It's Thursday, and I'm getting a text from my friend who's birthday it is.  I look at the clock.  9:20.  If I hustle I might just be able to catch the bus up there, to work, hmm.  I haven't even taken a shower yet.  Turns out it's already gone by, I find out from two young women speaking Portuguese, talking on the sidewalk in the light of the Korean market.  So I get an Uber, an Ethiopian cat who has NPR on, a piece about the supremacist ranchers out West, and get dropped off about 9:45 in front of the restaurant just as my friend is showing up.  It's Restaurant Week.  They've had a busy night.  I don't see but one busboy, and there isn't any other server in sight.

Ten PM and there are tables still.  I don't want to be in the way, but, more out of habit than anything else, we sit down, doing what's familiar to us in this place, and the barman is kind enough to pour us one, and we sit and chat with the two other regulars.   My friend who is a regular doesn't have a drink in front of him, and I don't want to bother the barman so I reach for a bottle and a glass and pour him a little bit of scotch.   A. the server had brought her brother in for a visit earlier that week, could see that I was frazzled, and told me, don't worry, I'll just order myself.  And she did.  Serving herself, coming behind the bar finally to pay her check, after getting bread and set-ups for the table.

But I know, it's stupid to be there, and I know I'm stupid doing this, but by now the need for the sugary water has stricken...  I'd already poured myself a glass back at the apartment, for some energy to think about dinner.

In an attempt to compensate for bothering him, I let the young guy go, telling him, you get out of here,  I'll clean up, and I put the bar mats through, load the dishwasher with the last of the glassware... wipe down the bar, etc.

The latest stupidity in the barman's work life...  As a sign of eating poorly over the week, cold cut subs, steak n cheese, as I'm enjoying the conversation from behind the bar, four very well-educated and interesting people speaking in turn, I have an immediate need to go to the restroom, in a gut sickly way...  But I come back and finish up cleaning the bar, and keeping my quiet birthday friend company, as she keeps a good sense of humor about things...

As we drive down the street, under the full moon, to park by the late night pizza delivery counter, things are chill.  We've had many a soulful conversation my friend E and I on such summer evenings in August before the work starts up for her.  And she has amazing stamina, as far as I can tell.




And then I get a text, from the boss, just as I'm tentatively getting up...  Please call me.  Thank you.   Uh oh.

What happened last night...

Uhm, well, it was E.'s birthday...  She wanted to meet up...  Who's E?  You know, she's a school teacher, been coming to the wine tasting night forever...

Well, tell them to come by when you are working...


Okay, well, anyway, two things, the boss says, not happy with me, obviously.   First of all, one of gas burners of the stove behind the bar was left on, we discovered it this morning, and good thing there wasn't a fire...

Second, it's Restaurant Week, people are tired.  (I know... )  And you reach behind the bar to pour A. a drink...

Okay, sure, yes, be happy to pay for it, the scotch in question.   I think you should, the boss says.  Fine.   I love the guy, but I don't want to be giving away free drinks....  Sure.  (He doesn't get free drinks.)

(The boss must have called around, and in so doing, getting the story.  I knew it was a stupid thing to do, and sensed at the time it would come out this way.  And anyway, seeing that the kid was busy and probably tired of customers I didn't want to bother him, nor trouble him by asking for a check before he closed out the cash drawer...  The kid is fit, works as a trainer, gets up early, hardly drinks at all...  Sweet kid, good with people, easy going...  Wednesday night was a hard-fought battle, me and the kid, and we did it together, and my not having to deal with a female co-server for once.  And with such simple joy did I walk out of work that night, walking down to the late night food counter, pizza, wings, steak and cheese, then getting the bus home, with enough wine to chill out with after having climbed the mountain since Saturday, closing every night, then reaching the summit, and then to rest and have time for the body to have to itself.)

You come by on your night off, people are tired, you drink...   And if you fall, or something happens...   We're screwed.

Ted, I love you, but, you come by...  you drink on your night off...  No.

Sure.

Well, no skin off my ass, that's how it goes.   Shouldn't be going there anyway.  Wasn't my idea.

And never once, never hardly ever, did I turn away a late guest, nor not allow for some therapeutic conversation the bar, whether or not I was involved with it so much, or whether it was just me and poor old departed from this world Uli, just the two of us, and hell I'll have a glass of wine anyway while we listen to Dire Straits, and do you think I'm sorry for any one of those moments of nights he, ostensibly, kept me and parts of the kitchen late, to have a civilized European style Sunday dinner in good company...

The effects of meditating and good readings, you take everything circumspect, fulfilling a certain unanimity, perhaps of an almost fatalistic kind.  Sure.  No problem.  That's how it is.  I agree with you, that's what happened, I'm fine with any outcome, any judgment.  That's how it is all the way along, each moment, really, in the barman's life, achieving a certain kind of magnanimous unity of letting the people think they are leading themselves.  I don't give a rat's hindquarters, God will let it work out as it is to work out.  And goddamn Jesus knew all this anyway, as does the good Buddhist monk, "is that so?" from the famous Zen tale.

Anyway, it was nice the boss could, in the midst of doing his duties, allow for the expression of his appreciation, along with the old "watch it" sort of thing.  That is not lost on me.  We've been through a fair amount together, and there are things we cannot say, in manly form, when we are out hiking up on the ridge of Big Schloss with a fire going.

Attempts of those who never get lonely and alone, to disparage the Good Samaritan, who does what he can to take in the lonesome, those needing an ear listening, who do not see the forest for the tree...

As well as a chance to, proverbially, come clean...  How little we know each other.  How little effort we make...



And I'm tired and dehydrated to begin with.  And feeling guilty, and how is mom's cat... anyway...  So, that's how much of the day off is going to go, a bad feeling, and not enough energy to go out and do yoga.  I knew it at the end of the night, staring up at the full moon, tired out, something would come out of the night's visit to the bar upstairs at work.  I don't have many friends outside of the place, really, except for the nice guy, fellow Irishman in background, who takes me out to Clyde's sometimes, buddy of mine, otherwise that's pretty much it.



Connecting, well, it was good conversation, but...  comes with a cost...  if it's all built around drinking...

Feeling stupid, the awkwardness of time alone again...  Laundry to do.  Too down to really get much out of Thich Nhat Hahn today in world of drunken lies and excuses and getting very little accomplished...


At the end of the day, though, whether rightly or wrongly, you have a sense of why Jesus might ask of his Disciples, what do they think of me, who do they say I am, who do you think I am, what would you call me.  And Peter, of course, has the right words, the Son of Man, meaning, more or less, the son of God, meaning more or less, a person educated somehow in the nature of deeper reality, and of the sciences that we entrust to people of more and greater spiritual insights than that of what we might normally come up with ourselves, would we have the time to do so.