Drunk Post #2
After too much laziness, the boy (Justin, for the uninitiated) and I got some food and then headed to the bar I work at to get my weekly pay. Since we’re both broke and the booze is cheap we decided to hang there and have a drink. Now, as a preface, it seems important to describe my bar briefly…
I work at a bar that nobody I know has ever even heard of, let alone hung out at (except for Court…but let her tell you that story). It’s relatively close in to the major parts of the city, but hides in an odd nook on a busy street that is unnoticed by anyone except for the alcoholics and videocrackheads (we have legalized video poker here in Oregon) who live and/or work nearby. And it is worth noting that this town is full of young hipsters who pride themselves on finding and exploiting every dive bar they can worm their way into. They have not found this one. Yet. It’s not a great neighborhood and I’ve already (in the month+ I’ve worked there) dealt with all kinds of fights and other confrontations resulting in calls to the police…but ultimately nothing too scary or threatening.
So, tonight I go in to grab my paycheck and take advantage of the employee discount on drinks since the boy and I are both poor. We order some cocktails, call some friends to join us, hang out, chat play some pool…the usual mellow evening in the silly dive bar. While waiting to pee, a man I know as video poker player from my shifts starts freaking out on the bartender (my co-worker). Last week he’d told me I had the perfect ass of a black woman right before he informed me his 3 year old daughter had been killed in a car wreck the day before and he was going home to bury her. I really felt for this poor guy who I’d seen in there before, sinking dollars into a machine intended to take advantage of his inability to calculate the probabilities of taking the Oregon government for a few extra hundred dollars.
He is a videocrackhead. He’s never seemed drunk or high or out of control. He has, in the past, inappropriately commented on my physical attributes, but in the name of flattery, I’d hardly hold that against him. In all honesty, he struck me as a relatively sane, amusing man trying to schmooze me and after a few games of pool with him, even Justin very much enjoyed his company.
So, evidently much earlier in the day he had had a problem with the video poker machines. Now mind you, the technology in these machines has never ceased to amaze me with it’s ability to track every single little thing without fail. One does not lose money to machine malfunction. But there was a malfunction and he claimed to have had money in the machine, in the amount of $42, that he lost as a result. He had been told tht his claim could only be taken up with the Oregon Lottery and that the bar could only file a report. So, of course, 7 hours later, he’s in the bar (playing pool with my boyfriend) and ends up freaking out about his lost money. In line for the bathroom I see him shouting about talking to the owner, about calling the lottery and about his dead 3 year old baby girl. After being informed that the lottery said he was taking a risk by even playing the machines, and the owner said to call the cops rather to talk to him, the poor man with the dead child was left hollering at anyone who would listen about the pain he felt that nobody understood.
At that point, I felt for the man. He kept saying that no one was feeling him and his pain…and I’m sure he was right. He kept asking this one girl trying to calm him down (a regular customer of mine) if she’d lost a baby girl, as though his problems would have been solved if she had. And in the midst of a lot of yelling he was informed that the police were coming and he had to leave. End of story, right?
This guy leaves under the threat of police intervention. He finally grabs his coat, shouting about nobody feeling his pain and walks out the door. But not more than 5 seconds later, comes back in the door and yells “You guys have ten minutes to get out of here! I’m gonna come back and shoot up this bar!! You have 10 minutes!!! I’m going to come back and shoot up this whole bar!!”
Needless to say the bar clears out. Everyone politely closes out their tabs and a particular style of Portland-style chaos ensues…lots of “oh dear! What should we do??!”s and gently frantic grabs for coats and scarves and last gulps of bad drinks. I decide immediately to get the fuck out of there and then, just as immediately, to stay out of some odd loyalty to this bizarre job that I can barely justify having. I wouldn’t leave and many of the regulars had the same reaction. I have never in my life been so eager to see the cops. I’ve generally viewed them as a bullying, offensive force in my daily life, but also a necessary one in certain cases. I sat in such anticipation of the police I was lauging at myself. It wasn’t even irony…just a girl sitting in bar being threatened to be shot along with 20 others, hoping for any kind of intervention to dissolve the situation. And the cops came. And they found the guy a block away and gave him a talking to. They hadn’t even heard he’d threatened to shoot us all until midway through their conversation with him, but it didn’t seem to phase them. They suggested he go home and cool down and come back to the bar tomorrow to reclaim his money. They came into the bar to inform the bartender of their “actions.”
The really messed up thing is, the people who know him say he has some really deep, violent connections (I believe the term OG was used) and that they were concerned some of those type of people could be contacted to carry out any threats he’d made. In reality, this guy is completely grief-stricken out of his mind and is freaking out like he really is the OG, but jesusHchrist, threatening to come and shoot up an entire bar!!!??? The bar I work at??!!!
Nothing came of it as of yet. I insisted on staying at the bar out of some sort of misguided noble protest against his threat. I’m now 3 drinks drunker than I’d intended on being…but I really don’t konw how to process someone threatening to shoot up my workplace. Thank god it’s a bar. If it were an accounting firm the bastard would have come back with a shotgun.
Maybe I should try and process this when I’m more sober and don’t have to take my friends to the airport in 2 hours.
Tags: Ramblings
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