Bar Room #496 - Dustin Vado
I wonder if they fuck.
She's thin as a line, Mischievous face with bags under her eyes to match his dark widow’s peak. He will be bald by 35, or maybe I'm not giving his genes enough credit, he might already be there. This bar room is as old as it's occupants - no, older. Not dank but not bright. It's family style, but defaults to dank during emptiness. The lady bartender covers a tattoo on her forearm with a sweatband because they make her. I asked her about it. I also asked her to show me, is that perverted? It said “let go” above a bunch of Roman numerals. I asked her if there was a story, and she said “a long one” as she walked away. She and the male bartender played a hand of war to the sparsely populated room as an older man sat next to me. Mid 60’s and silver rimmed aviators as they served him a beer. One for the road while waiting out traffic.
He wore a Cadillac sport jacket and accused the bartenders of gambling, but they were just killing time. He does like to gamble, he told me. The most he ever lost was 400 bucks. Not as bad as I thought for a car salesman, but he knew what he was doing. His sons don’t gamble “with their hard earned money”, but what do they know. The natives game the machines, how else could they make it? This guy said he had four days left of work until his forced retirement. They are bulldozing that Caddy dealership, and are only keeping the young guys. I wonder if they fuck… they play war in a room soon to be dead, like all of it, the hofbrau where the casino used to be. So coy, would you like another?
My buddy shows up, and we played cards with the barmaid. We showed her a vietnamese prison game, and after she was sick of it, revelled in the near past, the would be future of bummers. Our tone is more pathetic than classical shit talking, I’m sure it’s part of the millennial syndrome. There will likely be medication for it someday, something that makes our stunted balls finally drop and make us play war. The male barmaid tried to look busy, which means that he missed the cutoff for this syndrome. I have dreams. I wonder if they fuck… Is it really Monday?
The only thing missing here is smoke. If the entire room had a pack of Pall Malls and dirty ashtray at every seat, it would actually feel its age. It needs a hazy cloud like the smog over this valley, a worse beer selection, and all of these old men to be young again. The fat guy put a reserved sign at a strategically chosen position at the bar. The seats to either side of it were occupied, but that one lay reserved. I kept waiting for him to take the seat until I looked back and noticed him sitting at a table stuffing his face with the German style cafeteria food this place is famous for as he watched the game. He just put that sign there to make sure his line of sight to the TV was clear. There is something more tantalizing in this bar than football, and they are serving us drinks. I wonder if they fuck. How many dicks still work in this bar? Some of the lungs sounded like they could hack their last at any moment.
They are going to tear this place down soon, like the caddy dealership, like Quement and Murray’s (good riddance to that shithole), like all the Italian and Portuguese markets that this town was built on, and burn the memory of them like the Irish did to Chinatown. Most people don’t know there was ever a Chinatown in San Jose, and that’s how the Irish rioters wanted it. Out with the old, in with the new, which neither me, my buddy, the bored bartenders or any of the old folk in this room will be able to afford.
I never did like football.
