You Know This Guy?

Cass,

I think you might know this guy.

There was, briefly, the appearance of trouble out in front of Oxford's Pub the other night. But the trouble was never some how real.

You know how I am about smiles, how that's always the first thing I notice about someone and all - and, for me, it was the smirk, the sneer this young guy wore the whole time I watched him that made the thing no trouble right from the start.

It was that hour around closing and a weekend night and there was a pretty constant traffic on the street and sidewalk, as there always is. The crowd in front of the pub grew and faded and grew again in the usual way over the better part of an hour. And the particular smaller gang of ex-patrons and casual customers that got my attention, changed in number and faces, too, over that time. Most of the folk smoking their cigarettes and talking their parting conversations barely noticed that anything at all was happening.

A young guy with a lean and close-shaven jaw and a hard grin was the center of that little gang's attention and its attraction for me.

He had been ejected, asked to leave the Pub and he was objecting to that - at least ostensibly. His objection was occasionally persistent and amiably hostile. I'll call him, for the moment, the Ejected. I could call him the Objector but, perhaps, he'd object to that for reasons of political connotation.

Given your background and recently deployed status, my guess is your attention would have been drawn to him, too. He'd be familiar to you, you'd have singled him out, too, while others might only see a good looking young guy if they noticed him at all. Part of it would be his physique. You'd have spotted the over all fitness of him and his attitude, the way he presented himself. We get a lot of young guys coming to Oxford's who work out and, weather permitting, like to show off what they've accomplished in gyms and health clubs. They bare their biceps in tee-shirts ignoring the sharp winds of April. They don't dress sloppy casual like most of the rest of the guys who turn out on the avenue evenings. They wouldn't care for the comparison but they are the male equivalents of the girls who bare their shoulders and show off their thighs in short dresses while there are still traces of snow on the ground.

There are usually one or two or more every night there is a sizeable crowd.

But, out there, you'd have known the Ejected One's form as different and, to you, familiar. There was an overall perfection to the young man's build and set up. His torso and hips and arms weren't honed by a two or three times a week hour or two at World Gym and he wasn't fit just for evening appearances in the bars Friday and Saturday night. Nothing about the guy was just for display. He had been trained more purposefully than that.

I guess you could say this guy was uniform. And I think you'll know what I mean.

In the crowd he was with, none of the others were that or anything like that.

Most were, likely, new friends he'd made while drinking in the bar or guys who had seen him inside and gravitated to him, now that he'd been asked to leave. Some one or two may have been old friends of his one old friend who wasn't out there until later, till after closing, well after closing and with whom he eventually went home.

By that time, he had been deserted by the rest.

At first, the Ejected and those who went out with him were tight on the sidewalk just out in front of the Pub's doorway.

"I said, 'I just want to finish my drink,'" the Ejected One was saying, stating his case. "'N'at fat-fuck wou'dn' let me! What the hell's'at?"

But, like I say, he was grinning when he said it. He said it like it was a good joke, after all.

The others were in a swirl around him. They were grinning, too, enjoying the joke. They were all sympathetic to his cause and someone or two were urging him to go back inside.

"They shouldn'oughta!"

"Yeah, man, should call'em on't!"

I have said it before - one night when the cops swarmed in front of Oxford's and took away a slight young drunk who got into it with another and was put out by the bouncers. And I'll say it again - in all these situations there is always one guy who thinks he's Mike Tyson and at least one or two more who think they are Alan Derschowitz. Nine times out of ten, the fighter is the one the cops have the least trouble from. The fighters lose what ever animus motivated them with the one punch they throw. By the time the cops arrive they are already wondering what all the fuss is about. The cuffs go on and they take a seat in a squad car looking a little lost and puppy dog staring out the rear window wondering who'll take them home. Unusually, no one hears another peep out of them. The lawyers all want to argue with any cop who will listen to them for a time and 'no,' 'get out of here,' 'leave,' mean nothing to them. Even an officer pointing a finger in their faces saying, 'I've told you three times; you're one second from goin'!' won't get them to more than go up the street a ways dragged along by friends and still arguing about rights and their knowing the law over their shoulders. Even at that, they'll be back at least one more time - just wanting to ask, again, about how bail works. They know all there is to know about the law but bail procedures have to be explained to them two or three times more before calmer heads can get them to a car and away home. It would be interesting to know how many of these Legal Samaritans actually show up in the queasy morning after at the lock-up with actual check books in hand.

