Note from Dogpoet:  I’m happy to report that this post will be published in Fourteen Hills, a literary magazine put out by San Francisco State University. As part of that contract, I’ve agreed to truncate the essay and leave you just a taste, so that you’ll be more likely to buy the magazine when it comes out this winter. And for those of you in the Bay Area, I will probably be reading the essay at the publication launch in  December. Details to follow. And for those of you who’ve read the whole piece and commented in the last couple of months, you rock. Special thanks to my friend and fellow writer, Matthew Clark Davison, who helped usher this piece to Fourteen Hills.

I prop open the door to Folsom Street and blink against the sun for a second or two before retreating through the black leather curtains. Happy hour will be slow today, and an hour later only one customer, a regular who often dj’s at the bar on the weekends, keeps me company, sitting across from me on his bar stool, sipping a Jim Beam and Coke through a straw.

His lazy eye looks over my left shoulder as he tells me stories of the previous night. In his stories he is a fierce presence, whipping rowdy customers into shape with a single look, or a bullet-quick line. I sometimes wonder if these retorts aren’t shaped by wishful thinking after the fact, the kinds of things we think to say hours after the interaction, when our blood is only just beginning to cool. For in person he is a tad awkward if unfailingly helpful, dragging full kegs across the bar, checking coats, watching over the register when I need to take a piss.

A few minutes later both of us – anxious for more customers – catch sight of a movement just beyond the gap in the black curtains; a strange movement, slow, methodical, made by something that neither one of us can quite make out. There is a flash of leather, and of the bright petals of flowers, and what looks like a billowing cloak.

“What the hell is that?” I say.

“I have no idea,” he replies.

I take a step towards the door when the curtains part and she walks in…

“So last year I went up to Lazy Bear,” says one of the bartenders. “And I’m over at the pool party at the Triple R Resort. And this big hairy guy is cruising me. And he comes up to me, leans over, and whispers in my ear, ‘I’ve got nachos back in my room.’”

“This is for the vodka tonic,” says the man, handing me a five. Then he throws another one on the bar. “And this is for forgetting to put your shirt on.”