Dear Drunkard

When I get a chance to choose between sitting at home watching The Wire on my laptop or meeting some friends at a bar, I'll eventually turn up at the bar.  I'll pay the cover charge, drink the one beer that comes with that cover charge, and I'll watch whatever coverband is playing.  Mostly, I'm there to see friends that I don't get to see very often because grownup life sucks.  So, when some drunken dill hole mucks up my good time, I am unsurprisingly less than pleased.

Like any predator, you made your move when someone strayed from the pack.  I had been telling my sister that she should get the number of a quiet looking Asian fellow wearing an Ed Hardy t-shirt, because wow, and he turned it up a notch when he climbed on top of the bar with a fiddle and started playing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" with the band.  My sister and my friend Beaz went closer to the bar to watch, and you swooped in.  Tall, emaciated, and with a mangy mane of hair befitting a sewer poodle, you leaned in and yelled something at Beaz.  He ignored you, so you yelled loud, then proceeded to pick up the trashcan next to you and flail about, banging it on the floor and swaying your hips like a trollop.  You finished with a flourish, set the can down gently, then yelled, "Yeah!  Drum contest!"  You couldn't have known Beaz is a drummer.  You are simply a moron that wanted a drum contest and settled for humping a garbage can at a bar.

You couldn't settle for that level of drunken idiocy though.  You decided instead, awhile later, to push through my group of friends, put your arm around me, and say, "Thank God!  How tall are you?"  I'm not sure how those two utterances were related.  I was too focused on the fact that your greasy arm was on my shoulder.  I proceeded to, in no uncertain terms, explain that I had not given you any permission to come near me, let alone touch me, and that your touch was indeed unwanted.  I pushed you away, and I made several suggestions of other places where you could put your arm, because I am helpful.  You looked like you wanted to cry, and stuttered out, "But...how tall are you?"  My answer, if it were interpreted by a lip reader from across the bar, may have resembled "Duck poop.  That's how tall I am."

Grown men resolve differences with words, and sometimes fists.  You went to the bouncers, pointed at me, and told them I yelled bad words at you.  Like any bouncer worth their salt, they laughed right in your face.  You proceeded to sulk around, looking furtively over your shoulder at me from time to time, as if you were wistful over the friendship that could have been.  I'd have preferred you left it at that, but half an hour later, you wandered back up and placed something on the railing next to me and wandered quickly away.  Somehow, you have found a few flowers.  You took those awful flowers and set them in a beer cup, filled it carefully with water, and left it as a peace offering.

This was sent to me after I posted this letter.  I forgot photos existed.

I almost ate those flowers when you peeked around the corner at me, but I was afraid to put something in my mouth that you had touched.

I told myself I wasn't going to write this letter, because really, you aggravated me more than anything.  The whole thing was ridiculous, and your seeming high school crush was creepy, so I wanted to leave it die.  It would have, except for a server from the restaurant at work asked if I had been to that bar that night.  I told her yes, and asked why she hadn't come up and said hi.  She told me she wasn't sure it was me, because I had been smiling, which she wasn't used to, and wearing street clothes, so she wasn't sure it was definitely me.  She then asked if something had happened with a drunk guy that night.  Shoulder slumped, I asked why she wanted to know.  According to her, a lanky, sullen, very drunk man had wandered around to different groups at the bar, dejectedly pointed me out to them, and said, "That guy is mad at me, and I don't know why."

I can't get a woman to give me a second glance, but apparently, I am quite the heartbreaker for drunken goons.  I watched as you slunk out of the side entrance, in shame.  I won't lie, I made sure to check under my car to make sure you didn't Cape Fear yourself back to my house.