Dear Couple at the Bar

I can be a man of simple tastes.  I look forward to watching DVD episodes of a twenty year old tv show, I work in my vegetable garden in nice weather, I love going to diners, and I like going to see coverbands.  If both of you gross drunks could have ruined any of those other things, I am sure you would have tried.  You seemed content to stick with the last one though.

I recently went out on a night off with some friends to catch Vinyl Rhino play at a local bar.  The night was promising, with the decent coverband fronted by the obligatory hot blonde lady singer.  The bar I went to had been the scene of previous aggravation, so I should have been wary.   No, I ignored that, and tried to enjoy the covers of Spin Doctors and Macklemore while tolerating the watered down diet soda bars love to give designated drivers. 

The first sign of trouble might have been the derelict I dubbed Dancin' Dan.  He would go to the bar, buy a beer which he would immediately down, then dance a lap around the room.  The pace of the song didn't seem to matter, as he was merely dancing to the tune of his inebriation and most likely the nagging voices begging him to pinpoint exactly what terrible decisions led him to this point in his life.  On his fifth lap or so right in front of me, I moved to avoid his flailing elbows, and that's when I saw the two of you, not five feet from me.  Some forcefield had to have blocked you from my vision until that point.  Some blessed angel put a blindspot in my vision so I could continue enjoying my evening.  It would have worked if not for Dancin' Dan.  Once you both had been seen, you could not be unseen.

Both of you somewhere between a really hard late forties and still pretty hard looking mid fifties.   She was straining desperately against her acid washed jeans, and he kept his hand on her ass at all times to make sure the pants didn't burst.  For the next hour, when I looked, you were both either making out, or talking with your faces so close to each other that you might as well have been.  This is not hyperbole.  You made out through an entire set of the band.  Teenagers that were hoping to get laid for the first time would have given up on the display of PDA you were putting on.  At one point I am fairly certain she stuck her tongue up his nose, but I think it made me black out.  I will never be able to listen to Katy Perry the same way ever again, because the only thing that was roaring were your upper middle aged hormones and your lack of regard for those wanting to hear cut rate versions of popular songs in peace.

Things took a turn for the worst during Total Eclipse of the Heart.  She was vaguely fondling her own breasts while talking into his mouth like he was a fast food order microphone, and either started crying or had a stroke that made her bottom lip stick out and gave her Forrest Whitaker eyes.  He tried to talk her down, but after she made a few more rounds on her boobs and shed a few tears, she was somehow able to surgically remove his hand from her ass and storm away.

I had expected the bar to erupt into spontaneous applause as he rushed out of the door after her.  The drummer would have tapped his sticks together three times and the band would have let loose with a blistering rendition of "You Give Love A Bad Name" while the beautiful redhead in the Little Mermaid dress would drape her arms around me and tell me how brave I was to stand so close to the madness you brought upon us.  Instead I got a Miley Cyrus song and a lap passed by Dancin' Dan, because this world stopped caring a long time ago.