It’s late in the morning and how pathetic it is that you’re standing outside in the cold shuffling from foot to foot to stay warm while you’re waiting for the bar to open...I predict that the bartender will open the door at 11 a.m. and he does...but it’s not clairvoyance, it’s just that I’ve been there so often...when he does open up, it’s with a wry smile if anything at all; you’re back again...sometimes you are greeted with indifference but you’re used to that by now...he doesn’t even thank you for helping to keep him employed all these years...he doesn’t even bother to ask what your having because he knows all you’re having is a bad day mixed with the usual...so you throw out the first pitch and the game begins...sure, you could go to the liquor store, they open at 10...but sometimes you just feel like having a good barstool underneath you and sharing time with people who have got it bad like you being around whether you actually make an effort to talk to them or not...maybe you’ll hear a story that makes you laugh, or makes you cry...or makes you something...or sometimes you just don’t care at all...you stare at the bottom of your glass and the world just goes by man and it don’t care whether you’re an active part of it or not...it just goes and goes and keeps going...it’s not waiting for you to jump on...I look around and see the usual crowd...the lawyer who is well known in town coming in early for his usual liquid lunch...the middle aged woman with too much makeup on and wearing a dress that’s a little too tight, and heels that are a little too high...she must plan on going clubbing later I guess...she smiles and laughs a little too easy but she usually draws a crowd of desperate men...then there’s a couple of other guys who look like you do...people who look like the sun never shined on them...it’d be nice if the place ever fixed the little TV in the corner...it used to get a crappy picture when it worked, but now it hasn’t worked for some time...kinda like you...life’s been indifferent to you from day one...you are tapped out in the bank of life, you have nothing to deposit, you’re not earning interest from anyone or anything and you have nothing to withdraw; so on this morning you find your usual seat and begin the process...a glass of the good stuff or the bad stuff, whatever, one at a time until you move on the next haunt...pretty soon, it’s the afternoon and you wander over to the old man’s bar in town where they got cheap beer and a lot of old guys whose wives won’t let them drink at home evidently...they yell at the ballgame on television and talk about the old days...and then the early evening you slip over to the steelworkers’ lounge where the working men come in to blow off some steam, and blow some of their paychecks...or at least some of them work...some of them sit in a cubicle all day and pretend to...then before you know it, it’s starting to get late already, although for you, it got late a long time ago...the bartenders all know your name or at least recognize you; they know what you drink, they watch you slide downhill without so much as sticking out a hand to catch you...what do they care?...you try to justify it all somehow...you tell yourself that surely the sages or old had some tough times too...maybe Buddha or Lao-Tzu or Jesus hung around waiting for the bar to open before they made it big...it just isn’t your fault, you’re sure of that.
