Hot Summer Night
I got to the bar a little early on a way too hot summer evening. I’d ended up walking all the way down from the shop (thirty or so blocks) and by the time I got there, all I wanted was a cold, cold beer and some Tom Waits. A humid South Philly in the summertime is not so fun (and it smells kind of odd). What I got was an amazing blast from the past and a fantastic friend…. Back. Kinda.. You’ll see.
I was supposed to meet the Scumbag for a few drinks before I went to a show up in Old City. A few other people I knew really love the headliner, but in typical finn fashion, I was more interested in the opening act. I figured I’d meet the Scumbag, have a few drinks, walk up to Old City, take in the show and end the evening in a basement bar that wasn’t far from the venue. Because Odin knows I hadn’t walked far enough that day. But, five minutes after I’d arrived, the Scumbag called to let me know he’d be working late and wasn’t going to make it. I cursed his boss (and my own forgetful mind, as was the one who’d assigned him the project and given him a deadline that I knew was too short), and resigned myself to a quiet early evening of beer,Waits and the Murakami book I had in my bag. I pulled it out and slapped it onto the bar, waiting for the bartender to come over and ask me what I was reading. She always seemed to feign interest in whatever I was reading and I could never really tell if she was hitting on me.
But, this time, she wasn’t about. I could hear her talking to the guy ho came in a few minutes after I did, at a table behind me. At least I hoped she was talking to him. He and I were the only ones in the bar. “No, no, no… “ the male voice behind me started, “You’re missing the entire point of the clockwork castle.” After listening for another minute or so, I realized he was talking about The Watchmen. It’s a fairly fantastic read story wise and the art is littered with symbolic references that really reinforce who the characters are. At on point in the story, one of the characters creates a clockwork castle out of the dust on Mars and… Just read the damn book. But a good many of the points that the male voice was making reminded me of a conversation I’d had years before with someone I’d worked with in the bookstore. So I turned around on my stool and wasn’t too terribly surprised to see Mr. Wilson talking to the bartender about a comic book.
Mr. Wilson and I had fallen out of touch for absolutely no reason. And it was a shame, really, because during our tenure in the bookstore, he and I had become pretty close. Not “close” in a “we work together and I know small bits and pieces of your personal life” but actually close. Like getting arrested together close. Talking our way out of ugly biker bars close. He came to my first wedding and shared many a bottle with me. But, for the life of me, I couldn’t give you one reason why we had stopped talking to each other after I left the bookstore, except for the one I usually use. I’m crap at communicating with people.
So when I turned around and said “Hey, Mr. Wilson!”, he looked just as surprised as I did. It had been years since we’d seen each other, but it felt like about ten minutes. We sat and talked and drank for a while before I had to go. And it was just like it always had been, back in our younger days. The more we sat around a talked, the more I missed those old days. I made it a point to tell him so, and we made plans to see each other and hang out the next week. It’s not often you run into someone you haven’t seen in a long time and still have your relationship feel like old times. And when it happens, go with it kids… If I hadn’t run into him again, I wouldn’t be married again or have my little Uberbeast. You just might be surprised what you’ll get out of the deal.
thefinn isn't afraid of what he'll find, but he won't pick up a dollar bill that's on the ground. Archives
A couple of days later, he and I met up at the diner near the shop for lunch. And, in a somewhat strange turn of events for us, the conversation turned to women. Like I said before, Geoff and I had worked together for a few years, but for some reason, the topic of women had never come up. I guess it was because Geoff was scared of them. Well, no, not necessarily scared of them, but the possibility of rejection by them. To which I was flabbergasted. Geoff’s a decent looking kid in his thirties; he drives a nice car and has a better job than I do. He’s pretty neat and a pretty snappy dresser. I didn’t see the problem. The odds of him being rejected by your standard woman seemed a little low to me.
And that’s only fifteen or so minutes of my life. There’s hours of this crap. How about the time I was trying to impress a cheerleader with my leet skateboarding skills ? That’s kind of a long story, but let’s just say I ended up on my back with blood spurting from my nose and I was pretty sure I was paralyzed. What about when I finally got up the nerve to ask Gina Magana out and then proceeded to vomit all over her shoes ? Or the time I got sucker punched outside a bar and ended face first in dog shit. I actually laugh about that one now. You see what I mean. Any other person would be mortified. Terminal embarrassment. But not this kid. Because I really don’t let it stop me. So what if I broke my nose trying to impress a girl ? I eventually got her to like me and we dated for a while. I won the fight with dog shit on my face. And it cleans up pretty good, with a little soap and water, and if you’re too drunk to care that you missed a spot behind your ear. While Gina didn’t speak to me again after I blew chunks on her Chucks, her friend did. 