This occasion, fortunately, there was this young woman who was with these guys for a time but about to leave with another group. She put her arms out and somehow moved the lot of them out away from the door almost to the curb side before going off with her other friends. She was saying things like,

"It'll only get the cops here!"

And,

"The guys, the bouncers are just doing their job!"

She wasn't as high or as wide as any one of the guys in that crowd, and they weren't the equal of the Ejected One whose chest she barely came up to. But she did good work out there and, then, followed her friends to Gitsis' Diner where they were going to get in ahead of the after hours crowd.

On the curb the Ejected stood and smirked with the Avenue and the after hours traffic behind him and his admirers ranged around him. For the longest time, as closing came and went, they were in that one spot and the conversation took a turn that introduced the expression I now know the Ejected One by.

Perhaps the young lady's several times repeated words in favor of bouncers put him off, for a time, talking trash about the fat-fuck who'd put his hands objectionably on him. At least, his objection to the fat-fuck was reduced to one point.

"That guy's no bullet-stopper! 'At fat-fuck'd never make a bullet-stopper! Not ever!"

The expression delighted the rest of them. To a one, they were the familiar Oxford's clientele in their baseball jerseys and caps and Hollister tees. They asked questions of the Bullet-Stopper with admiring smiles and quickly wanted to know if this one or that one among passersby were likely bullet-stoppers or not.

One look and the guy could tell the ones who weren't combatant material and never would be (nearly everyone) from the one or two who might have been at one time or someday might be. It was the game of a few minutes and got the subject off the Bullet-Stopper's having been asked to leave Oxford's before he could finish that final beer. The evaluated ones were guys walking back home with sacks of dinner from Gitsis' or going off to cars parked along the avenue, dashing out into traffic for Rookie's Express pizza parlor over on the corner and there appeared to be no particular reason for any one of them to be singled out.

I was drawn into it.

I'd passed near by the gang of them on my return to my stoop beside Oxford's from a walk down through the zone while they were just out of the bar. Standing in my place in 640 Monroe's doorway, I'd watched them being moved out to the curbside. I'd heard Iraq and two tours mentioned and had admired the young man's self-confidence and had taken in the looks of unadulterated man-love, guy crush on the other pasty faces around him from that perch. I saw this game of evaluation and the kind of impromptu recruitment talk that followed it as all a part of that starry eyed male adulation for the one who has been where the action is.

"'At fat-ass, he'll never stop a bullet," the guy was telling the bright shining eyes after barely glancing around at one of the guys going off with a crowd.

A couple of the others had their heads together, I noticed, just then, and they were whispering and grinning in my direction. To the majority of young guys out of Oxford's I'm marked down as a Monroe panhandler, some gray bearded never was.

"Him?" the Bullet-Stopper considered when one of the two of them pointed in my direction and asked.

"He coulda been in the day!"

I was flattered by the assessment, however inappropriately.

There was talk of combat pay and the probability of his being rotated yet again over there, or somewhere. There was some back and forth between the Bullet-Stopper and a girl and her girlfriend who were leaving with a party. It was a conversation briefly funny and hostile, the sort of thing that is always going on between young guys who have asked and been turned down and the 'Lesbians' they have approached in the crush of Oxford's.

Eventually the changing faces of the small clump of guy-crush friends around him dwindled and the Bullet-Stopper was left making cell calls to someone who wouldn't come down to the Pub this time of night. I got the sense that it was some other young woman, like the young lady who'd moved him away from Oxford's door, and that she was saying some of the same things to him about the bar staff and its treatment of him.

After he put up his cell, at any rate, without his crowd of admirers about him, the Bullet-Stopper took his hands out of his pockets and casually swung up to Oxford's doorway for the first time since I'd been watching him. He reached his arms wide, as though about to embrace the place and, still grinning, leaned in and addressed the occupant of the chair that is always set just to the inside of the door.

There were no hard feelings.

