My Bengals Loss, or: my Buddha Belly, My Body, Myself

hipsters: the ultimate in fetishists...

The good and the wise lead quiet lives. - Euripides

"Come on," he said. "One bearded guy to another?"

I was there to watch the Cincinnati Bengals play, and Amanda -- who has no interest in "sportsball" of any kind, loves me enough to feed my need to cheer for the football team I was destined (and doomed) to be a fan of. I grew up watching the Bengals. I think of them in athletic and literary terms. In athletic terms, the Bengals are a team with historic low self-esteem and an owner who has contributed nothing to the sport other than convincing his dad, Paul Brown, to escape Cleveland (by night) with truck load of uniforms to start another team.

In literary terms, the Bengals are canonical -- as in Greek Tragedy. Sophocles has got nothing on Paul Brown's brain child.

After the best start since the last time they made a Superbowl appearance, the Bengals managed to make it back to the playoffs. Because I'm a lifer, I know better than to get too excited. After all, I lost $5 on them when they lost the Superbowl to the San Francisco 49'ers in the last 11 seconds. If ever there was a team that could, through sheer hubris, lose a lead in less time than it takes to exhale, it's the Bengals.

This game was no exception.

The bar was busy, though not because of the football game. When we got there, well into the first quarter, all the TV's were on a college basketball game no one cared about since it was neither Louisville nor Kentucky playing.  Getting the channel changed was an ordeal, because the bartenders were swamped. Getting to listen to the game was also an ordeal, because once the channel was changed, one of the owners came out, turned the sound down and turned the juke box volume way up.

Saturday night is not usually a bar night for me. I'm usually a happy hour week day inhabitant of my neighborhood watering hole. Happy hour regulars hold down bars so that on weekends, people can drive in from the east end,  downtown, and the Highlands when they feel like slumming it by not having to pay extra for the atmosphere when ordering whatever cocktail is trendy at the moment.

There was an odd vibe, too. At least three drug deals*, one sketchy chick with meth-head shakes pacing back and forth looking for purses or cell phones to palm, and more than several not-so-casual trips to the unisex bathroom** that made me not want to pee there. It's not that I'm shy, and there was a stall clearly marked MEN so that only the most drunk would be confused. But I didn't want to walk into someone's Saturday night special. Listening to the sound of people trying to screw in a bathroom stall or that odd gurgly suctiony sound from a drunk sloppy blow job makes it difficult to pee.

I drank a few cocktails and watched the game. Amanda followed enough to cheer at appropriate spots and tolerated my sound high top coaching tips (that Marvin Lewis ignored).  The air was stuffy, and the crowd was just odd. I noticed a face I knew, though I doubt he remembered me. He's the son of a local evangelist who appeals to bikers with instant redemption and 2nd Amendment proclamations.*** I sat in on a service once because I was going to write an article about them for the the local alternative dining and band guide^. I ended up not writing the story because the managing editor wanted a cheeky culture/make-fun-of-the-rednecks piece and I was more bothered by what seemed to be a take on the old tent revival scam.^^

The bar isn't downtown, but that part of the South End is bit too downtown and too close to a busy immigrant neighborhood for him to patronize on a regular basis.

Jackyl

And then some fat bastard walked in, plays Jackyl on the juke and proceeded to act like he owned the bar. He walked bowlegged and stooped, like his designer jeans will drop at any moment. Or like he was still getting used to the cowboy boots he was wearing. They let him behind the bar, where he started mixing drinks and shouting that he's selling shots for a dollar. Amanda and I were distracted from the game by all this noise. Luckily, we were sitting far enough back that we didn't get the view when his pants actually did fall down and everyone who did had the opportunity to see why fat guys should never go commando.

Fajita Mike: Reality TV Personality and sketchy bartender

Amanda thought she'd seen him somewhere, but we both knew it wasn't at the bar. After one of the owners, looking like she was worried she let loose the black plague in her bar, came over and talked to us a bit, we found out who it was. Apparently he's on some reality show set in a bar in Sturgis that's only open during Bike Week.

