Bar Hawks and Vultures
[Norristown, PA on 9/30/13. Those nasty knuckles almost landed on my porcelain mug.]
Seeing my photo of Empty Pockets in Wissinoming, Philadelphia, a reader sent a fascinating account:
There was an "Empty Pockets" bar on Eighth Avenue in Brooklyn that I went in one evening some years back for a few drinks and the next morning I woke up to find my pockets emptied of everything: cash, keys, wallet, and when I looked out the window, the car was gone too. Then I remembered: an Italian couple befriended me at the bar and near the end of the evening we all went out together in my car and I let them drive because I was so damn drunk and they took me to various ATMs and withdrew my money then after all was done they were nice enough to drop me off at my house then drove away and it was my car. It was an episode to remember of my drinking life. That bar is gone now and in its place is a Chinese grocery store.
At Arlo’s in Wolf Point, Montana in 2014, several guys in their 20’s asked me to join them for some partying nearby, but “Cheeseburger” gave me a stern look and said simply, “Don’t go.”
After they had left, he added, “They all seem cool, but they’ve been watching you.”
Back in Philly, I found out two Wolf Point instant buddies weren’t exactly saints. Old Alfred had just gotten out of jail after raping his daughter, and Mervin would be locked up soon for stabbing somebody.
Alfred saved me from a raging dog. Biting through my jeans, bitch left a scar that took more than a year to fade.
There’s a Vietnamese proverb, “Hang out often at night, you’ll see ghosts.” For all the shit bars I’ve stumbled through, not just in but ouside the US, it’s a miracle I never got rolled or roughed up. The closest was in Norristown, PA in 2013.
A black guy, Kenny, had just invited me to his house around the corner, so I went and met a bunch of his relatives, all super nice. As a thank you, I said I’d buy him a beer when we returned to the bar:
Though my stool was unoccupied, my notes were gone, and I pointed this out to Kenny as I reclaimed my seat. Wanting his beer, he was right next to me, but then he disappeared for a few seconds. When he came back, Kenny whispered, “We’ve got to get out of here!”
“But I have to find out what happened to my notes,” I smiled, “and get you your beer too!”
“No, they think you’re a cop. We’ve got to go!”
I picked up my bag, and slowly walked out, but not before I had said goodbye to Chaz, though he seemed terribly uncomfortable shaking my hand, “Let go of my hand!” I also paused to look Don in the eyes, smile and shake his hand, “I don't know what's happening, man, but it was good talking to you.”
It seemed like the perfect time to go home, but Kenny suggested we went to another bar, since he still wanted that beer I owed him. The issue became moot, however, because Don had barged outside to confront me, “Hey, are you a cop?”
“What?!” Seeing that Chaz had come out, too, I looked at him and said, “Didn’t I tell you I was a writer, right from the beginning?”
Chaz said nothing, and Kenny said nothing, and I was left to confront the enraged Don, “That picture that you took of me. Erase it!”
“Man, you don’t have to be like this, but I will,” and I erased the photos in front of him. Showing his true self, Kenny then shouted, “Take the card! Take his card!”
This has turned into a robbery, pure and simple, and a potential physical assault. First of, a Lexar 16GB 300X card costs $150, and it was not blank but filled with photos, so there was no way in hell I was going to let him take it. As I put my camera into its bag, Don grabbed my left forearm, but I immediately yanked his hand away, then I took out my phone as I stepped backward and opened a door, right behind me.
I had no idea there was a door there until I opened it, and it could easily have been locked, but there I was, suddenly, inside Berks Insurance, and it was my first time in an insurance office, by the way. Mr. Berks, bless his soul, quickly instructed a male employee to not let my harassers in. When Kenny tried to enter, this employee chased him out and locked the door. Within two minutes, two of Norristown’s finest showed up, and one asked me, “What do you want to do?”
“I just want to walk to the train station and get the hell out of Norristown! If you have questions, just ask the people in this store. They saw everything from beginning to end.” As I walked away, the cops watched my back, and so ended my pleasant day trip to Norristown. Its motto, Fervet Opus, and it’s boiling all right, though not from industry.
[from my Norristown postcard, which is included in my Postcards from the End of America]
[Wolf Point, 6/27/14]
Many people never deviate from rules, mostly internal. Others let themselves be improvised by circumstances. There is a continuum, of course. I lean towards let’s just see what the fuck happens, though not without self-preserving instincts, or I wouldn’t be blabbering at age 58.
OK, so this is not a proper article, just a quick note prompted by that reader’s email. I’m working on a piece about barmaids, but such a voluptuously ample topic can’t be dashed off, so you must wait a day or two, all you much mashed sots.
You will be delivered soon by angels.
[Friendly Lounge in Philadelphia, 1/5/17]
Linh,
Please don't take this as criticism. It's a sincere question that comes up each time you publish something about American underclass culture.
Your subject matter is interesting. Wondering why you chose/choose to focus, in America, on the scummy lowlife dive bars and the down-on-their-luck unfortunates, criminals and soon-to-be-criminals who inhabit them?
Specifically, why that focus in America, while in Vietnam you seem to focus on more wholesome and family-friendly locations and people?
There are plenty of scumbags in Vietnam. Plenty of lowlifes and dive bars. Tattooed gangsters and their hoes, drug-runners, thieves, drunks and druggies, wife-beaters, women beating their husband's mistresses, and much, much more. Why not interact, hang out, and write about them? Your skills at inter-cultural translation could provide interesting portraits of the same class in Vietnam that you so ardently pursue(d) in America.
Thanks.
From a literary perspective, the underclass can be more interesting than the middle class or the rich (see Orwell and Twain, who hang out with bums and vagrants and wrote interestingly about that). The middle class is usually more boring or depressing as a subject, although of course there are exceptions. Even Borges, an artistic writer if there ever was one, who hang out with upper-class people and the literati, but his preferred stories among the ones he wrote were about gaucho thugs fighting with knives in taverns (or vikings fighting with swords, which is more or less the same thing). The rich... Well, Fitzgerald wrote about it but his famous novel seems a bit fake to me. Proust is interesting in his childhood recollections but as he drags on and on later about princesses and dukes in their salons, it becomes a bit boring. Perhaps it would have been more interesting if he went to some Parisian low-class bar of the time to see "how the other half lives".