B.A.L.L.S.: Awkward moments at the bar

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You're standing in a line to get into Jack's on a Friday night — you and 500 others.

Huddled girls are wearing tight black dresses with high heels that crank their backs, making them look like a horde of Guns n' Roses groupies that spent too many hours playing the piano. Guys with their side-angled hats and baggy jeans walking around looking for a fight with their tough, steely eyes that are far too close together. It must be irritating looking at your nose all the time — no wonder they are angry at the world! Whale-tails, sunglasses at night, cleavage, smells from laboratories and bright white sneakers: a uniformed pack of hormones waiting for mating season to begin.

Finally the stony-faced doorman, who looks like a cross between a balding 10-yearold boy and a retired drill sergeant, cards you. He's wearing a t-shirt that says BOUNCER on the back that's five sizes too small to accentuate his Gold's Gym power shake physique. His dominance over you makes his inability to get into the police academy momentarily acceptable.

You walk in greeted by the boom-boomboom of bass and the instant judgment of the entire bar. You wind your way to an empty spot, trying not to walk in beat to the music.

So you get to talking — or shouting — and you're telling a group of people a story. Then someone comes over and distracts a couple of people, so you focus your story more on the few remaining patrons. It's a happening night at the bar, and some more people drift away. Next thing you know, you're looking around for the only person still looking at you, even if it's that "getdrunk- way-too-fast guy." He gives you an acknowledging nod, and a waft of a silent burp that smells like beer and sausage, to impart that he is listening. That lonely moment when you realize that you are boring, and the "get-drunk-way-too-fast guy" is feeling sorry for you.

Then later, you are feeling good, and you strike up a conversation with some chick wearing stand-up pants. She nods and smiles and gives you the obligatory reply, but it is loud so you don't hear her. You put you hand behind your ear to tell her you didn't hear, so she repeats it. Another mumbled, but louder, phonetic jumble. You indicate that you still didn't hear, so she shouts in your ear, but you still didn't quite catch it. You pretend that you heard her and laugh and laugh and nod and maybe even spit a bit of your drink back into your glass, hoping all along that she didn't just tell you that her cat died today.

With ringing ears, you make your escape. A night of catching someone's eye (if you want to know if someone is checking you out, pretend to yawn, then look to see if they yawn in reply), shoving past hordes, sticky floors, washrooms that look like a Jackson Pollock painting and a guy with his eyes too close together who just shoved you as he walked by. Now the fun really begins.

Small congregations of dudes proclaiming that they are so f%^*ing wasted. "I had like 15 beers, five Jägermeisters and a shot of tequila," one claims. In reality, he nursed one beer all night and a shot of Schnapps that someone left on the bar. His hat is so cocky now that it barely stays on his head, looking past his nose for that guy that was talking to the girl he wished he had. Testosterone and Schnapps, mixing it up for the big obligatory after-bar fight. Gaggles of giggling girls drift away, the end of the grand tease, as their flirting promises amount to a hasty departure. The words, "Did you see that guy..." fading in the night.

Broke, smoked and stoked. You make it home to do it again tomorrow.

We all join the grand parade in our own way. We all play our part in this game that we invented. I suppose, if even for a moment, we are distracted by the weight of responsibilities, that it is a good thing.

"Don't you know there ain't no devil, it's just god when he's drunk." — Tom Waits

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