It was a Thursday evening, the last time I saw my good friend Paul. We sat for what seemed to be hours in the smoky air of a bottomless-mug pool hall in East Oakland. Poor running motorbikes, loose women, and stories of “Army days” filled our conversation. A single pool table lamp to our rear and a “Have a Guinness!”-illuminated mirror to our front provided light to the quiet back corner portion of the long wooden bar.
Paul told me that he couldn’t quite “get things together,” that money was tight, and that his wife of three years had left him and returned back to some piss hole in Nevada “where she belonged.” Her name was Connie, a name I lived to hate thereafter. I tapped the bottom of my mug on the bar top; and when the barkeeper approached, I ordered two refills and a shot of “the best, near untouched scotch” he had for the both of us. He returned as Paul was thanking me for taking the time to drop by and listen to his “bullshit-stories-of-woe-is-me,” he simply “just needed someone to talk to.”
Paul and I nodded thanks to the barkeeper. Paul lifted his small glass of scotch and examined the contents from the bottom of the glass. He asked if we were “supposed to just shoot it or sip it?” I shrugged my shoulders. In parallel, we lifted our glasses and looked at one another. We toasted “to good friends lost in the desert, to trying to remember the necessary whilst committing to forget the unnecessary, and to the fuckin’ A’s, may they some day secure the pendant for this dirty old city!”
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