24 August, 2009

Those Who Can

Your problem, Nicky,” G told me over the lip of his martini glass, “is that you’re too much of a philosopher to ever be a writer.”



That was his way of being kind. I said nothing and drank my beer. Not so much because I agreed or disagreed with him, but because I wasn’t really listening. He liked to sit at the bar, drink martinis, and trash talk the local art scene, pontificate on national politics, and complain about the state of American Culture. I usually let him talk and he usually let me let him. I was trying to get the attention of a particularly luscious girl with auburn hair who was sitting on the other side of G. She was dressed to impress – wearing a short and tight black dress that left little to the imagination, but had mine working overtime. Her hair was long and thick and she had tied back in a cute pony tail; there was a long strand falling beside her face. She looked like the sort of person who should have been smoking a Virginia Slim with one of those long elegant cigarette holders.



A girl like that shouldn’t have to wait on anybody. If anything, some chump bastard should’ve been sitting and waiting on her with a sense of gratitude. But I couldn’t get her to look at me.



aRE YOU LISTENING?”



G was looking at me with his annoyed and disapproving look. Vodka made him sensitive. “I WAS talking, you know.”



“Sorry,” I mumbled, tearing my eyes off the auburn goddess and focusing again on his narrow, wide-eyed face.



“Christ,” he sneered a little too loudly. “Are you ever NOT gonna think with your DICK?”



G and I had known one another since elementary school. We grew up in the same shit hole town in southern Ohio, right on the river. The only thing New Leeds, Ohio had going for it was a steel mill that was shut down, a nuclear power plant that was converted to coal because of hordes of protestors worried about radioactive waste in the septic smelling rivers, and a lot of foreclosed farms. His dad worked for the power plant. My dad worked at the steel mill; he got his job when the union went on strike and the company brought scabs in to keep the place going. He, like the other replacement workers, had to ride in on prison busses because the windows had metal grates over them.



Wilbur was this sickly looking kid with huge eyes and no muscle. He told me he lived the first five years of his life in a bubble; he was so sick that he couldn’t even breathe regular air. And even after he was let out of the bubble, his mother was afraid to let him outside, and she spent her days cleaning the house so the dust wouldn’t kill him. He laughed once and told me about how she scrubbed the walls and even the ceilings, trying to protect her baby boy from the dust bunnies. He wasn’t good at sports. The other kids didn’t like him. He had a lot of problems with people.



“I’m getting the hell outta this place, Nicky,” he’d tell me. “I’m getting out just as fast as I can and I’m NEVER coming back!”



I don’t even really remember how we started talking. All I knew was one day he started hanging around. That didn’t make people like him more; but it did make people leave him a lone. People liked me okay. Sometimes the sons of the union workers gave me hard time, but after one or two fights they learned to leave me alone. I was decent at sports, and even played JV football. I felt the same way he did, though with far less passion. I wanted to get out of New Leeds for all the reasons that teenage boys want to escape their hometowns. Big city girls had more class, more style, and more reasonable parents. There was more to do in the city. Plus, I was tired of living in a town that boasted the oldest Tastee Freeze in the state and where the streets rolled up at five o’clock.



Back then I thought I was a writer; I was always scribbling defiant poems and hackneyed stories in composition books, and reading novels by writers nobody heard of. I quit the JV football team and grew my hair. When the coach asked me why I wanted to quit, I told him it was because I wanted to be a writer. I still remember the perplexed look on his face. My dad was heartbroken. My mom, though, beamed and started calling me her “little poet.”



G like to bring up the writing shit. It was his way of reminding me that he’d actually become an artist. He’d gone to college for it. I went to college, too; except the only thing I learned when I got there was that I wasn’t much of a writer. I did just enough to get through. When I got out, I found an entry level job in a downtown office. I had a cubicle decorated with ironic signs and slightly but not too offensive off color jokes. I wore a tie everyday. I put money in the NCAA basketball tourney pool every year. I did the same with the Superbowl pool. I took advantage of Casual Friday. Once at a company Christmas party I fucked the cutie college intern in the copy room – bent her over some boxes of computer paper. She writhed and moaned while the boss was in the outer office toasting holiday.



