It was the start of another shift at the 2 street bar. I walked in and tapped out John the day bartender. I looked around. An old rummy nursing a mug of beer, a couple of construction workers with five empties in front of them, flirting with a bored neighborhood housewife who was decked out in a purple velvet track suit. In the corner there was a kid playing the video golf game in a tee shirt three times too big and his cap pulled to the side of his head. Just another shift. As John was leaving, he pointed to the farthest booth back at a body propped against the wall."So uh, when that guy wake up, you'll want to throw him out."
"Shit man, he's passed out over there. Why don't you throw him out now?" I asked.
"Well, he's got a gun in his pants that he was waving around earlier so I figured we would let him sleep it off."
"Cops?" I said putting an imaginary phone to my ear with a "duh??" expression on my face.
"No cops. You know the rule."
The bar had just been listed by the South Philly Review as one of the worst nuisance bars in the city. While the owner had won the battle to re-open after the big drug bust, we were still on the city's most wanted list and the LCB was trying to take the liquor license away. The owner was very clear. No cops.
"I'm sure he'll be more reasonable after he sleeps it off" he said over his shoulder as he rushed out the door.
I stood there with my mouth open and my heart pounding while the construction workers barked at me for another round.
I tried to go about my business like everything was normal while my eyes darted to the dark booth every 30 seconds. No one seemed to notice the snoring corpse. About 20 minutes into the shift, I heard the loud thump of a metal object hitting the floor. The body was slouched over the table. I tip toed to the booth. He was out cold and I could see the .38 by his foot. I got on my hands and knees and crawled under to retrieve the weapon. I picked it up, it was wet. What the fuck? I looked up over my shoulder with my face right at crotch level and realized he was peeing his pants. This was no tinkle, there was a torrent of beer piss poring down his leg. There I was, on my hands and knees, under a table, in a rapidly growing puddle of another man's urine, while holding a .38, in a shit hole bar in deep south Philly. Just freeze that moment in your head. Freeze it and ask yourself, why was I there? I certainly did.
No one understood why I would put myself through working in such a sketchy place. The answer lies in a basic understanding of my personality. While the 2 street culture wasn't all that alien to me, I was alien to them. Most of my regulars rarely ventured out of the neighborhood. Most were born, lived and died on the same block. Center City was only five train stops away but to them it might as well be on the other side of the country. Not only was I not from the neighborhood, I wasn't from South Philly, I wasn't from Philly, I wasn't even from the east coast.
"Where were you born?"
"Kansas."
"You grew up in KANSAS?" they would ask with a look of wide eyed astonishment.
"No, I grew up in New Mexico."
"....you...grew... up..."
It was enough to shut down their brains. Here was this college educated wacko from some strange land that had suddenly invaded the neighborhood. Sometimes I got the feeling that they were coming into the bar just to gawk at me. The 2 streeters were fiercely proud of their blue collar roots and there was a basic assumption that since I wasn't one of them, I was weak. It didn't matter that I had spent my teens and twenties hanging out with thugs and drug dealers, that I had been involved in plenty of fights, that I've seen people beaten into the hospital and shot. I spoke funny and wasn't from there so I HAD to be weak. The bartender Tommy, pulled me aside once to try and help me assimilate.
"Not for nothin' but it's like this, everyone knows you ain't one of us. See cause you read."
"I read? Tommy I read the fucking Weekly."
"Yeah, but see, we don't read. You stand down there readin' and it makes you look like a snob. Like you're better than us. And you talk like some kind of snooty professor."
"Jesus Christ, you make it sound like I'm quoting T.S. Eliot for fuck sake."
"Yeah, it's talk like that, you gotta stop it. Also, I gotta be honest, a lot of the guys think you're a faggot. It's not just all the big fag words you use, but it's those shoes. The second people see you they know you ain't one of us.
"My Chuck Taylors?"
"Yeah, only those punker weirdoes over on south street or the faggots wear those. I try and stand up for you and tell the guys you ain't a queer, but you ain't makin' it easy. I mean for real, this place really ain't for you."
Pep talks like that were regular occurrences from everyone around me. There was a betting pool to see how long I would stay that started the first week. The neighborhood goons constantly tested me to see if I would stand my ground. The fact that no one believed that I would survive, and that no one wanted me there was exactly why I stayed. I worked at the 2 street bar for a year and a half out of spite for my customers and a need to prove I could do it. I knew I would never earn their respect and didn't want it, I just needed to show that I could last.
After I disarmed the drunk of his piss soaked pistol, I flopped him onto the floor with a loud painful thud. He moaned but didn't wake up. After dragging him outside by the dumpster and kicking him in the stomach as payment for my troubles, I went to the bathroom and did my best to wash off the urine. Then I went to the end of the bar and started to read.
My Company
