The Drunkard and The French, Part One

When we arrived at the bar, we ordered our drinks and took a seat outside. The sky had cleared on our trip back to campus and, surprisingly, most of the water had evaporated from the tables. A quick brush of the hand cleared off most of the stubborn drops that clung on for dear life. At the table next to us, a couple of Chinese students chattered away in Mandarin and one of them looked at The Drunkard with a look that I might call coy.

The Drunkard gave her a winning grin and said, “Howdy ma’am, fine day today, isn’t it?”

She responded in English, but with such a thick accent I could not understand what she said.

The Drunkard gave it a couple seconds’ thought, tipped his cap that wasn’t there, and said, “Have a good one,” and turned back to me. “You get what she said?”

“Nope.”

He shrugged. “Oh well.”

“You know,” I said, “I haven’t heard about your French flatmates for a while. What’s been going on with them?”

The Drunkard sighed and shook his head. “Well, a couple of them went back to Paris to attend a rally—they were striking about something, probably for a raise of a couple of cents. The girl—Julie, who, when she’s not dressed up like some fucking existentialist nightmare, is pretty hot—hung around the flat for the weekend and acted like a normal human being.”

“You hook up?”

“Well I’m going to have to try now, aren’t I? Anyway, they all got back in-country on Monday and the flat returned to normal. Woke up this morning to find forty used copies of Camus’s The Plague stacked in front of my door.”

“That is—”

“Fucked up, yeah. I don’t get it, man,” he said, taking a drink from his beer. “The U.S. is supposed to be the country that sends a giant ‘fuck you!’ to everyone else in the world, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why is it that anyone in Europe with half a brain starts implying that we’re responsible for the global recession, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, corruption in the third world, and automatically assumes that we want Israel to scalp all the Palestinians—all right when they find out we’re Americans?”

The thought had crossed my mind a few times. There were a few of my British colleagues who sure as hell acted like we were responsible for all of that, and they were all, otherwise, extremely sane and intelligent people. God forbid they found out I was Jewish, or they might start refusing to take out money in my presence for fear that I’d lunge at it. Now, granted, most of the Brits were people like anyone else who were just happy that there was a new perspective on the table—and could tell the distinction between a government’s actions and the beliefs of the people—but there were a few (shall we call them the rotten apples?) who seemed hell-bent on taking America down a peg, starting from the individual level.

The thing I really liked about the Greeks—and, to my initial surprise, all of the Middle Eastern people I’d met so far… and Indians, to add to the list—was that they really didn’t care. Booze was the common unifier with the Greeks, and I could get on board with that.

“I don’t know,” I said. “The Traveler might know.”

The Drunkard nodded. “I’ll have to ask him when we next meet up.”

At this point, I noticed that, out of the corner of my eye, five slim and tall figures dressed in black sweaters, trousers, and berets filed through the door to the patio. They spoke in rapid, animated French, and a couple of them held copies of books. I tried to glimpse the titles, and, though my French was rusty, I thought I could see that they were clutching copies of Endgame and Waiting for Godot. “Oh Christ,” I said. “French existentialists gripping Beckett.”

As they made their way closer to where we sat, they spotted The Drunkard and I and fell silent. They filed into a straight line and we stared at each other. I looked over at The Drunkard and saw an expression of exasperation and fatigue. I looked at the French man in the center and saw basically the same look. Suddenly, I knew what had to be done. I could patch this bridge, but it would take a masterstroke of planning and execution—one that I was probably incapable of delivering. However, I knew what was at stake. I’d lived in a situation where no one got along with each other, and it was no way to spend one’s life. After all, with all of the problems one has to deal with in life, why should we spend our leisure feeling miserable at home?

I got off my stool, walked inside and to the bartender at one end of the bar, who was chatting up a beautiful blonde girl. “Sorry to bother you,” I said, “but—”

“Fuck off,” said the bartender.

I could see flashes of Brooklyn pass through my vision, but I kept it down. Now was not the time to Hulk out. “Excuse me,” I said, putting a two-pound coin on the bar. That got his attention. “You can keep that,” I said, pointing to the coin, “if you listen to me and help me with a volatile situation.