I've never been much of a reality TV fan. There's not been much to convince me I'm missing something, either

The game was teeter tottering. The Bengals were one point up and there was less than 2 minutes on the clock. They were in the final stages of completely unraveling on the field. Fajita Mike had, by that point, started wandering the bar in search of people to impress and drum up interest for the brand of legal moonshine^^^.  He even stopped by our table after asking the bar if anyone was watching the game and I said I was. He was, I think, looking to bet on the game; but since my aforementioned loss, I never bet on football again. So, he kept on mumbling, kept on hiking his pants up, and wandered off. After that, I understand he exposed himself -- probably on purpose -- and tried to tongue a late night regular, a tall, wide-shouldered woman who always seemed to me to be playing for a different team than any Fajita Mike would have luck with.

There were some patrons there who had driven in to catch a view of Fajita Mike's Brown eye. They were obvious. Hoodies brandishing the name of the reality show "Full Throttle." A few sculpted beards and form fitting flannel shirts.

I was on my fifth bourbon on the rocks when I switched to a beer and shot. Neither Amanda nor I were feeling the mood, and the ball game wasn't breaking down well. Even when I can sense the loss coming, I hate to stick around for it. It's just too heartbreaking to watch my favorite football team lose to the only team that ever really defeats them -- themselves.

And that was when one particularly skinny east end kid brandishing a meticulously sculpted beard, baby-blue fitted flannel, skinny-baggy jeans with a pointless wallet chain, and a too nice to be punk Social Distortion jacket -- who was probably trying to impress his very uncomfortable girlfriend, asked what I would do if he reached over and rubbed my belly.

"Would I let you?" I repeated.

He nodded his head, quickly, like he was trying to seal the deal. "Yeah. I mean, would you punch me?"

Of all nights to ask me that, I thought. If there was one night I could probably get away with punching some east end idjit for being handsy with my Buddha belly, it was that night. I probably could've gotten free drinks out it, blamed the outcome of the game, and scored some low grade coke, if that was my thing.

Shit. Sometimes it's a struggle to not punch people. I swore off physically hurting people 20 years ago, and I haven't thrown a punch since -- in spite there being more than several occasions when I desperately wanted to. I didn't need some fetish+ addicted stylisto to point out that I, like Fajita Mike, am fat. I see it every time I see a picture of myself. What can I say? 2015 was both a happy and stressful year. Amanda and I got married, but I lost two jobs I excel at because while I don't physically hurt people anymore, I don't mind using my words in the slightest. But I do tend to eat and drink when 1) I'm very happy, or 2) I'm very stressed.

Moderation has always been a problem for me. But, like all creatures, even Fajita Mike and the Skinny Fetishist, I am a work in progress.

But how to respond? Not having an enormous amount of direct experience rebuffing advances from grabby hipster guys that didn't include a solid punch, I tried to imagine what someone else with more experience might do.

What would Wonder Woman do in this situation? 

The problem with that was she probably WOULD have punched him. Besides, I am clearly no Linda Carter. I'm not even that major with the super-white teeth that every boy who watched Wonder Woman tolerated just to see her.

So, like the Bengals, I tried for the two point conversion.++

"The only person who gets to rub my belly is her," I said, pointing to Amanda. I showed them both my wedding ring. "She paid the freight."

That was enough to make him laugh and to make his girlfriend breathe a sigh of relief. I paid the tab just as the preacher's son was making another loop from the bar to the backroom with a gaggle of girls with low-self esteem trailing behind.

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* Spotting a drug deal in public is sort of like spotting a cockroach in your kitchen. You see one, you know there's more you're not seeing.
** The bar owner has been trying to get the restrooms redone. During the day, the unisex bathroom is never a problem. Apparently  a rainy Saturday night means running out to the car or, to a fine hourly establishment is out of the question. 
* You can find him on YouTube, cradling an AK-47 and talking about Jesus.
^LEO Weekly. There's not a better source -- except maybe Yelp -- for restaurant suggestions.
^^ The minister wasn't there that day. But one of deacons led the service and talked entirely about how much the preacher needed money to keep the lights on. This church, by the way, also runs a bar on Saturday nights. "Jesus died for you but the preacher loves you most!" Consequently, the managing editor was not interested in that kind of story, as it was hard hitting and not the sort of story that downtown hipsters can read and use to make fun of anyone who doesn't sculpt their beards into the shape of a pair of swans giving birth.
^^^ You know. Everclear. If it's legal and taxed, it may be corn liquor, or maybe even overpriced bathtub vodka. But ain't moonshine.
+For those who haven't read their Marx, fetishism is a symptom of late-stage capitalism. If you think I'm being unfair, look at a hipster sometime and tell me it's not a fetish. Come on. I dare you. 
++They didn't make it. They rarely do. It's probably one of the stupidest coaching calls next to hoping for a safety (also 2 points.)