Soon after that he was joined out on the street by his old friend whom he'd told to stay when the bouncers told him he, himself, would have to leave. His old firend was tall and slender and the two of them dodged traffic jogging over to Rookie's. There he remained outside and made a couple of last calls on his cell while his old firend went in and glad handed the counterman. One call repeated the urgings and suffered the rejections of the previous call and ended with the same brief angry spate of words. A little later the Bullet-Stopper was inside Rookie's, in the tight well-lit scene in the pizza parlor, grinning his now familar grin and offering his hand around.

Ordinarily, it being the weekend, I'd have already moved on from Oxford's by that time. I was late, now, for the after hours scenes developing down at Gitsis' and beyond on the corner of Goodman. But I hadn't been lured away by the sight of any cop cars gathering with swirling lights out front of Mark's or the congregating of a jumbled mass of tricked-out cars totally crowding the front of the closed Gulf Station. I hadn't heard any angry words break out over the traffic as young gangs coming in to Gitsis' crossed one another on the street as things turned dramatic.

I was sticking with this guy, I guessed.

Eventually, a taxi van pulled up before Hunan Wok, next door to me at 640, and the Bullet-Stopper and his old friend dodged traffic back to this side of Monroe to get in it. The usual is that cabs arrive and, maybe, there is a discussion between those piling in as to where they are going now that the bars are closed. Or, with a cab secured, there is a late conferral on matters of finance - hands digging into pockets and thin wads of the left over bills of a night out counted and compared. Either the would-be fares get out, again, and start walking home, or, the cabs depart with them.

I was getting ready to pull up roots and walk, myself, at last. But the Bullet-Stopper got into the front seat of the cab and sat with his back to the passenger side-door with the pizza box on his lap and a party ensued. The driver, one of the Nigerians, I suppose, smiled and accepted a slice as did the pal in the back seat driver's side and the conversation was warm and friendly having little to do, immediately, with a destination.

They were parked out there the whole time I was down at Gitsis' and didn't leave until the pie was gone, I imagine.

I liked this guy and I liked him long before he mistook me for a possible former Bullet-Stopper like himself. I liked him the instant I saw him freshly ejected from Oxford's door and grinning over being put out before he could finish his drink. I liked him despite his denigrating the fat-fuck whom I suspected is really a guy I know for a very decent bouncer who is never more agressive than he needs to be and is liked by one and all. I liked the ease with himself he had and the fact that he was laughing at his situation and, maybe, a little, at those around him who were so worshipful and warming themself in the reflection of his glory.

I just liked the guy. He was okay.

I think you'd have like him, too, having, yourself, been where he was.

Perhaps you know him.



May 30, 2009.

"There Are Smiles."

"KIMBA!"

From behind, back at Oxford's door, that annoying Jeremy voice springs after them with a smile in it and Kimberley's slow walk away fades in only two short steps to a stand still.

He's come out of the bar after her and, crap! she's going to turn around and go back up to him. He will be just there in front of or just up from the bar entrance in those stupid suspenders , silly, silly toy goatee stuck under his lower lip like a blond smudge. And, now, crap, crap, there's going to be more to this scene.

Goddamn and it was over with, too!

For the lingering moment, though, Kimberley is only standing looking down a little forward with that same bliss-ed out smiling look on her face that she's had on ever since returned to them from telling Jeremy she'd decided, at last, they should take a break from one another.

But, now, she is going to turn back crap, crap, crap!

"Kim-BER!" she is warned, not that it'll do any good!

And, up ahead of them, where she has trotted off to on the way to the car, tiny Melissa, too, in her knit cap and jacket, looking all candy pink and white like a frosted Christmas cookie, has turned back to them with shoulders hunched in tight against the cold and pleads, too,

"Kim-MY! C'mon?" in her mouse voice.

Kimberley, in the bar, in Oxford's, deciding, once and for all, that Kimberley and Jeremy needed a time out, was all excited happy. Her head tilted forward, then too, in that moment, hands gripping the sides of the little standing table they were sharing. Her face wore a big old grin - a goddam giddy I'm-going-to-do-it-I-can't-believe-I'm-really-really-going-to-do-it grin. It was like she was going to burst out and say just that. Her eyes glittered with the excitement of what she was thinking. And, then, with it done, she came back with this quiet, accomplished smile, bliss-ed out and half daffy, but in a good way.

'Lissa took a picture on her cell to commenorate the occasion.

And, like the flash had fixed it, that look hasn't gone away. It doesn't even yet fade when she does turn around and Jeremy is standing there with out even a jacket on having come out after her with only his own goofy smile.

