper berries, and shame. How many times have I scrubbed Red Bull-flavored vomit from someone’s bathroom floor? And how am I going to respond to Pat, my friend, one of my only friends, because in this world, thou who doth beg shall not be thou who doth choose. Should I tell him to give it the ol’ college try, and be there for him when not one person from the team’s staff responds to his email? Should I tell him the truth, that he’s a complete fucking idiot who needs to purchase a one-way ticket to the world the rest of us occupy? Should I set up an elaborate prank, hire actors to stand in for these people—the owner, general manager, et cetera—and make him believe that the team actually wants/values/needs his input? 

In the end, I simply say,

You seem really upset.

I say this because it’s harmless, and it’s the truth.

“Bro,” he says emphatically and finishes his drink.

“I almost didn’t come out tonight,” he tells me.

I laugh, because I think he’s joking.

He stares at me with the candor of someone sitting in the front row of a funeral.

He’s not joking.

Jesus, I say.

When I joke about suicide hotlines needing additional help when the football team loses, I say.

You’re the one I’m joking about, I tell him.

He holds up his arm and brandishes a wristband from the local hospital.

“Why do you think I called off this morning?” he asks me.

---

When I finally got my prison outdate, all of my buddies in Echo Bravo were far more excited about it than I was. One of my friends, a guy who’s been locked up since 1996, was so excited, you’d think he was the one getting sprung. How many times did I answer the “first meal as a free man” question? How many people did I promise to stay in touch with? In a place inhabited almost exclusively by narcissistic men who valued their own personal desires above the laws of society, I was shocked by the seemingly altruistic excitement that a decent chunk of the compound had in regards to my release.

And don’t get me wrong—I was excited. No longer being locked down because someone in my unit may have stolen a Phillips-head screwdriver from the chow hall? Not having to smell the rot of fruit in the middle of the night when the Mexicans are producing their latest vintage? Never again walking into the bathroom at the library only to find one of the “original gangsters” and a deucehead transgender playing Hide the Pickle? Check, check, and double-fucking-check. Leaving prison was for sure something to celebrate.

But it is by no means the end. It is not, Okay, get in the car and drive home with your family and now your life is all better because you’re “free”—whatever the fuck that means. I’m a felon, a convict. A criminal. And in prison, so is everyone else. The playing field is leveled, and someone like me who has half a brain and ambition can rise to the top as I did in my pre-incarceration life. 

Out on the street, outside the fence, things are different. My skills haven’t diminished, but so many doors are closed to me. Which is why I’m working as a line cook at this shitty downtown restaurant with Pat. Because after two years of being out, that’s all I can get. And I should be lucky to have what I have.

Before my arrest, my incarceration—before I was a criminal—I was a leader. I was in charge of shit. I was aggressively ambitious. Nothing was ever good enough, and I used that mentality to improve upon myself. When shit hit the fan, I was the guy who people looked to so the ship could be righted once more, and I relished that role.

Today, I am in charge of nothing. Not even my own life.

There are some days I love this. When a server comes back to the line looking for a manager to deal with an asshole customer, that manager isn’t me. It’s someone else—anyone else. But not me.

There are days when I see my lack of responsibility as the best thing that ever happened to me.

There are also days when I wake up and brush my teeth and wash my face and look in the mirror and see all the wasted potential, the never-to-be-used ideas, the contributions I used to make to society, could still be contributing towards society. All of that ability remains, although dormant. I could turn it on today, if I wanted to.

If someone else—anybody else—wanted me to.

But those days are past.

That shit is over.

---

Pat has met a stranger at the bar who is just as interested in talking about last night’s game as he is. That’s the good news.

The bad news is, this stranger is sitting on my left side and Pat is on my right. I am ensconced. Insufferable sports talk radio in Dolby 7.1.

It doesn’t help that what is going on at the moment isn’t a conversation in the most literal interpretation of the word. From the way I’ve always understood it, a conversation is when Person A says something that Person B listens to; then, Person B will respond to Person A’s initial statement, at which point Person A responds to Person B’s response, and so on.

This is not the scenario that’s taking place at the moment. They are just saying things to each other. Sentences that have little context in regards to what the other person has said.

 Imagine you have two old, shitty, late-90s boomboxes, each with a yellowed, worn out cassette tape of two people babbling on about nonsense. You hit play on each of them, alternating, both of them spewing out pearls of wisdom, but not listening to each other at all. Because they can’t. Because they’re late-90s boomboxes.

Tape #1: NOTHING ELSE MATTERS IF YOU DONT HAVE A FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK.

Tape #2: THE COACH HAS LOST THE ROOM. THATS THE NUMBER ONE PROBLEM WITH THIS TEAM.