“Outside,” I said, “there is a group of French Existentialists squaring off like a band of banditos against my fellow American. They don’t get along in politics, cleanliness, or literature. The way I see it, the only option left to exercise is music. Do you have any Bob Dylan that you can play?”

The bartender snorted. “Course we fuckin do. What do you think this is, some chav bar? Want Blood on the Tracks? Highway 51 Revisited?”

I scratched my head. Blood on the Tracks was typically seen as one of Dylan’s best works, but I wasn’t sure about it. It was accepted in the mainstream, and the Existentialists might just turn up their noses while The Drunkard and I howled along with “Tangled Up In Blue.” Highway 51 Revisited was equally thin ice. Being the album in which Dylan switched to electric guitar, it was exactly the sort of fodder the Existentialists might use to try and point out the Americans’ lack of taste in music.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Play a few tracks from Freewhelin’ if you have it, then go with the big ones from Blood on the Tracks.”

The bartender nodded. “Anything I can do to ease international tensions.”

The music stopped playing as I walked back to the table, and “Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” took its place. I sat. The Existentialists looked up at the speakers, exchanged looks, and, just for a second, smiled. Just then, I knew it was going to be all right. I waved them over to our table with a gregarious grin on my face. “Bonjour, mes amies,” I said. “Comment-allez vous? Bien?”

They nodded, looking me up and down.

I leaned to The Drunkard and said in a whisper, “I’m going to get them to sit down, and then I’m going to go get a couple bottles of red wine.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re living with these people for a full year, and you cannot spend that time dangling them out of your windows. While I’m gone, you are to discuss music and music only. They seem to like Bob Dylan, so that’s a start. I’d guess that since they’re here, they’re not averse to rock.” I patted The Drunkard on his shoulder. “Tread lightly, my friend.”

I turned back to the French. “Sorry, but I’ve exhausted my French for the moment—haven’t practiced in a while, you see. Please, have a seat. I shall return momentarily.”

A slight breeze passed by, and we could hear ducks quacking on the other side of the building. The Existentialists looked at each other and made their way to the table. Now was my time to go and get the wine.

At first, the bartender didn’t believe me when I said that the bar had a stock of wine. “This is a rock bar, mate. Not some sort of fancy wine bar where you can get a spaghetti a la Bolognese.” The girl he had previously been chatting up giggled, and I realized that my task would be made infinitely harder.

“Sir,” I said, “there is some sort of miscommunication between us. I hold in my hand a menu that—”

“The only miscommunication,” he said, “is that, apparently, when the bouncer was told to keep the prats out, he mistook Americans for human beings.”

The title song to Welcome Back Kotter played through my head, complete with shots of alleys and streets. I saw roving gangs in leather jackets speaking in thick accents. I twisted my head to the side, cracked my knuckles. “There is no bouncer. Now, listen, friend,” I said, “this is a drinks menu. On this menu there is, clearly, a listing for red wine. I just want—”

“You can stop talking is what you want.”

I leapt over the counter before I could stop myself. I took the bartender by his neck at the collarbone and dragged him to the ground. I moved in real close to his ear and said, “Listen motherfucker, don’t go fucking around with shit that you can’t handle, capiche? Now I know good God-damn well that you freaks got some wine down here, and, lookie here,” I said, moving his now red face to looking at the wine stocked underneath the till, “here it is. Six bottles. Well holy shit, I think that’ll about do it. So here’s what we’re gonna do—you listening?”

I forced him to nod. He gurgled in response.

“Good. I’m gonna buy these six bottles and give you a nice fuckin tip, cause I like your face this color—really accents your eyes. Now you’re gonna stop being all high-and-fuckin mighty, shit-for-brains. I ain’t one of your Brits who just takes shit with a stiff upper lip.” I released my grip on his throat, and he sucked in air and started coughing. I smacked his cheek and said, “I’ll be waiting to pay you for the wine, buddy.”

This time I walked around the corner to the other side of the counter. The girl was staring at me open-mouthed, eyes wide, and sputtering in trying to utter a response. I cleared my throat and got control of my anger. “That’s why you shouldn’t date assholes, ma’am. It rarely, rarely ends well with them outside of the movies.”

