2001-04-26 || 2:21 p.m.

|| lots of liquor inside that cave. ||

I WISH I WERE MORE OF A oh dear. caps. i wish i were more of a drinker because there are all kinds of dreamy bars right around the corner from my apartment. old ones with dark cavernous insides and rickety bar stools and wrinkly bartenders and beautiful neon signs and ancient juke boxes. last night we walked into the ivy room because the pool table was open. there were three people in there including the bartender. they were all singing along with the radio propped up behind the bar, its antennae pointed toward the budweiser sign. the bartender was sneaking sips of something evil from a shot glass in between songs.

we played a couple of games of pool. i was awful. i put a gash in my pointer finger with one of my frustrated attempts to make the striped balls go flyin. the sacrifice of blood and knuckle did not help my game unfortunately. i chucked the number eleven ball in the center pocket when i thought he wasn't looking. that didn't help either.

but oh, the jukebox! "it's old. it doesn't take dollars," the bartender lady said from the bar. "you have to put two quarters in at a time. it says you get seven songs, but if you put two quarters in at a time at least you get six songs. that's the best it will do." and she ran over to show the man fumbling with it. she started pushing buttons. buddy holly started singing. i never would have taken her for the buddy holly type. the man stood over the juke box forever, flipping back and forth.

he called the songs "eclectic."

'welding' by i-roy came on. the men at the bar blew cigarette smoke and lifted their heads to sing the chorus, then fell back into the shadows and returned to their half-hearted conversations. then 'sleepwalk' by santo and johnny came on. everyone whistled along, swayed on their bar stools, waxed down the shuffleboard run, and i leaned against the wall, listening to the solid balls darting around on the table and falling into the pockets plink plonk plunk and the whistling and the cars outside and the bartender's rough voice and that dreamy dreamy song.

previous || next || random

guestbook || notes || archives || profile || photos || d-land