God, these people!

Again, another useless caution,

"Kim-ber!"

But Kimmy takes in a breath along with her smile. And she's smiling even more, a smile almost like when she decided there before but not that nearly about to burst. It is like the giddiness of having chosen her course, at last, is still with her but the bliss-ed over with having actually done the thing once and for all is there, permanently, too.

And - she goes straight up to him, any way, right up to him standing waiting with his dumb comical grin.

God knows what they can have to say to one another! It isn't good that his happy, oh so smarmy confident face keeps right on looking down over her except when ever he says whatever he says and, then, he keeps looking away to one side every time like he can't look at her and say it. What ever IT is!

God! Does he even know what a clown he is?

Oxford's door stayed open behind him for some reason and ...

Inside they are playing 'More Than a Feeling,' that mom-and-dad oldie with the great riff. It comes blasting over them out the door way so there's no telling what it is they're saying to one another.

But it can't be good.

"Is she coming?" Tiny 'Lissa is returning and is curious and concerned to know.

She's drunk, of course. Her little feet mince and wobble. It's like she's walking a line. Like cops have pulled her over and she's walking a line on the pavement, failing a sobriety test.

"Who knows? Aaaaagh!"

The night is black all the way up to the pinpoint stars.

"Well," she asks, still with that curious questioning whine in her voice that becomes especially concerned just at the end, "What are they s-a-ying?"

And, now, it is plain. Too, too good to be true but - Kimberley is explaining it all to him again, what she said before. His lips are still smiling looking down on her face but he is only listening, now, and no longer talking at all and looking away at the window glass when he does.

"She's telling him it's over!"

Maybe it is over. At last!

Then, Kimberley, having said her piece and left Jeremy with nothing more he has to say, has turned and is starting slowly back to them.

But Jeremy's smile is curled, too, in a new way, now, and he watches her go a moment more looking after her appreciatively before going back into the bar. And, then, too, downward cast and private, Kimmy's blissful smile has a thoughtful sly look about it now.

"'Snot over!" little 'Lissa declares with sad certainty and cynicism.

No, it isn't over.

"Le's go," Kimmy says, walking right by them along with that smile, the small sly part of it a secret thought she thinks she's keeping to herself.

God! Fuck it!

It's Sunday; That Explains It.

Wouldn'tjah know:

It's Sunday night and you can walk by a bar on Monroe without picking your way through a crowd asking for a light, sneaking drinks out on the street, vomiting. You can hear yourself think. You see a panhandler or a crazy person coming you can light right out and cross the avenue without waiting for traffic to clear.

I'm down across Meigs and I walk straight by that bar they've put in down there, the Park Bench, without noticing it has opened, at last, till I come to the corner of the building where they have put out a sandwich sign pointing down it's side to the new front entrance.

I get what I need from the no name convenience store next door and the clerk and I agree there is a new bar in the neighborhood. Thursday night, he thinks it was that they opened.

"They are open now," he informs me in that quiet, careful sounding African accented voice of his.

Concerned only with making a living out of his little store and selling gas, it is apparent he hasn't taken all that much notice of his new business neighbor's presence.

I have no other reason to do so, but I cross to 7/Eleven because I can without interruption and because of something I was told the other night.

I was in Rite Aid Friday or Saturday and the subject was the crowds that were out in the bars and on the street with the fine weather we were having. The subject was mostly all Gitsis' and Mark's and the scene that we expected there would be out in front of those spots after hours. It was largely, too, remembrance of how it had been last summer before the shooting that shut down Gitsis' weekend night after one in the morning.

I recalled how the crowds that come on to Monroe for all-night eats when the bars all close in other parts of town took, after that, to going down to Mark's and raiding 7/Eleven for snacks, instead. Without mentioning it in particular, I remembered how, for a weekend or so, the crowd was baffled by the absence of Gitsis' to go to but, then, began pulling into 7/Eleven's parking lot in their polished street machines till there were traffic jams in there and party scenes started up among the snarls.

"7/Eleven," I only mentioned, "they had to take on that security guard."

"Joe, big guy; he was okay,' the Rite Aid clerk, Aaron, remembered him fondly.

"You know John?" he asked.

John, the clerk, is 7/Eleven after midnight.