“We’s not datin,” she said in the most hideous accent I believe I’ve ever heard. “We’s just havin a little fun on the side, then. You’s didn’t need ta go almost killin him.”

“Please, for the good of humanity, never procreate.”

The bartender managed to haul himself up and put the six bottles of wine on the counter. He tapped a few buttons on the register, and I paid. “Thanks a bunch, man,” I said. I took the wine bottles out to the outdoor area and saw The Drunkard slapping the back of one of the Existentialists, swept up in a fit of laughter. Indeed, everyone at the table was roaring in glee.

I put the bottles on the table, went back for the glasses, put them on the table, and said, “What’s up?”

The Drunkard turned to me and said, “Man, Mattiheu has the best—and I mean the fuckin best—Bush joke I’ve heard in the last nine years. Tell him, Matthieu.”

One of the Existentialists—the one with a big black bush of hair and James Joyce glasses—stopped laughing for a bit and told me the joke. It was in French, which was a pity, because my French was limited to “Je voudrais un espresso,” and none of those words happened to be in the joke. Still, he finished, the table burst into laughter again, and I joined in.

Most of the remaining hour and a half was spent drinking wine and trying to follow the completely-in-French conversation. It turned out that The Drunkard had a really good grasp on the language, for, though he stumbled from time to time on words and syntax, he followed them much better than I would ever have been able to do. Despite that, I had fun drinking wine, getting drunker, and chipping bits of the wooden table off with my fingernails.

After a while, we got up to leave, made our way back to the college—The Drunkard whispering into Julie’s ear, and she having a look of mixed terror and bemusement on her face (The Drunkard was quite drunk at this point, and probably not in complete control of what he was saying or even thinking)—and went our separate ways. I went back to my block and played Risk with Jay and Zaf and a few other people who surprised me by knowing not only the rules to the game, but the territories by heart.

The Drunkard’s night, though, got much more interesting than mine.

Epilogue to The Stalker's Tale

Words cannot express the happiness I felt when The Drunkard took The Stalker by his shirt collar and dragged him out of the pub. Judging from the sighs of relief from The Traveler and The Writer (The Student having long ago passed out in the corner), I was not alone in thanking God that The Stalker was forced to stop his bizarre list of… I don’t know what.

“Jesus H. Christ,” said The Traveler. “What was that?”

“I do not know,” I said.

The Writer took a swig from his drink. “Something eldritch. Unfathomable. Ripped from an episode of To Catch a Predator.”

We sat in silence. I looked out of the front window of the pub and saw The Drunkard pacing back and forth in front of The Stalker in the middle of the square, his face red and his hand outstretched and index finger always pointing at The Stalker. The Drunkard looked a bit like what I would imagine General Patton would have looked like on the battlefield if a soldier were brought to him complaining about being afraid. I couldn’t hear what The Drunkard was shouting—for he was shouting, the people backing away from my companions was testament to that—but the absolute lack of reaction from The Stalker made the whole scene incredibly unnerving. I would have expected a nod, or a response, or a mutter from The Stalker while he was being upbraided, but there was absolutely no reaction. He stood there, facing straight ahead, back bolt-upright, like a man against a wall and facing a firing squad. I imagine that The Drunkard was shouting something to the effect of the following:

“You miserable little worm! How dare you soil the sacredness of our contest with such profane babble as that? Did you consider, even for one second, that what you were doing implied that you had engaged in behavior that would be considered, by any justice with half a mind, to be anti-social behavior indicative of a sexual predator? Son, I should throw you in the clink right now and have you await trial by court-martial! No, that’s too good for you. Some sick idiot might think you are innocent. What I should do is have you shot. No, that’s too quick. Hung! You should be hung by the neck until dead. Boy, you are the epitome of everything that has gone ill with human society.”

Of course, The Drunkard was probably just shouting obscenities at The Stalker and calling him a pervert, but I couldn’t be sure. Eventually, The Drunkard exhausted his surely copious list of obscenities and resorted to kicking The Stalker, once, in the ass. The two then walked back into the pub, and sat down.

There was a silence. To describe the silence as awkward would be an understatement. To describe it as pregnant would be—in addition to odd—an understatement. I could only say that it was a Lovecraftian silence. One could almost see ancient, malevolent beings cackling in the darkness, pleased that we puny humans were so ill-at-ease.

