A bar the weekend before that: John Updike.

The weekend before that, I was at another bar inside a vegan restaurant in a hipster neighborhood, and sat there and had a beer and was reading that same novel, by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.

"You read Murakami?", the tall, skinny, (white), mustachioed, heavily fore-arm haired (hipster) bartender asked me.

"Yeah, for class," I was like.  "You?".

"Yeah, I read like three of his, but not that one," he was like.

I then asked him what he was reading now, and he said John Updike.

"No way," I was like.  "He was my favorite author back in high school.  I really remember 'Rabbit, Run', which was the 2nd novel by him that I ever read.  There's this time where Rabbit wakes up and is sitting on the bed and looks down at his legs and realizes that the quality of his leghair has changed, and he suddenly realizes that he's old.  At the time, I was like, 'What the fuck is that?', and then, years later, it happened to me."

Then, after a pause, I was like, "And he always has some really perverted sex scenes."

"Yeah," the guy was like.  "He starts writing on that, and it's suddenly just like Screw magazine or something, nothing literary at all.  Like I was reading 'On the Farm', about a city couple going to take over a farm from the guy's mom, and as soon as they get there and the old lady steps out, the guy turns to the woman and is like, 'Let's fuck.'  I don't remember much, but that stuck with me."

"That's nothing," I was like.  "In 'Rabbit, Run', he has pages of dick envy about some other guy who's a douche but has a nice piece, and then the morning after Rabbit's honeymoon night, his wife is cooking, and Rabbit walks up to the pan where she's standing and making scrambled eggs and jerks off into it and then they sit down and they have a breakfast of eggs and his jizz."

And at that point, this older (white) male grandfatherly-looking customer walked up to the counter, just as I was saying "...and they have a breakfast of eggs and his jizz," and the bartender kind of bolted upright when he realized another customer was there, and I started and looked over at the older guy, and he kind of looked at me and raised both his eyebrows in mock shock, almost a bit lasciviously.

He had on a polo shirt and white pants and had a bit of a pot belly and was tanned a bit, as if he just had gotten back from Florida.