Everyone who knows me knows that I have a penchant for Japanese food. Well, perhaps penchant isn't a strong enough word. A compulsion to seek out good Japanese may be a better description. Whenever I'm in a new area, I always check for three things, Japanese food, tobacconists and bars. Kind of sums up my big three vices right there. Lemme tell ya, if I ever find a bar with good sake and sushi that sells me French cigarettes, I may never go home. 
So, I popped my head in and was immediately greeted by Shiro, the owner. He’s a very smiley, quiet(ish) guy who makes the best damn quick Japanese I’ve ever had. Make no mistake about it, I’m not talking about gourmet food. I’m talking about sushi, teriyaki and udon. Nothing terribly fancy, but this man makes shumai that you’ll kill your mother for. The place is tiny. There’s window bench seating and a large common table right in the middle of the restaurant. And that’s it as far as seating goes. It’s family style because Shiro likes to talk to everyone who sits down in his joint. He likes to meet with them and find out what they like and don’t like. He’s incredibly personable and really likes to get to know the people who frequent his establishment. People who come back here come back fantastic food that’s reasonably cheap and for Shiro’s consistent good mood
older games that you may not have had any luck finding at garage sales, swap meets, etc.) when something caught my eye. It was a game that I used to be really good at once and it got me into some serious trouble. I hadn’t played it since.
I got eaten alive the first time I played. It was a Sunday morning and there was no one in the arcade except the attendant, a younger Asian kid and myself. As soon as I walked in, I headed over the Street fighter II machine and dropped a quarter. About two minutes into it, my character had been pounded into dust and I was dropping another quarter. The Asian kid came over and started giving some pointers here and there. And after about ten minutes, I was completely hooked. The Asian kid started playing against me a little after that, stomping me every time we played. But I kept at it until I was out of quarters and went back for more. After a week or so of playing at the arcade in the mornings, I got good enough to consistently take the Asian kid down. Since he wouldn’t play against me, and since I worked the afternoons and nights (when the arcade would be full), I started looking around for more machines. And, as luck would have it, I found one. 
Which I did for several hours. There were a few guys in the line that provided me with some decent competition, but for the most part I was running the show. Until He came along. A tall redneck with a mullet and a trucker cap, who was insistent on beating me. He had come up through the line like everyone else, talking shit to the guys in front and back of him. He’d been drinking almost as much as I had (after the first four or five rounds, some of the guys around the machine had started to play me for drinks) and by the time he and I were ready to square off, he was slurring like a madman. He finished the rum and coke he had been drinking as he came up to the machine, looked me square in the eye and said “Boy, I’m gonna beat your ass one way or another.” 
The booze slowed my reaction time. While looking for an opening I barely noticed his left coming at me. I ducked my head back just in time to save my chin, but not fast enough to save my glasses. He clipped the right lens ever so slightly and knocked them off my face. Let’s get one thing straight, I go Velma immediately without my glasses. I can see about three feet in front of me, but no more. And when I heard them hit the ground and the lenses shatter, I lost it. Fuck being nice to this asshole. All I did was beat him at a video game and he just broke my glasses that I can’t afford to replace. So I rushed him. I got right up in his face and pinned his right arm back. I told him to knock it off and he spit on me. Right in the face. So I head butted him, right in the bridge of the nose. I heard the cartilage go and his scream when his nose broke. I felt him go a little limp in my arms, so I let him drop and proceeded to kick him in the ribs while he was down. After two or three good kicks, I felt my arms get grabbed from behind me and I was pinned against the wall.