G didn’t work much. And when he did, he never worked very long. He always got shit jobs that didn’t pay and that would inevitably offend his artistic sensibilities. He called me when he got hired. He called me when he got fired or quit. Once or twice he invited to his “studio” – that was what he called the attic space he appropriated in the house he was renting a room in near the university. The entire house was old and smelled like burnt wires and old cheese.



“Well,” he asked me, presenting his latest masterpiece. “What do you think?”



“I don’t know. What’s it supposed to be?”



“It’s not supposed to BE anything!” He rolled his eyes. “THAT is THE POINT!”



I didn’t press it. I mean, what the hell did I know about art? Not a damn thing.



I finished my beer. Vic, the bartender, happened to look over as I set the glass down. I nodded at him and he started me another Guinness. Vic was a fantastic bartender. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the local music scene and of everybody’s drink of choice; once he learned your name, you never had to tell him what you wanted – unless you changed it up. And then he just added to what he knew and moved on. Nothing phased him. He was friendly, but not inclined to put up with bullshit. Polite, but not a pussy. Tarbull’s was my favorite downtown bar; I was there most every night after work because it was so close. I could walk there after work, have a few, relax, then walk back to my car and drive home. And if I got too drunk, I could take the bus – I lived across the river in Erlanger. That meant an early start the next day; but still, it was nice to have the option. Tarbull’s boasted that it was the oldest bar in the city. It was, at first look, a tiny place. A hole in the wall. But what a bar! The bar took up most of space: all hardwood, worn from years of people propping themselves up on it; it survived prohibition and the anti-German waves during both world wars. There were high tables pushed up against the opposite wall for more private conversations. Dim lights, decent food, nice staff. No television. It was meant for people to be social, and unlike all the new bars cropping up downtown and across the river in Newport, it was gimmick free; Tarbull’s didn’t try to be anything other than what it was, and it was glorious.



Then I had to start taking G. In my defense, though, I hated the places G wanted to go; they were pretentious. The kind of places that wanted to act like they were in New York or London instead of Cincinnati.



Vic brought my beer and eyed me. G was getting too loud. Again. I nodded and checked the time. The auburn goddess was gone. Maybe to the restroom. Maybe she gave up waiting and left. I really wanted her to come back.



“This guy,” G said, “doesn’t know good art from his dirty asshole!” He laughed. Actually it was more like a cackle. “You can tell by the shit he hangs on the walls of his gallery.”



“But you have a show there,” I pointed out. “Right?”



“YES,” G rolled his eyes and shook his head. “But MY show is sculptor. Painting is a dead form.” He looked at me like I was supposed to know that.



I shrugged. “Still,” I said, “he IS giving you a show. Don’t you think…”



“Not because that pig fucker has any taste. He gave me a show because he read the article and remembered me.”



The article. That was his claim to fame. The article. That’s what he called it. The god damned fucking article. When he talked about it, he made the whole thing sound way more impressive than it actually was. If you’d just met him and heard him talk about it (which if you just met him, he would) you’d think he was interviewed and featured in some high class art magazine. In actuality, G – whose given name was Wilbur G. Schenk (He would never tell me what the G actually stood for; I guess it was even worse than the rest of his name.) was quoted in a page 33 article about the last art show at a failed co-op gallery. His work wasn’t even part of the show – he thought he was too good for the co-ops; no, he was just there. To Be Seen. His quote was small and nobody remembered it but him.



“Pig fucker,” G cackled. “He’s such a god damn PIG FUCKER!”



For a brief second, the bar went silent, then returned to it’s usual level of innocuous noise. Vic brought the tab and looked at me. That meant it was time to go. I agreed. G plus five martinis equals obnoxious asshole.



But he insisted on paying. I let him. The only time he allowed himself such a grand gesture was when he was drunk. I’d end up paying in the long run; he’d end up calling in a couple of days, trying to get me to take him out to lunch or something. There was always something. You have to love karmic retribution.



We finished our drinks and left. On the way out, I looked over and saw the auburn goddess. She was sitting at one of the high tables with a guy in very expensive looking suit and ivory white teeth. Her back was to me; but I could tell by the way she was leaning in and tossing her hair around that she was really enjoying herself. I could tell by the look on his well kept face that he was too. Dumb chump bastards have all the luck.