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Superstition and Tradition

Pictured left is my second round of drinks as a paid freelance journalist in Louisville.

Nothing fancy. Just my usual round of Miller Lite and Maker's Mark. This combination has been my bar drink of choice for longer than my second marriage lasted. My older brother, whose tastes are far more refined but who can drink with the best of them when the mood strikes him, is always a little sickened by my choice of combinations.

I was feeling a little squirrelly last night after a days of spending my days in the basement, sitting at the desk, working. I love the solitude, love the pace of the work I do -- gig based and sporadic as it feels at the moment -- but sometimes I need to get out. As Amanda understands and is extraordinarily patient about, it's not even about being social. Unless I'm meeting friends, I don't even socialize all that much.

The best way I know how to explain it is that sometimes I just need to swim around in a reasonable crowd of normal people who are not me, my books, my stringed instruments, the dog, or the cat. And sometimes I need a good bar with an uncomplicated air to find the ground. I need a place where I can be quiet and still feel like I've socialized.


I've established myself in a neighborhood watering hole that meets all the requirements set forth my pre-established Rules For Not At Home Drinking*.  And although I don't see the inside of a bar as much these days thanks to "the gig life" and the general financial burden that is summer (Thanks engrained academic schedule!), I felt it was important to go and have a  round or three out of the first check I earned as freelance journalist here in River City.

This was as much about wanting to see the inside of a familiar bar as it was superstition. In my last gig as a freelance muckraker -- with the The Prairie-Advocate out of Lanark, Illinois -- the first thing I did when I got paid was walk up to the local watering hole (there were two at the time and I was strongly discouraged by my  now ex-wife from walking in to one...  she called it, not incorrectly, "the redneck meat market") and have a beer and a shot. Bourbon is hard to find that far north, so I made do with a shot of Jack** and stuck to beer after that.

Drinking to inaugurate a new gig is something I see as crucial to the success of that gig. I did the same with first checks from teaching gigs in my 30's and still do in my 40's. I did the same from checks from day labor and factory/warehouse gigs in my 20's.  I will admit to a certain superstitious bent, but that's only because once money rolls in on the regular or semi-regular, it is immediately gobbled up in that bottomless pit called Bills and Other Unsavory Obligations.***

I had more reason to celebrate this gig check, though. When Amanda and I were first talking about me moving to River City and setting down some roots, I wasn't planning on going back to teaching. My Plan was to try and wow some of the local media with my portfolio of news writing. My Plan was that maybe I'd wiggle my way into some freelance work, and start building a fresh portfolio upon which I could build a livelihood out of writing. I don't really consider myself hampered by the fact that I don't have a degree in journalism (I did minor in it once upon a time). But I did find, on first pass, that not having a journalism degree in a medium-sized market as problematic as not having an MFA when you're applying for creative grants.

Sometimes editors, publishers take the absence of a specific degree personally. So my foray into the Louisville journalism scene didn't pan out. Initially.

But, as I am often reminded, everything is about timing.

Talking with Amanda about moving here and writing for LEO was the beginning of  this new and happier chapter in my life. In case you didn't know this about me, in addition to being somewhat superstitious, I'm also a touch sentimental about certain important things. Although I know that this gig is only prelude to something else and life moves forward, it reminds that 1) I really do like writing about news and think good, researched journalism matters, and 2) the Universe is sometimes very kind to me... and even looks out for me from time to time.

So, Sláinte ^ , Dear Friends and Readers.