“I should apologize,” said The Stalker. “And so I do. Sorry. This is me. Being sorry. Saying what I did was ill-advised and I should never have volunteered to begin talking.”

“And?” asked The Drunkard.

“And I am not a sexual predator. You can look that up on the database.”

 Rather than accept the apology outright, we at the table nodded—except for The Student, who started snoring against the radiator.

“Okay,” said The Traveler, “let’s hope that nothing else like that comes out again.” He shivered. “That was just about as bad as The Interloper.”

“I would remind you,” said The Stalker, “that words are simply words. Though I strung words together in a chain, forming sentences, and, in this case, the beginning of a comprehensive list of my… interests in Tennessee, that does not inherently mean one thing or another.”

“Bullshit,” said The Drunkard.

“I find myself agreeing with The Stalker,” said The Writer. “Words do not mean one thing or another. He might as well have been reciting something from Facebook.”

“Once again, bullshit,” said The Drunkard.

“Please,” said The Student, “though I agree with you, you’re going to have to qualify that statement.”

“Figured I would,” The Drunkard said, taking a drink from his glass. He straightened up in his chair and popped his neck. “Right. You say that words are inherently neutral, correct? Now, if they were inherently neutral that would mean that they, in essence, have no bearing on the way they should be used in certain situations. In other words: would you agree with me if I were to state that whenever a party, A, is insulted or offended by the word choice of another party, B, they are overreacting, and are not in full understanding that a word’s connotation may be nullified over time?”

“I am,” said The Stalker.

“Very good. Now, Traveler, if I were to walk down the street and come across a black guy, and were to shout, ‘nigger!’ at him, what do you think would happen?”

“You’d probably find yourself getting your ass handed to you,” said The Traveler.

“I agree. Now, further, Traveler, would you have sympathy towards the person who shouted the racial epithet? Would you spring to his assistance?”

“God no.”

“And why not?”

“Because to do so would, to the outside world—and, honestly, to myself—suggest that I have sympathy for certain, ah,” he fidgeted in his chair, “anti-social views.”

“Exactly,” said, The Drunkard turning to The Stalker and The Writer. “While, semantically, you are correct in saying that words are neutral and they do not lean one way or another, we find that, in the real world, they, in fact, do. In the abstract, one could very well go around shouting ‘chink,’ ‘kike,’ ‘dago,’ ‘WOP,’ and any other slur you might think of, and that person would be perfectly fine, for he doesn’t mean any harm, he’s just shouting out sounds that translate into harmless, harmless words. However, we find that, in the real world, our epithet-spewing friend finds himself with broken bones, black eyes, and a whole mess of hospital bills. For, you see, his actions show him as a racist.”

The Drunkard sipped from his whiskey. “In a concrete example, would you want to hang around with The Interloper when he spots an Indian restaurant? Would you want to chill with a skinhead while you drive past a synagogue or mosque? I posit that if you say that you would not mind hearing invectives spewing forth from a foaming, racist mouth, then you are playing devil’s advocate and, in reality, have no argument to make beyond the semantic tripe that I’ve heard a thousand times.

“And so, Stalker, when you say such bizarre and grotesque things as ‘walks down dark paths,’ we are led to believe that you are a sexual deviant who must be punished.” He took another drink. “You probably are, but we need evidence to convict you. Words do in fact have a meaning and a, to mix metaphors slightly, alignment—there can, in other words, be an evil term—because of the weight society lends them.”

“Basically,” said The Student, “don’t shout slurs at people just because on the semantic level, it doesn’t mean one thing or another.”

“Exactly.”

“I must say,” said The Writer, “you are completely wrong and your entire argument is pedestrian and caters to the ills of society. You are, in fact, a coward.”

“Am I?” asked The Drunkard. Amazingly, the vein hadn’t popped out of his forehead yet. Perhaps the whiskey acted as a calming agent in some cases. “Well, next time you see your muscular German flatmate, you call him a Nazi—in earnest and not joking in the least, as if you were stating his name—and tell me what happens.”

The Writer fidgeted in his chair. “Er.”

“Exactly.”