Matt Helm (as portrayed by Dean Martin in four films) is a smooth, sauced, roll with the punches kinda guy. Dean Martin basically took his onstage persona for these films (The Silencers, Murderer’s Row, The Ambushers and The Wrecking Crew) and applied to the tried and true “spy film” formula. Hilarity ensues as he fires off one liners and get himself out of all kinds of sticky situations with humor, wit and just a dash of cunning. And, as always, the beautiful thing about the Matt Helm movies isn’t the gadgets (although his “ten second delay” gun is pretty hot) or the dames. It’s Dino, being Dino. Throughout most of “The Silencers”, he’s a little hit or miss with the “I’m a little drunk and people are trying to kill me” routine but by the time we get to “Murderer’s Row”, the man’s got it down pat. He’s suave, debonair, half in the bag and he always gets the girl. It’s entertaining as hell to watch Dino does what he does best, be Dean Martin.
When I think of James Coburn, I don’t think wise talking International Man of Mystery. I think of the cool, calculated killer he’s played a million times. But that was before I saw “Our Man Flint” and “In Like Flint”. Super cool secret agent Derek Flint lives in seclusion, surrounded by beautiful women and a doting staff that care for this no retired secret agent. But when a mysterious organization called GALAXY threaten the planet; he’s called into action once again. Armed only with his sidearm, a multifunction cigarette lighter and that sly Coburn smile, Flint saves the world and looks good doing it. While Bond can be interpreted as pretentious and self confident to the point of arrogant, Flint is the epitome of cool. There’s no questioning it. Any man who can fight his way through a madman’s army using only his feet and walk away with five new girlfriends is a man to be reckoned with.
I Spy wasn’t originally a movie (and if one person brings it up, it’s curtains for ya….) but was instead a fairly complex, dialogue heavy show about a pair of secret agents who worked for the US Government. Robert Culp played Robinson and Bill “Puddin’ Pops” Cosby played Scott, a pair of agents who masqueraded as a tennis pro and his trainer. Their cover was that they were a couple of tennis guys who bummed around and played tennis against rich people, mainly for cash and room and board. In reality, they were tracking spies and traitors and taking them down. The interplay between Culp and The Cos is why this show is still a classic. I haven’t seen chemistry this good between two men in well… Let’s not go into that now. Let’s just say that I was young and my girlfriend thought it’d be hot. These two play off each other so well that at times you forget that they’re out to kill and imprison people for the government. Can’t recommend this one highly enough. 
That’s the inherent problem with becoming friends with the people who serve you booze regularly…. You end up hanging out until four or five in the morning, hitting up every after hours joint in the city… Checking out strippers drinking themselves stupid after a hard night of shit tips and shittier customers (“You’re not so pretty when your forehead bounces off the table after your fifth tequila shot, kiddo”)…. Barbacks bitching about their tips and some sous-chef at some frou-frou joint up the street (“Ice… That motherfucker wants ice and I have three customers asking for me. Me!!”)… The same handful of young waitresses lined up to use the bathroom, over and over again ("Did you leave the mirror?") And my friends, the bartenders…. Well, shit man, they’re tired… They just wanna put their feet up for a little bit, have a beer and chill for a few minutes (“Take my shoes off and… ahhh.”)…. 
I call it quits around eleven, after some small talk about the previous night with the barback. The crowd is starting to head in. They’re getting loud and tonight, apparently I don’t feel like loud. I head back to the neighborhood, pick up a six and a bottle of whiskey for when I get home. Open the door to my little hovel with fumbling hands and say “Hi” to Guinness (the cat) who barely glances in my direction. Open a beer and turn on the TV….
I really never noticed until I started hanging out with Jonny D. While he wasn’t exactly a genius, he was capable of simple feats, like following directions. He and I started building models right around the same time. Scale stuff of tanks and jeeps. Mostly so we could blow them up later. While he would always fly through them, I always struggled. It just seemed like the directions never made sense, no matter how many times I read them. I’d sit there and look at the pieces for a half hour and always end up with something that looked nothing like what I was trying build. I’d do a lot better if I didn’t look at the directions at all, but most times I’d feel lucky that my fingers weren’t stuck together. 
improvement place, trying to figure out if I could justify the cost of a 5000 piece ratchet set on the off chance that I might actually need and use four or five of them. The first and only project I undertook for the house was to replace the garbage disposal. It took me all day, the kitchen sink was completely unusable and I still had to call a plumber to finish the job and make my sink useable again. After that, I started to gather phone numbers of reliable repairmen. 
halfway through my cuppa and a smoke in the backyard, I started to remember the dream I’d been having before my eyes popped open. I’d been home for Christmas.
