It’s another Wednesday night at the Blue Rider, same as always. The four of us sit around our usual table, in the corner nearest the door. I’m finishing my third Michelob Ultra, having recently jumped onto the low-carb bandwagon. It’s not a bad beer, so far as the light stuff goes. With me are my friends Phil, Michelle, and Karin, whose pleasant descriptions of their weekends are fast coming to a grinding halt.
“…so I think I’ll start wearing Patagonia instead,” Phil finishes saying, followed by the appropriate murmurs of moral assent from the rest of us. Ordinarily the talk at the Blue was a round-robin of conversation, one of the three picking up the tail end and setting off again, leaving me pleasantly to my thoughts and drinks. But tonight was altogether different, lacking in a certain zest or interest or energy. No joie de vivre, like.
“This sucks,” Karin at last says huffily. “I mean, like, this dynamic.” She motions around the table. “We’re just a bunch of boring white people. We suck.”
“I know,” Michelle agrees, her biff Phil nodding along in agreement. “We need a gay guy or something, like all the cool groups seem to have on TV, you know? Somebody to liven things up a bit.” And she gives me one of those withering looks. I don’t add much to the dynamic, I know, but in all honestly there isn’t much more to add. Ordinarily the three have their bases pretty well covered.
I get up and grab myself another Ultra, wishing they didn’t go down so quickly. Not only am I drinking more of them than usual, but the blasted things are a dollar more expensive than the Pabst. When I return to the table Karin is already on the phone, doing that head waggling emphatic voice thing she does when she wants something. “Could you please please please come down,” she was saying. “We desperately need to hang out. Really? Alright!! See you in a bit, hon. He’s coming,” she tells us triumphantly as she pops her phone into that outlandishly sized pink purse of hers.
“Who is he, then?” I ask, but nobody hears me.
With the expected arrival of another the talk picks right back up, Karin describing her friend Colin with Michelle and Phil winding themselves up into an absolute circus of excitement. When this Colin finally strolls in after maybe ten or so minutes, Karin and Michelle both jump up to hug him. They briefly introduce Phil and myself, and with an emphatic whoop-whoop Karin orders up a round of brightly-colored Mike’s Hards, which I suppose is the new Zima.
The gals hedge Colin in between themselves, their combined energy about double what it normally runs at. Phil leans in to Michelle’s left, doing his best to outdo them in the gesticulating party atmos they’ve created. Even I take things up a notch, leaning forward on my elbows and nodding here and there as I sip at my Mike’s. It’s a sweet thing, a sort of cappuccino of the beer bar universe. Frankly, I’m not much into sweet anymore. But they’re unstoppable as the next two rounds come to table, sickly pastels in clear bottles.
It’s my turn to buy another round, so I belly on up to the bar to order myself a real beer in addition to four Mike’s. Not even an Ultra; I’m thinking Guinness or the like at this point. Something bitter and real and palpable to savor.
“Gawd, she never shuts up,” Colin hisses as he unexpectedly sidles to the bar beside me. “Why do you hang out with them? No offense, but you don’t seem to be their type.”
I think about it, having not really ever thought about it before. True, that nameless feeling crops up from time to time, that out-of-place sensation. I suppose it’s always been a for-granted, ‘Wednesday nights at the Blue.’ Like church. “I dunno,” I tell him. “I like this place, I suppose. And listening to them lets me unwind a bit. It helps to sort of go limp and tune out, just listen to the sound of their talking like.”
Colin laughs. “Buy me a drink? Like, a real one?”
“Yeah sure, those help too.” I order two pints of stout and three candied Mike’s, and looking over at the corner table I don’t think they’ve noticed Colin’s gone.
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