The Traveler checked his watch. “Well, I think we’ve made some real progress here. However, I’ve got a research seminar I have to go to, so shall we adjourn for today?”

We nodded in agreement, and filed out. The Drunkard and I, though, were quite bored, so we decided to go to one of the bars on campus.

The Stalker's Tale

Alan, Rebecca; 3549 Peacock Court, Nashville, Tennessee; 458-2391; 24 years old, brunette, brown eyes, likes her treadmill and her Husky puppy named Princess.

Alan, Sue; Not related to Rebecca of same surname; 919 Broadway, #4-A, Nashville, Tennessee; 919-2913; 30 years old, blonde, blue eyes, also likes her treadmill; works at Callahan’s Pub from 8 pm to 2 am.

Ames, Amy; 1000 Bob’s Road, Murfreesboro, Tennessee; 459-1920; 22 years old, red hair, green eyes; lives with ex-boyfriend; possible nymphomaniac.

Anderson, Ashley; 1242 Jefferson Davis Avenue, Cookeville, Tennessee; 876-1922; 26 years old, brunette, green eyes; originally from Chicago; likes wearing track shorts.

Anderson, Denise; 876 Jefferson Davis Avenue #B-2, Cookeville, Tennessee; 291-8192; 25 years old, brunette, blue eyes; drinks a lot, walks down dark paths.

Anderson, Rebecca; 712 Harkness Place #412, Nashville, Tennessee; 129-6834; 21 years old, blonde, brown eyes; probably fake hair color, member of Alpha Delta Pi.

Ascot, Becca; 5 Holly Circle, Big Rock, Tennessee; 776-9128; 18 years old, brunette, purple eyes [contacts]; listens to Coldplay, has two Dobermans.

Ayers, Anna; 16 Willows Avenue, Murfreesboro, Tennessee; 765-5462; 19 years old; brunette, green eyes; does not answer phone.

Baden, Lucy; 1890 Ridley Street, Smyrna, Tennessee; 655-1924; 20 years old; blonde, blue eyes; extremely gullible.

Baker; Anna; 87219 Baker’s Ridge Road, Antioch, Tennessee; 102-4102; 18 years old; blonde, green eyes; supremely stupid.

Baker, Becky; 19241 Old Hickory Boulevard, Franklin, Tennessee; 192-9210; 20 years old; brunette, hazel eyes, works for the Democratic Party.

Baker, Beverly; 8128 18^th Avenue, Nashville, Tennessee; 828-1924; 21 years old; jet black hair, blue eyes; compulsively listens to “Wish You Were Here” while dressing in the morning.

Baker, Erin; 919 Hollisfield Place, Belle Meade, Tennessee; 919-8591; 27 years old; black hair, brown eyes; undresses in front of an open window.

Baker, Freida; 717 Marshfield Road, Nashville, Tennessee; 478-5555; 25 years old; brunette, blue eyes; has a golden retriever named Happy.

The Prologue to The Stalker's Tale

 

The Traveler called on Friday afternoon after talking to the rest of our party. We were going to meet at The Sub-Pope’s Flock in a couple of hours to resume our contest. I asked if The Drunkard was going to be resuming his tale, and The Traveler went silent for a moment before responding that, in the interests of not infuriating The Writer, The Drunkard would not be continuing his tale. (The Traveler did not elaborate, but I assume that his thought process went something like this: if The Drunkard continued, The Writer would throw a hissy fit about how we shouldn’t bow to the man’s wishes just because he was the most easily-antagonized out of the lot of us.) I said I would be there and hung up.

To waste some time, I decided that I would stroll around the city gardens before going to the pub. It was a windy day, so I put on my windbreaker, tossed on my baseball cap (the Houston Astros are one of the worst teams in baseball but they were my team, and we must always represent), and walked outside. These walks were a time that I valued immensely, but today, an exploding window shattered any hopes I had of a nice walk. A human form catapulted out of the first floor kitchen and landed on the pavement of the walkway.

I ran over and found, not entirely to my surprise, that it was The Writer sprawled nearly unconscious on the ground. I looked up and saw a Greek woman looking out the space where window had just been. She screamed “malacka!” before walking back into the kitchen. I shook my head; maybe The Writer couldn’t actually control himself and angered people simply by virtue of giving voice to his thought processes. Crouching, I slapped The Writer on the cheek a couple of times.