Walking down that long, long hallway, knowing that at the end of it, there’d be coffee, a great breakfast and a kiss on the cheek from the Momma-san. We’d all go our separate ways after breakfast, but for those few minutes, we acted like a “family”. 
One of the things I love best about the town though is the winters. It doesn’t get really cold (negative numbers once you factor in the wind chill)until mid January or so, but it is cold enough to snow for the majority of December. And that’s all I’m waiting for this holiday season. You can keep the trees and the presents. I just want snow.
The place was small, almost claustrophobic. Marco was by no means a small guy, he used to play semi pro football, but he was a giant in the place. He covered three quarters of the table with his paws and his legs and feet were actually hugging the pole that ran up the middle. I actually wondered where the waiter was gonna put the food, so I jumped into the table right next to ours. The waiter took our order and brought us our food. He and I had been goofing around and talking all day, so mostly we ate in silence, feeding the machines so we could get up in the morning and finish this mess up. 
Around 7:00, Marco came over to check on me. I’d been in bed for an hour or so, trying desperately to get some sleep and not move at the same time. Every time I moved I thought that the dreaded bathroom cycle would begin again and I was in no mood to spend any more time in that bathroom. He checked me out and told me he’d be back, returning a half hour or so later with a couple of loaves of white bread and some Gatorade. Just so I’d have something in me to throw up. 
The town’s too damn quiet for me in my current state of mind. If I'm gonna shake this funk, I need loud music and 24 hour party people to spend some time with. People who yell "Whoo" in a bar and order rounds for the entire bar. People I usually can't stand. Exactly what I need. The complete antithesis of everything I look for in a bar. And from here, it's about 10 blocks to Old City, where every bar is an expensive party and every restaurant is a "dining experience". Because I'd never go to a "dining experience" under normal circumstances.... But maybe that's what I need right now. Something I'd never do.
These are not my people. I need dirt and desperation and a jukebox that doesn’t contain Justin Timberlake. I want a slightly sticky bar and barely any overhead lighting. I want surly bartenders and a wait staff that doesn’t give a fuck if I’m having a good time or not. And I am obviously not going to find it here. 
Basement bar. Concrete floors. Brick pillars doing more than their share of holding up the fifteen or so stories above me. A little dirt and some cheap heavy stools. Prayer candles written in Spanish are the only source of illumination and a there’s jukebox playing The Pixies. Carnival and religious memorabilia lining the floors and walls. And there’s a couch along the back wall and a table for my laptop. 
"Good evening, Officer,” I smiled. He gave me a look that said “Split.” So me and the redhead did just that. We were half a block away when we heard the rest of the cops pull up and saw the lights flashing behind us. We kept on down the street and hopped into a train station. Once we were down the steps she and I went our separate ways and I never saw her again. 
Two more blocks to the house and I still wasn’t any closer to figuring out whether I was just being paranoid or if there really was a good reason that the cops were tailing us. Jonny wasn’t dealing nearly as many drugs as he used to, Andy quit beating people up in the street… Hell, the house had been deadly quiet for months now. Ever since Angela had left…. Oh crap.
“Look,” he said, “I’m not really gonna have time to watch you. Your mother’s gonna be working a lot and your siblings will have school and stuff, so… I guess this is where I tell you that you need to start acting like a man.”
When I was younger, I did more than my share of experimenting. I did my share, your share and I borrowed quite heavily from everyone you know. So, if you’re reading this and you haven’t so much as smoked a joint, I’m sorry. I took your share of the drugs. I stayed up for days at a time, completely out of my head. And I’d do it again.
I have always loved record stores. Big ones, small ones, even the ones that look like junk shops. I love the smell of old cardboard and the dusty, stale air that you only find in a record store. I love the sound of the needle as it clicks into the groove. And I love the people who work in record stores. The stoners and the serious musicians, the artists and the critics. The guys who’ll quote you the first and last names of everyone who played a session with Miles Davis in ’65. The longhair who smells of something long dead that works your last nerve with his consistent talk of Sabbath. Freaks, every last one of ‘em. But they were my kind of freaks. 