Tape #1: WE WILL NEVER WIN A GAME BECAUSE THE REFS HATE US. EVERYONE KNOWS THE REFS DONT WANT US TO WIN.

Tape #2: THEY USED TO SOD THE FIELD WITH A DIFFERENT KIND OF GRASS TWENTY YEARS AGO EVER SINCE THEY CHANGED IT ITS ALL GONE DOWNHILL.

Tape #1: THIS GUY WHO WORKS WITH MY UNCLE KNOWS SOMEONE WHO WORKS FOR THE TEAM AND HE SAYS THE TEAM HAS TO HAVE A CERTAIN PER CENTAGE OF BLACK PLAYERS AT ALL TIMES AND THATS WHY WE HAD TO TRADE OUR STARTING LINEBACKER LAST YEAR.

Tape #2: THOSE ALTERNATE UNIFORMS THEY WEAR SOMETIMES ARE CURSED.

Tape #1: IF THE LEAGUE GAVE US A BALANCED SCHEDULE WE WOULD ACTUALLY HAVE A SHOT.

Tape #2: NOTHING ELSE MATTERS IF YOU DONT HAVE A FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK.

And as I sip at my Jameson’s, praying that this nectar of the Irish gods will eviscerate the dendrites in my brain responsible for remembering this conversation, I ask myself if I should have these two lunatics committed. I think there’s an outpatient mental health center about three blocks down this street. Hey, I enjoy watching a game of “chase the ball” as much as the next guy, but whatever emotional reaction I get from the game lasts about twenty seconds after the game is over. It’s been almost twenty-four hours, and these two guys are still on this shit. 

“You don’t say much, do you dude?”

There’s a pregnant pause before I realize the stranger is talking to me. He’s wearing a wool ski cap even though it was seventy-five degrees out today, and he smells like someone who works a half-day at Hollister and a half-day spreading manure on a cauliflower farm. A solid thirty minutes have passed before he has acknowledged my presence, and now I’m too flabbergasted to say anything in response.

“Bro?” Pat says, nudging me on the shoulder. 

I think the fact that I haven’t said anything is pretty self-explanatory—but then I remember who I’m talking to. 

I want to say, You’re crazy. Or, You’re fucking nuts. Something in that vein. How do I explain something so simple to someone who is obviously so incapable of understanding it? Like explaining red to a blind person. Or to a deaf person, the aural joy of ‘Stacy’s Mom’ by Fountains of Wayne. This can’t be explained simply—otherwise, they’d know it already. 

I was just wondering, I say.

These guys you’re talking about—the quarterback, the coach, the linebacker.

“What about ‘em?” the stranger asks.

I tell them, I was just wondering if those three guys are out at a bar somewhere.

Talking about us, I say.

Or someone like us, I explain.

Wondering about us and our lives.

And whether or not we matter.

Three guys at a bar somewhere.

Pat finishes his Jägerbomb.

The stranger sets down a half-eaten Korean barbecue wing.

And says,

“Dude. You’re fucking nuts.”

Yeah, I say.

Probably.

---

Ever see the movie Heat? The one with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro? The black guy in the movie who does Allstate commercials—what’s his name?—plays an ex-con who gets out of prison and finds a job as a short order cook. His manager is a dick who profits off parolees, but Allstate perseveres. At the end, De Niro’s crew is about to rob a bank and needs someone to drive and cover the radios. Allstate tells the dick manager to fuck off, then goes off to do the thing he’s always been good at.

Two factors motivated Allstate’s return to the world of crime. Obviously one of them was the dick manager. But the other motivator—the stronger motivator—was an intrinsic one. For Allstate, he had spent a life in crime honing his skills, carving out his place in the world. This wasn’t just what he did, it was who he was. Yeah, it was illegal. But the laws of the land mean nothing in the face of identity. 

The universe is so big and has been around for such a long time, and we spend our lives convincing ourselves that, despite the math, we matter. But when the circumstances of life tear that identity from us, everything comes off the table. 

Who I was—the person who I spent my life becoming—no longer exists.

And the universe is so big and has been around such a long time.

Who will I become?

Why should I care?

Pat’s having another Jägerbomb. He’s probably going to drink it like a pussy.

But who cares? The old version of me, I guess.

And those days are past.

That shit is over.

And maybe that’s a good thing—I don’t want to go back to prison, after all. Phillips-head screwdrivers and rotting fruit and Hide the Pickle.

But I just don’t know where I’m going. Where I’m supposed to go. Going back would be so easy.

“Bro,” Pat says.

“If I can get us tickets for next week’s game,” he starts,

“Would you wanna go with me?”

The bartender comes by.

Points to my glass.

I nod.

And say,

Yeah.

I think I’d love to go, I tell Pat.