The Time I Met Buddha

It was late on a Saturday night, technically a Sunday morning. After another depressing, unsuccessful night at the club I wandered into Eventuality Point. That's what I call the after-hours dive bar I always end up at when I fail to get laid at Tasty or Club 74 or The Cerulean Room... which is to say every single weekend for the past five years, not counting the time I got meningitis and was out of commission for a while. Eventuality Point is a sad, sorry excuse for a leisure establishment. The only reason anyone ever goes there is because they've got a license to serve alcohol until 4:00. Seriously one time I went there during Happy Hour and it was just me and some 60-year-old woman drinking Fuzzy Navels and smoking slims. The state banned indoor smoking six years ago but nobody ever goes to EP, not even the health department.

The night I met him it was actually my birthday. Like, literally. My 30th birthday was that Sunday, which is good I guess because being reminded that you're a social failure on your birthday is kinda horrible. Of course, telling people that it was my birthday may have made things easier, but it probably would have turned out the same regardless. I spent the last dwindling minutes of sunless respite downing Jaegermeister and telling myself that I wasn't really a regular because I only ended up at Eventuality Point because I couldn't be where I really wanted to be. I mean, the folks who are regulars at a dive actually want to be there, right?

Of course not.

Anyway, I was sitting at the bar holding in what I could only assume was one of those epically long pisses that would be inconvenient if they weren't so damn astounding. "Just another minute," I thought, "Then I'll get up." It didn't strike me then why I was stalling. I mean, I wasn't afraid of anyone slipping something into my drink. If the people patronizing Eventuality Point had sense enough to drug strangers they wouldn't wind up riding one of those stools. No, I stalled because I didn't want to look in the mirror in the men's room. I only got up when I felt a few drops escape against my will.

When I got back to the bar, I noticed a new guy sitting at one of the booths. He was pudgy and wearing one of those Russian fur hats. Didn't say a word, the guy, but I sat down across from him anyway. He just nodded. When the pitcher came he poured it out so elegantly that it was like watching a geisha do a tea service. After I took my first sip I noticed that he had emptied the salt shaker onto the table and arranged some beer nuts in the mounds. It was beautiful.

We shared our beer without a word. "Stairway to Heaven" played on the jukebox and a smile formed across the pudgy guy's face in increments so small that it didn't peak until Robert Plant sang, "Our shadows taller than our soul". My round-faced benefactor balanced his pinky on one of the beer nuts and said,

"We're going on a road trip."

log on next week for part 2