I was walking around town last night with the baby on my shoulders. He and I had been singing “Whoo Hoo” by the 5.6.7.8.’s for about three blocks when I finally decided to pop into the Tower on Broad Street and pick up a copy of the album. At least that way, I figured, I could share the pain with my wife when I wasn’t home. And when we got to the entrance I was shocked by the signs on the door. “Bankruptcy Sale” glared at me in looming letters five feet tall. “Everything Must Go!” and “All Sales Are Final” pasted on every non-horizontal surface. Tower had finally succumbed like most of the smaller record stores in town.
At FTTW, we believe that our writers are our company’s strongest asset. We troll the four corners of the earth, seeking out and courting only the most talented young writers. New writers are handled tenderly and gingerly, in much the same way you might care for and cultivate a flower. We strive to breed creativity in a nurturing and caring workplace. But we’re not training flowers here at FTTW. We want thought-killing machines of incredible prejudice. We want you to write so well, other pages with written words become a vague memory in our audience’s minds. With that in mind, every minute you are at work must be spent at work, producing content for the company. If, for any reason, you are unable to produce for the company, please alert your supervisor. As an extra incentive to inspire your creativity, please be reminded that if you don’t produce, we will kill you and your entire family.
Jonny D. called me on his tenth birthday. His party wasn’t for another two days, but his father had gotten him a dog as a present and he was so damn excited he couldn’t wait to tell me. “He’s freaking huge,” he exclaimed. I asked my mother if I could go over to his place after school the next day so we could walk the dog and play with him.
During that summer, a group of kids would roam the neighborhood. And one day, they got it into them to pick on Petey. Jonny and I had been over at my place hanging out and drawing comics. He had been telling me about the new issue of Deathlock that he’d picked up and we decided to head over to his place to get it. When we got there, we’d heard the group of kids in the back, yelling at Petey and taunting him. We came around the side of the house and saw that a couple of them were poking at him with sticks and throwing rocks at him. Petey had a couple of decent cuts and was barking at the kids. We chased them off and cleaned Petey up.
Tonight the family and I were wandering around the neighborhood, checking out the Halloween decorations on peoples homes and dodging kids hopped up on sugar and anonymity. We tried to take the boy trick or treating, but he lost interest not long afterwards. I guess he’s just used to people telling him he’s adorable and giving him candy. We ended up back at the house fairly early and I ordered a pizza from the place up the street. A few kids came to the door and I asked the boy if he wanted to give the kids some candy. I can’t tell you how excited he got by the prospect, so the family and I sat out on the front porch as the steady stream of kids came through. The boy got to give them candy and I honestly think he enjoyed that so much more than trick or treating himself.
He was also in a foul mood, because two nights earlier he’d gotten into a fight at the train station. Another guy on the platform had been fighting with his wife for a bit when he finally hauled off and smacked her, knocking her to the ground. The kid had stepped in between the man and his wife, telling the man to knock it off or he’d call the cops. As payment rendered for his Good Samaritan services, the man socked him in the mouth, breaking off one of his front teeth at an odd angle. It’s been digging into his bottom lip for the last two days and generally fouling his mood. With no bartender to flirt with and a grill that looked properly broken, the kid decided to drown his Halloween blues in Specials all night long. 
“You scumbag little motherfucker!!” he yelled. I whipped my head around to see what was going on. The Vest was three quarters of the way over the bar, and about to land on what looked like a prone figure on the floor. Then I realized that the prone figure was wearing the same shoes as the kid. At first I thought that maybe The Vest had popped him one and the kid was on the floor as a result. But The Vest was a big guy and one shot from his meaty paws would’ve killed the kid. So the kid had to have already been on the floor when The Vest yelled at him. Just then I noticed that the table next to the jukebox contained nothing but young, pretty girls. In long skirts. On barstools. 
He came down hard after he came over the bar and picked the kid up by his neck. I bid the cook a hasty farewell and headed down to the other end of the bar. Not terribly fast because if the kid got socked, he deserved it. But he didn’t deserve a serious ass kicking and I now I’d have to talk The Vest into putting the kid down so we could get the hell outta there. “I’ll oughta fucking kill you,” The Vest bellowed, “right fucking now!” I walked a little faster. “Hey,” I yelled, just to get his attention, “He hasn’t wronged you. Let your girl take a shot at him if you’re both that pissed off. But put him down. He can’t breathe.”
