An Odd Night of Barhopping: Memories.

So the other Monday night I was downtown for a labor activism informational meeting with my one hippie friend from Michigan and then to do some work at the art school, and afterwards I began to hit up some bars.

At like the fourth bar that I was at, this kind of swanky-looking “farmhouse” place in a touristy area with high turnover, I walk in, immediately to be greeted with a “Bon soir!” by this short moon-faced Frenchman with a wrinkled face and a freshly-trimmed van dyke beard – and, this odd smell, of pickled vegetables, and dark fatty organ meats like pate, and body odor, that was exactly how my dead Hungarian grandmother used to smell.

I was overwhelmed, and ready to cry, since I hadn’t thought of my dead grandmother in so long, and it had been even longer since I had remembered how she smelled.

The fact that I was going on the 4th beer of the night didn't help, either.

At some point, the owner said something in heavily-accented English to me, and then I asked him to repeat himself, and he was like, “But I am speaking English,” and then said again that he apologized that the air conditioning was broken, it had been working earlier that day.

Then, I realized that the place was overwarm and a bit clammy, just like my grandmother used to keep her house and just like her arms used to feel when she hugged me – she used to wear sleeveless house dresses, so you could see liverspots on her upper arms and wobbly fat where her muscles used to be - and that was part of it too.

In the bar part of the restaurant there was this very thin younger (white) guy with dark hair and big eyes, and a fat Frenchman in his mid-40s (?) at the end of the bar, with a big gut and a thick gold chain around his neck and nestled among the chest hair bursting out of his open shirt, and maybe with a facelift, too, because of the slightly strained look around his eyes and hairline.

The fat Frenchman turned out to be a restauranteer in town for a convention; he owned a major French restaurant in a small Rust Belt city where he had chased an American woman to years ago, who had drawn him away from Orleans, and every time he was in town he stopped through this particular French place.

He was also working on opening up a wine bar in that same Rust Belt city, as a more casual companion place to his main restaurant, which was more of an expensive place for couples, rather than a place to stop through after work and have a bit of wine and some food with friends.

“You know,” I was like, “If I owned a wine bar – and stop me if I’m full of shit –”

- and at that point I temporarily broke off to apologize for my language, and the fat Frenchman said not to worry, since he spoke like that too –

“If I owned a wine bar, I would have a weekly ‘Men’s Night’ special, just like they have ‘Ladies’ Night’ at some places.”

I let that sink in, then I continued.

“Some of my single female friends,” I was like, “used to go to wine bars to relax, and they would never meet any men, it would just be other women and couples there, so the thing is, you already have business from women, if you can get single men, you get their business, and even more women to come in.”

Then, I said that maybe some upscale single male workers from downtown would stop through his wine bar for the special – like a “dollar off per glass of wine for every male” – and then they would find out that they like the place and make a habit of coming through, and women looking for men would especially go there, to meet the eligible working men with good incomes.

At that point, he said that he was going to be very careful not to call the place a wine bar.

“When people hear ‘wine bar’, they think ‘French’, and they think ‘expensive’, like my other restaurant,” the fat Frenchman said.  “They do not know what a bistro is, but that is okay.  I will say ‘wine – beer – casual dining’, and they will come.  It will mostly be good wines, but I will have craft brews also, for the people who want that.”

Then he said that some restauranteers from another Rust Belt city warned him away from labeling anything “small plates” or “tapas”, since customers categorize that as upscale, rather than a casual drop-through place.

“Eighty percent of all restaurants fail,” he was like.  “And when you start with the wrong name, you are doomed, and it is too late to change it.”

Later, just as he was leaving, he asked me what I did, so I said I was teaching college and finishing my doctoral degree, and we began talking about BDSM and transsexuals, and he immediately began to linger.

As I started expounding in response to some question of his, he stopped me and was like, “How do you know all of this?”

“I read books,” I was like.

“But where do you find the books?”, he was like.

“I just find them,” I was like.  “I find them because I love them.”

Then, I went back to explaining how for male-to-female transsexuals, they peel the skin down off the cock like a banana, remove the banana part and throw it away, gouge some shit out in the pelvis, then layer the peel internally to preserve nerve sensations in the genitals.

“But how does it look?”, the fat Frenchman was like.  “A woman, you know, she looks, complicated,” and he kind of gestured his hands in a mound-like gesture, and slightly and slowly wriggled the tips of his fingers to indicate the various folds of skin.

“I actually have no idea,” I was like.  “Google it.  There’s probably a website there, two pictures, one with a real woman and one with a transsexual, and you have to guess which genitals are real.”

“There is such a website?”, he was like.

“I don’t know, but probably,” I was like.  “And if not, let’s make one, I’m sure there’s money in it.”

He then related the story of a deliveryman at his restaurant; in the guy’s old age, he decided to become a woman, and his wife decided to become a man, and they’re still together, but the husband is now the wife and the wife is now the husband.

After he left, I spoke with the slight (white) bartender guy, and he said that the smells in the restaurant really come out on hot days.

He also turned out to have worked there for 5 of the restaurant’s 17 years – it has been there a while, but I had no idea it was there! – and he teaches ballet on the side.

After I left, I ended up down the street at this yuppie bar with dark wood and lots of flatscreens and a banner up above the bar like a stock market ticker, only giving sports scores and news.

Lightning had been flashing as I left the French place, and at some point a downpour started, and yuppies came in from the patio, just around the time that I started noticing that the lit banner was obsessed with sports injuries, every few minutes flashing “...TORN LIGAMENT...” or “...SPRAINED ANKLE...” or “...SEVERE CONCUSSION...”.

The bartender was a jocked up white guy from the south part of the state, and I asked him if anything had ever triggered him thinking about his dead grandparents.

He said every time he goes to his hometown, just seeing the signs at city limits with the name of the town makes him think of them.