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* Rules For Not At Home Drinking, codified and approved 2004, Cincinnati, OH. 1) Do not drink more than stumbling distance or not more than a 30 minute bus ride (no transfers) from home without having a ride. 2) Do not drink more than 5 shots of bourbon in a two hour period, regardless of how good or how empty the mood. 3.) Hydrate regularly. 4.) Eat properly 5.) Be safe.
** Any drinking rules I have get altered when Jack Daniels gets involved. Say what you will, but different liquors hit me differently... and the last time I went on a Jack induced bender I ended up getting hit... and hitting other people. Something in that Tennessee swill raises the temperature of my blood to an unpleasant degree. I take this as proof that I am, at least physiologically, in the right state now.
*Or, THE DEVIL INCARNATE
^ Gaelic for 'Good Health' or 'Last one to drink is a Protestant Tory.'

[Mercy] An Excerpt From: THE MUCKRAKER'S CHRONICLE

 “Do you really want to piss off the only person in town that still likes you?”

Maude has a way getting straight to the point. “Parton doesn't like me. I'm not enough of a bigot.”

“ENOUGH of a bigot?”

“You know what I mean. He's a moron.”

“I'm not talking about him,” she said. Her voice was tired. She was almost always tired when she came home from work. When we first moved to Mount Arliss, I would try to have supper on the table when she came home. But it became impossible to know what time she'd be there; sometimes she worked late if she had a lot of ticket sales, or if she was working on a a new pamphlet or poster or some other marketing tool. Sometimes she said to hell with it all and came home early. But it was impossible to tell exactly what she had planned and she never called to say she was on the way home or to say hello. I'd call her sometimes, just to see how her day was going. If it was going good, she was too busy to talk. If it was going bad, she was in too lousy a mood to talk. We both have cell phones, yet I never seem to be able to get a hold of her; granted, cell phone reception in Mount Arliss isn't the greatest. But if she wants to find me and she can't, I end up hearing about it later.

She was tired because she'd had another in a string of bad days. There was a time when I would try to get her to talk about her bed day. Her strategy for dealing with bad days was different from mine; she would simply not talk about it and hope that by ignoring it all, that all the bad feelings would simply vanish. It's a beautiful system in idealized form; something out of the 1950's image of the prosperous American. Smiling wife serves dinner in a spotless, perfectly ironed dress. Husband smiles and shovels food in his mouth, content that he's done his bit for god, country, and family that day. Bad feelings? Depression? Anger? Push it away. Bad feelings are the enemy. They're communists. They're islamofascist terrorists. Ignore them and they'll go away. Then no one has to listen to anyone else's bullshit and everybody can be happy. Happy happy joy joy. The problem with her method was that outside of the idealized form, it doesn't work. The human psyche isn't built to hold in an infinite amount of negativity. When it reaches the fill point, rather than expand to take on the extra load, all that badness and negativity spills over into the body, becomes aches, pains, sickness. High blood pressure. Diabetes.

My strategy is less elegant. I simply howl at the universe until I feel better. This tends to annoy other people, but since they're generally part of the reason I'm howling, I figure they might as well take on their share.

Maude never says so, but from the way she acts, she thinks my approach is the more selfish of the two. She's probably not wrong.

“Well who ARE you talking about?”

She sighed and looked at me with a weary expression. Thick as a brick me, I finally got who she was talking about. I didn't answer and opted to pour myself another drink instead.

“Why do you have to do that?”

“What?”

She pointed at my glass of scotch. “That. You're drinking more than you used to.”

“Not really. I pace myself better than I used to. I've slowed down, comparatively.”

“Compared to what? It was one thing when you sat around drinking beer...”

And, I thought, you didn't like that either.

“...but now you sit around drinking whiskey...”

“It's not whiskey,” I said. “It's scotch.”

She rolled her eyes. “It's the same thing.”

“Not really.” Maude didn't like it when I drank whiskey. She always said it turned me into a different person. I never really thought it did anything but make me more honest... temporarily removed the filter in my head that kept the more acerbic parts of my personality at bay. There was a time when I was horribly concerned about the little green demon in my brain. The one that scrapes and claws at me and wants me to simply be, without all the hang ups of worrying about anyone else. I sued to try and keep it under control because of a similar statement I heard once from my ex-wife. She used to say that when ever I lost my temper I became a different person. She said I even looked different. I never knew how to take it, and I wasn't absolutely sure that she wasn't just trying to manipulate me into feeling guilty; that was some she did often and was very proficient at. That was before I learned that guilt, and the heaping of it upon the self and others is all based on obligation and expectation. A husband, according to my ex-wife, was supposed to fulfill certain expectations, play a certain role. And I had certain expectations of myself too – higher ones than I was capable of, I eventually came to realize. That was when her manipulations stopped working, and it not long after that I left and we divorced.   