One day in early March, long after the divorce but not long before I’d decided to kill myself with the drink, my father rang me up. He and I hadn’t seen much of each other in the last couple of years and we were never real big about talking on the phone. We’d chit chat here and there but for the most part we’d only talk when we were around each other. He caught me totally off guard with the phone call and when I heard the tone in his voice, I immediately thought that something was wrong. He sounded really upbeat, cheerful in fact. My father, even in a stellar mood, never sounded as happy as he did on the phone that day. 
The week goes by in a mostly drunken stupor and late on Friday night I straggled in and packed up what I’d need in my old frame pack. That poor thing hadn’t seen the light of day in years and it felt really good to break it back out and fill it with everything I’d need for a week in the woods. The old man figured that we could cover the whole trail in the time we had and while I disagreed, I knew we could get through most of it. The simple fact was that it was 70 miles of rocky, mountainous terrain and I knew the old man wouldn’t be able to keep up as well as he thought he could. His emphysema had gotten worse over the years and there were some days when he just couldn’t go as fast as he had in the past. I didn’t want to rain on his parade, but I mapped another route, just in case. 
For some reason, my brain jumped from there to one of my other favorite films. Something I saw a dozen times when I was a kid, but really holds an entirely different meaning for me now. Most of you know how I met my wife. But nobody knows about the first date. 
We grabbed a couple of beers and tried to make small talk, but the simple fact was, I had no desire to make time with her in a meaningless, let’s shoot the shit kinda way. I wanted to kiss her and smell her skin and talk to her about records and music. If you know me at all, you’ll know that the last is very important. If I’m willing to sit and talk to you for hours on end about music, I’m trying to get you attention. It’s the only thing in my life that ranks up there with my wife and kid, so don’t try and bring that Rick Springfield shit. So we sat and made small talk until I mentioned a show I wanted to go to in a couple of days. And she immediately caught on. Band names started flying, guitarists we respected and lyrics we thought were cool. Serious nerd shit, but I live for stuff like that. We almost missed the beginning of the movie. 
That’s why it was a little odd when my baby sister called to tell me she was coming up for a visit. I’d always made it known to the family that they had an open door policy to come and visit. My baby brother had been up to see me every time he could get leave from the Marines and whenever he had come up we made it into “Boys Time”. Drinking for hours in my favorite bar, hitting up the casino’s in Atlantic City and being generally sleazy individuals. All in good fun, of course. When my sister called me and told me she needed a little downtime, I told to come on up. We’d hang out and I could show her the town and she could relax.
Once again, I woke up before her, so I made some coffee and turned on the news. The Today Show, I think it was. I distinctly remember sitting on the couch, watching my breath and the steam from the coffee mingle when I first heard the words. “We’re just getting word that a plane has struck one of the two towers of the World Trade Center.” I was pretty dumbfounded as they kept showing the footage over and over, speculating about what might have caused the crash. Watching several floors of the building disintegrate as the jet fuel ignited and obliterated everything in its path. I started wondering about Danny and Paul, two guys I used to work with and hoping for their family’s sake that they were in the other tower. I sat there mesmerized for about fifteen minutes when my sister woke up and asked what was going on. We sat on the couch, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes as the second plane hit. And as the speculation continued, I saw her face grow more and more worried. William. 
Once we left the apartment, we were stunned by how quiet the city was. No cabs, no pedestrians, no nothing. Everyone was shut up in their homes, trying make sense of what happened. Every street we walked down was deserted and most everything was closed up. I knew the Living Room wouldn’t be, because the crowd on a Tuesday night was a hardcore drinking crowd. And since the world was ending, I knew it’d be open to give them a place to get loaded. We got to the bar and were greeted immediately by the Ramones on the jukebox and a mostly empty bar. But Mikey the bartender was there slinging drinks and we managed to have a good time despite the fact that no one knew what tomorrow would bring. 
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension sent me spinning the first time I saw it…. Words almost fail me when I try to describe to other people how cool this movie is. “See, there’s this really hot car,” is usually how I start, “and this guy drives it through a mountain, immediately after performing brain surgery and just before he has a show at the hottest rock club in Jersey City… And then the good aliens come to contact him because the evil aliens are trying to destroy the world, but he’s all wrapped up in his newly found dead wife’s twin and….” And I usally come off like a blathering idiot. Which isn’t unusual when I’m trying to describe the convoluted plot of one of my favorite sci-fi movies.