"Sure. I started going into 7/Eleven late nights for John - and that guy Dave that worked with him."

Aaron looked baffled.

"I don't know a Dave," he said.

"Tall skinny dude with a beard, always cleaning his nails," I characterized Dave.

The subject stayed John - squat, hair to this shoulders and no neck you can see - since we both know him and how he manages the After Midnight at 7/Eleven. John, we both agreed, hates Panhandlers who hang around his store and sneak thieves who pilfer merchandise.

"The other night," Aaron told me, "somebody busted out the window over at Rent-a-Center and just started walking away with a flat screen. John was out there and followed the guy. The cops busted him."

Now, Sunday night, John, himself, remembers it.

"Oh, yeah, yeah," he says, when I mention it, "Wednesday night, it was!"

He is raking merchandise in under the UPC reader and making change with both hands. The 7/Eleven is busy if nothing else is on a Sunday night.

"Guy," he says, taking it up high, "was walkin' off here like it was nuthin'. I followed him down around there and the cops came and busted his ass!"

We agreed that was a very fine thing, should happen more often.

Back out on the corner of the store, overlooking Meigs and Monroe, the parking lot foreground is all fast arriving cars and vans and trucks that pull in and sit with their engines running, stereo systems rapping and rocking but the streets beyond are that dark and that empty still, that Sunday night. When I'm ready to, I can cross the long way through the intersection to the New York Stylee corner. I can stroll across that long way unchallenged by so much as a bicyclist with a bell. I can take my time doing that and check out the front of Rent-a-Center though there is nothing there now, of course, to see. I can glimpse that doorway down from there and be reminded of that zombie drunk Friday night who was a good ten minutes angling his key at his lock as I came and went from my beyond Meigs stops.

Coming up the dark block toward Woodlawn with its bright corner, Mark's Texas Hots, I'm thinking how it is around Closing Time and there is nearly no one out on the street. There are no gangs of kids pouring out of O'Callaghans to dash through traffic and get in line at Mark's front door. No one is spilling out to hang around in front of Acme Bar and Pizza or the Sports Page, either.

Holding the door open at Mark's, is this runty little guy a half inch higher than a midget. He has a small face that comes to a point at the tip of his nose ferret fashion and he is still dressed for winter yet in heavy jacket and a wool cap.

Coming through, in the light of the entry, there is this slim Pretty Woman with long straight hair and, instantly, I am hoping she isn't attached in some way to this ferret guy.

Then, as she slips out and sidles around the corner to stand and wait, the doorway frames a large tall dude in a bright yellow tee-shirt like two acres of sunflowers seen from a half a mile away. He and the midget are quite the contrast. He is wide as the door, itself, and tall enough to seem to want to stop coming through it. He is hauling a sack of take out that could feed a boat load of Somali Pirates but it is only a snack for this one guy. Slim has her own tiny sack she's holding on to and, I think, she'd better only pick at it when they get where they're going.

"Gonafiniszat, Hon? 'mm'mmm!"

Scripted in red high on the billboard of this tall guy's Carney shoulders as I follow them up the sidewalk is 'Got You Stimulus Package Right Here!'

I'm following the couple of them, but only as far as Acme Bar and Pizza, where they think they see someone they know through the window. Then, it's the reverse and they are coming along just behind me the whole way pass the Sports Page and Country Sweet Chicken and Ribs. I'm hoping that one of these cars parked along the curb is theirs because Hightower doesn't seem to notice there is any one else on the street and I definitely don't want to come between him and his diner.

But no such luck.

So, corner of Edmonds, I veer right and step off the curb without my usual caution. I don't look around dreading to see a bright sunburst of tee-shirt coming up over my shoulder one nano-second ahead of sprawling on the asphalt with a size nine imprinted on my back.

Otherwise I wouldn't be so bold.

Instead, this baby blue jeep jitterbugs around the corner just as I've got a foot down in the street. It comes careening off Monroe as though the parking space on Edmonds along side Sol Burrito were the last spot in walking distance of the avenue on a Saturday night.

I have to step back.

It is a close call - jeep or Sassquatch?

Only, as it happens, the Pretty Woman has veered left and taken her large friend with her out into Monroe to cross.

He is saying,

"What night is this?"

"Sunday, Hon, it's Sunday."

"That explains it."


May 4, 2009.