Able Baker Brewing, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Visited on June 23, 2022.
A threesome, two of them friends, the other a significant other, together, discuss another who is absent, a mutual acquaintance, whose sins are catalogued, whose motives are impugned, whose reputation is dissected, who is said to be “manipulative as fuck.” Everyone knows someone like this because everyone has created someone like this, a caricature. Even when true, still a caricature.
A beer is a bomb.
A bomb is a song.
If not for love
Would we have lasted so long?
One thread on the hem of her cut-offs is longer than the rest. What happens when you tug on the edge of a concept? What happens when you tug on the edge of an idea?
It comes apart. You end up naked.
We could tell it was busy before we entered. Everyone who could had grabbed a seat outdoors. We share a table with the threesome. Despite every inconvenience, and no matter how tired we are, we show up. You and I always show up.
Hey.
I’m back.
Joe.
Hey.
I’m back.
Joe.
I’m back.
In the United Soviet Socialist Republic.
That’s where I am.
Whenever I see a cooler covered in stickers, I think of Jumper. I imagine every sticker a portal to another place. In the movie, if you can see the place, you can travel to the place. The contradiction is that reality is greater than the imagination, that it’s more real to travel to a place than to imagine it, but the movie is made up, the result of an imagination. So.
So. (Beowulf. trans. Seamus Heaney)
ORDER FOOD HERE
She carries eight empty glasses in each hand to the concrete bar with ABLE BAKER stenciled on the front.
Here’s one for anthropologists and ethicists of the future. A prompt to get your students talking:
The only person in the bar wearing a mask takes a picture of her bahn mi and steals a French fry from her companion. The food is served on flat metal trays lined with wax paper.
Discuss.
I’m irksome because I don’t argue.
Up next: “Ode to Pile of Empty Glasses at the Bar.”