Bugs – Every little boy likes bugs you’re thinking to yourself, right? Not this kid. They had too many legs and way too many eyes. They wore their skeletons on the outside and the damn things were everywhere. I think I was six or seven when I read that the insect population outnumbered the human population 150 million to one. And I immediately came to the conclusion that if they ever decided to feast on human flesh, it’d take about two weeks for them to take us all out. As a youngster, the thought of a swarm of insects pulling at my flesh and tearing out my eyes just to make a meal of me terrified me. For weeks after I learned that nifty little nugget, I was convinced that every bug I saw was an advance scout for the coming Insect Invasion. I wanted desperately to kill them all, destroy every damn bug I came into contact with, just in case they decided to turn on us. Because what’s the use of being part of an Insect Invasion if I don’t have my eyes to watch it with ?
The first thoughts that went through my mind were not very clear. I couldn’t tell if I was being mugged by Roscoe P. Coltrane or if I had somehow incurred the wrath of another southern sheriff. I knew there was a taser in the back of my neck, because after a while, you just get used to these things. What I didn’t know was who was on the other end of it. “You gonna turn around real slow now,” he continued. “And you’re gonna put that thing back in your pants and hand me your identification.” It seemed to be an odd thing for a mugger to say, so I replied with the first though that came into my head. “Can I… um, finish first ?”
But where to go ? The city was littered with my castoffs. You couldn’t walk two blocks in Old City or Uptown without running into a bar I’d been to a couple of times and decided I didn’t like it for one reason or another. Either the jukebox sucked or the service was bad or there were too many college kids or… Hell, sometimes I think I just made up reason not to like a certain place. As a result, I’d become a connoisseur of the “Old Man” bar. The quiet joint where there were three or four old guys who were always at the bar. They didn’t talk to each other, much less the bartender. They would just sit and watch the TV and sip their beers. A little quiet and solitude in a very busy city. And they were fantastic. The bad TV, the lack of anyone coked up and talking about how they could change the world and the complete and total anonymity. The “Old Man” bars were hidden all over the city and it became sort of a mission to find them all. I thought about writing a book once about them, just something to put into my bag. A quick ref for all the quiet places in the city to get a beer. As a matter of fact, I may still do that. 
Whiskey down and about halfway through my pint and my thoughts started to turn back to her. It was gonna be weird without her particular brand of madness. We’d bonded almost instantly, just before Christmas. Before the blow and the lies. I ordered another double, cause it was gonna be a long night. We’d seemed like we had a lot in common, before the truths started coming out. She liked punk rock and fast cars and pinball. She wasn’t afraid to go to shows and push back when she got shoved. She made me smile immediately and if you know me, that’s no mean feat. I ordered another beer and a double. All these things she told me, and they were all lies. The things that were bouncing around in my head were the things I was trying to erase. Memories like beans rattling around in a can. They needed to go away. 
We started seeing each other right before Christmas. I’d been in my usual Friday night haunt, covering the bar for the bartender while he went downstairs to get some change and a pack of smokes from the vending machine. Since it was early, I had my feet up on the stool next to me and I was reading something. One of the thicker Murakami books. Usually when he had to “go get change”, it meant that the bartender had a dime bag or so in his pocket and he wanted to sneak a few lines in before the crowd hit. He and I had known each other for years and it wasn’t the first time I’d covered for him. Hell, I could work the register and mix a couple of drinks at this point, so I was better off than the first time he’d asked me. 
Here’s what I’ll propose instead. I’ll give you the set ups, you tell me how it ended. You can finish the entire story in your own unique fashion, or you can just give me the ending. You can wax poetic about the beauty of the rising sun on a summer morn, or just say that she lied about being pregnant. Anything you want, any direction you want to go. So here, in no particular order, are the best of what I was able to start….
Two days later I left school two periods early and headed over to the adjoining kaserne. I had the address of where I was going on a slip of paper and it wasn’t too far from the school, but in a part of the kaserne I’d never been in. Two blocks, three blocks…. Right around this corner and… Damn that’s a pretty good sized building. Instead of working for the paper, I was working for the community theater, doing god knows what. Excactly the type of job I was qualified for.