He blinked rapidly and sat up, then rubbed his head, checked his hand, and said, “Well, at least I’m not bleeding.” He looked up at me. “Oh hello, Narrator. Do I have any glass shards sticking out of me?”

I shook my head. “What happened?”

The Writer stood up with a grunt and dusted off his jeans, then his red button-up. “Stasia and I—Stasia’s the one who kicked me out of the window just then—were discussing relationships, as healthy, sane adults do from time to time, when she said that she hadn’t been in one in a while, and she was starting to feel very lonely.” We started walking. “She mentioned that, when she felt in such a way, it was mostly in the mornings when she woke up; so I said, joking of course, she could always come to my room and I’d keep her company.”

“Ah-huh. Did you mean that? Was your ‘joking’ comment a cop-out, Writer? I think it was.”

The Writer scratched his chin. “Maybe. I’ll have to get back to you. Anyway, I said that I’d keep her company and she started screaming in Greek. When she does that, I usually try to back towards the door, so I can open it up and flee to my room. Well, this time, she was at the door, so I made the mistake of backing towards the windows—thinking that she wouldn’t try anything with the risk of smashing them.” He sighed. “Turns out I was wrong.”

I smacked him on the back. “Well, buck up. You don’t have glass in you and we’re about to go hear another story. I was going to head into town, take a meander around the gardens for about half an hour before heading to the pub. Would you like to go?”

The Writer looked back at his block’s kitchen, at the glowering Greek woman who had reappeared at the window frame, and said, “I think it would do me some good, yeah.”

It was a cool afternoon in early October. The Writer and I walked down the footpath discussing who we thought would be the next person to give storytelling a shot.

“Personally,” I said, “I don’t really care who it is. I’m just having a good time sitting back and listening to what everyone has going on in their mind.”

“You are aware that you’ll have to take a turn as well.”

I nodded. “Of course, but until that time, I shall do what I do best: observe and report.”

The Writer cocked an eyebrow. “Report? To whom?”

“Why, my readers.”

The Writer scratched his head. “Sorry?”

“I’m writing a blog, you see.”

“Oh dear Lord. You’re writing a blog about this?”

“Of course,” I said. “It’s a rather monumental time in my life; people want to know what’s going on.”

“Your parents don’t count as people.”

“There are others reading.”

The Writer kept his eyebrow cocked. It was very disconcerting, seeing that a person could hold a position like that for so long. “Like,” I said, “my friends back home.”

“I guess you’re sure that you at least have a loyal readership. Tell me: who do you think will be the next to go?”

“Well, I think that—Dog!” We passed by a woman in her early thirties who was walking her cocker spaniel, who was, in turn, pulling at his leash trying to get to us from the other side of the path. I came just short of leaping at the dog, but managed to control myself and walked over, scratched it behind its ears and made vague growly sounds at it. After a few seconds, I collected myself, stood up, and said, “Sorry,” to the woman. “Missing my dog back home.”

She smiled and said, “Oh, no worries,” and pulled the dog away, its tail furiously wagging in the air.

“Are you going to do that every time you see a dog?” The Writer asked.

“Hopefully not,” I said.

“Good. They’re not worth it. Attention whores. Cats are much better. You have to earn their respect, not like those blasted mutts who will love anyone who feeds them.” The Writer then spat on the ground.

My guess is that dogs never liked The Writer.

“Anyway,” I said, “if I had to guess, then I’d say The Student. It’s between him, The Stalker, and myself, and I think we’re all a bit afraid of what The Stalker has to say, so he’ll go last in the first round. That leaves The Student and myself: Now, given the choice between the two, who would you pick?”

The Writer wrinkled up his nose. “Considering you said that your goal was to observe and report—which sounds just slightly less frightening than anything The Stalker has to say on a daily basis, might I add—then I would have to go with The Student. Personally, I’m not thrilled about any of you going.”

Now it was my turn to arch an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yes. You see,” he said, taking a deep breath. “You see, it’s not that any of you are disreputable individuals—except for The Drunkard, who may be the most scandalous and crass man I have ever had the misfortune of meeting—it’s more that you are all, how shall I put it?” He paused. “Yes,” he said, “that’s it. None of you have any balls.”

