Work was entertaining tonight. I served a foursome who was already in the bag when they sat down. They were older than me, I think, or at least the girls looked more road-worn than they should’ve been for 36. I can’t confirm ages, because they were clearly too old for IDing to be necessary.
One of the girls kept talking to me, but I couldn’t hear her, partially because she was slurring and partially because she was whispering.
On the sixth time of “I’m so sorry, could you say that again,” I got “blahblahblah Hawkeyes,” and I used my superior bartending skills to infer she was asking me the score to the Iowa football game.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I can look it up for you if you want.”
“Cd lkjdadflkaj Iowa,” she said, which I took to mean she was from Iowa.
“I love Iowa,” I said. “It’s a great place.”
“People get FUUUUUCKED UP, in Iowa!” she yelled. “Like, really fucked up!” Those sentences I understood.
“I think that happens in a lot of places,” I said, “but I agree that there’s not much more to do in Iowa.”
We went back and forth for a minute more about how she loved Iowa and I agreed. And then she said:
“Y’wanna know the best thing bout Iowa?”
“What?”
“All the girls there got big TITTIES!” Then she grabbed her boobs and jiggled them at me.
“Now I feel weird, so I’m going to walk away,” I said. Mostly, I didn’t want to disagree with her. I’ve met plenty of Iowa girls with small boobs.
—
There was a party tonight with Robert Roberts as the host. Robert Roberts got “fucking torn up,” and said so to me several times.
“I’m so sorry I can’t talk,” he said.
“It’s all good, dude,” I said. “As long as you have a ride home, we’re cool.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I had twins almost nine months ago, and I never get to leave the house anymore.”
“I can’t believe you had twins nine months ago and look like that,” I said. “You should be proud of how quickly you got your figure back. That’s no easy feat.”
Robert Roberts giggled. “I like you,” he said.
At the end of the night, Robert Roberts walked around to all of the people in the bar and offered them cake. There were no takers except for one girl who was visibly stoned, who said “Are you serious? I fuckin’ love cake!”
When it was time for Robert Robert’s crew to pay the tab, I impressed them by reciting the Rifleman’s Creed, and then explained the reason I knew it was because my father once punished me by making me memorize it.
—
There was another foursome of mid-30s parents close down the bar. Of course the women were so excited, repeating “we shut down the bar” over and over to each other.
At 10:10, it was pretty clear they had no idea what time it was. The moms were talking about closing down the bar, the dads were talking about rifle scopes (“I just want to be able to have a scope that can snap drop an asshole at 500 meters”), and the two little girls who should have been in bed two hours ago ran around the taproom squealing like feral hogs.
One little girl, around 6, came up to me while I was wiping down the bar. “There are a lot of leaves on the ground,” she said.
“There sure are,” I said, thinking and as soon as your parents take you home, I can start sweeping them up.
The girl was apparently not pleased with our cleaning efforts, because she went up to Sarah, the other bartender, 10 minutes later.
“Are you a janitor?” she asked.
Sarah laughed. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m a bartender. But we all need to do our part to clean up.”
The girl sized Sarah up for a moment, and then she started pointing and chanting. “Janitor, janitor, you’re a janitor.”
Sarah looked at me, and I looked at the parents, still engrossed in their blah blah blah, oblivious.
“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” Sarah asked. The girl skittered off without answering.
I Don't Belong Here. 