One of the wonderful things about Maude is that she doesn't try to manipulate me. She's far too direct for that, which makes her – as far as I can tell – a rarity among womankind. Most women manipulate the men they “love” because maybe there was a time when that was the only real social power they had. Like it a kind of defense mechanism against the patriarchy. Most women not only manipulate their men, they try and manipulate other women, too. It's about status, position. Men who pick up on this trick and adapt it to their own ends become politicians, local busybodies, church officers. But Maude, god love her, doesn't do that, and she hates it in other women. The impact of this is that it makes her more direct, more honest. And while I take this as a good thing, a rare thing to be cherished, there are times when her directness borders on something else.

When we first got together, I was a drinker. I've been a drinker for many years. Back then, she drank too. As a matter of fact, she could drink me under the table. But she tapered off and eventually quit drinking. I didn't.

“It IS the same thing.”

“Okay,” I conceded. “It's similar. But it's different, too. It's about the age and the fermenting time...”

“Don't change the subject.”

“Fine.” She knew me too well to be baffled by bullshit.

“It's not good to sit around and drink the way you do.”

“Some people eat chocolate. Some people drink.”

“Don't try and be cute.” She paused. “You're a drunk. You know that, right?”

“Sure.”

“When was the last day that you didn't have a drink?”

I shrugged. Probably a truly miserable day.

“Do you think it's healthy?”

“I think it's healthier for me to drink than it is for other people.”

“Oh please...” she snorted. “Because YOU'RE so different?”

“Everyone's different,” I said.

“I don't like who you become when you drink.”

“Who am I when I drink?”

“You're just... different. That's all.”

I didn't answer.

“Sometimes I think you want me to end up sitting next you in a hospital, watching you die. Is that what you want?”

It wasn't. I'd seen people die from drink. Fucking horrible way to die. Besides the pain of it, the worst thing about dying is that people don't really care about you when you're dying. You're liver's cashed, your kidneys are failing, your body is swelling like an overfilled water balloon because you can't get rid of toxins anymore. If you're in a hospital, they end up jacking you up on morphine until your body finally wears out; this isn't mercy as much as a way to quiet the moaning and groaning. It makes the doctors' and nurses' lives easier. There's no mercy in the world for people who drink themselves to death, just like there's no mercy for junkies or the homeless or people who eat too much. No mercy. That goes back to obligation, too. It's generally agreed upon that the good, the upright, the useful, they live in a certain way and in a certain manner. They work. They save money. They pay taxes. They aspire to upward mobility. They live in nice neighborhoods and lease new cars every two years. And when you step off the worn-out path into indulgence, intoxication, or living in a way that most people probably would if they had the balls, the price you pay, among others, is the absence of mercy.

Maude wasn't merciless. On the contrary, she probably had too much mercy. But I was starting to realize that maybe I was wearing her down; that didn't surprise me as much as that it had taken this long for her to get to that point. But it wasn't just the drinking. It was that she was really the only person in town that I ever talked to, in spite of the fact that we'd been living there for a year. I never made friends easily. Not like her. People were just drawn to her, her energy, her enthusiasm for things she cared about. Part of the reason she was always so exhausted was that she always put everything she had into whatever she was working on. She was like that with every job she'd had since she and I had been together. Maude didn't know how to be any other way, even though her work ethic had been taken advantage of time and time again. She gave until there was nothing left, and then she would simply implode. I'd never known a person who had been hollowed out by the world so many times and still went back at it in the exact same way.

“That's not going to happen,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“Because I just do.”

She shook her head again gave up. But I knew we'd have the same conversation again, sometime soon.

“I love you,” I said.

“Do you?”

“You know I do.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, goddamn it, you do.”

She stood up, patted me on the head, grabbed her pack of cigarettes that were sitting on the end table next to my chair, and lit a cigarette. Then she asked what my thoughts were on dinner.