I coughed. “What? What the Hell does that mean?”

“Oh,” he said, “not in the literal sense. Though you might not have testicles; I haven’t checked. It’s just that you all seem to be literary eunuchs. You don’t shock the listener to their core and make them question the society around them. Hearing the end of one of your stories is like listening to Beethoven’s Ninth more than once. It’s boring.”

I wanted to reach out and smack The Writer. I could take insults against my character; I could even embrace them, as they had the potential to have a kernel of truth. But to attack the Ninth! To attack any music! Music never did anything to The Writer! Music didn’t make him into the grade-A prick he was today. “How can you say that?” I asked.

“What?”

“That horrible thing. Insinuating that the Ninth is boring! My God, man, people have been shot for saying less heinous things than that.”

“Oh come now,” he said. “Next you’ll tell me that you find Dvořák intellectually stimulating.”

I’d never sputtered before. It was an odd feeling. My mind came to a halt, started back up, then came to a halt again. I knew then how my old car must have felt in the mornings. “Yes,” I finally managed. “I do.”

“Pah!” responded The Writer.

“What do you like, then?”

“I only listen to true genius,” he said. “Like Philip Glass.”

I turned my head to one side. “The guy who made a soundtrack consisting of car honks and electrical wires buzzing?”

The Writer cleared his throat. “If you are referring to the tour de force that is Koyaanisqatsi, then yes. Beethoven is an ant compared to Glass.”

I seriously considered throwing The Writer into the River Stour—as we had made our way into the Westgate Gardens at this time—but I remembered what I read in a Zen Buddhist class about anger. I made a mental image of The Writer babbling on about Phillip Glass, stuck him in a Mason jar, and, instead of firing a gun at the jar—which is what the text recommended—I ordered a NAPALM strike on it. Then, back in reality, I sat down on a bench to catch my breath and calm down.

“Are you okay?” asked The Writer.

I nodded.

The Writer sat down next to me and said, “Excellent idea. It’s been a while since I relaxed in a park.”

Thankfully, he didn’t try to continue our conversation about music, and we sat in contemplative silence. This was the first time I had been in the Westgate Gardens, and the weather had changed its mind and become sunny. A British friend of mine once said that an Englishman’s garden is his castle; if you were to apply that to the Westgate Gardens, then you’d have a castle on par with Camelot. The Gardens were carefully and closely manicured; flowers seemed to be chosen to create an almost masterpiece of color to complement the natural pastoral beauty of the trees drooping over the River Stour, the green grass (I’d noticed that Kent’s grass was almost uniformly a deep, rich green, and that no one seemed to have to work to get the grass in such a condition), and the ducks floating along the river, quacking and flocking towards elderly people sitting on the banks. Being in that place and simply watching people go by made me almost thankful that The Writer had launched into one of the more pretentious tirades I was to hear that year. The Writer shifted in his seat, cleared his throat, and said, “Really, if you listen to ‘Pruit Igoe’ and compare it to the choral movement of the Ninth, then you’ll—”

“Shut up,” I said. A mallard and its mate floated along the river, quacking. A breeze rustled the trees. I didn’t want The Writer to pollute the moment with his yammering.

We made our way to The Sub-Pope’s Flock after a half hour spent in silence. On our way during the five-minute walk, the sky became dark with clouds and rain pelted the earth. I’ve heard that the Inuit have hundreds of words for snow, and I’m surprised that the English do not have thousands for rain. I’d been here less than a month and I’d already come up with thirty. This rain, the one with the heavy drops that seemed to hurl themselves from the sky like kamikaze pilots and only seemed to appear on days where the wind could knock over an old woman, was what I called “invictarain.” (So The Writer and I dashed through the High Street, through the invictarain, dodging French children left and right, and barreled into the pub in record time.

We shook ourselves to get rid of some of the rain, went to the bar, ordered, and joined The Stalker at the usual table. “Stalker,” said The Writer, “do you ever go places other than this corner?”

The Stalker slurped his customary cider. “Of course I do. Sometimes I go to the corner in the opposite side of the room. Wherever the wind takes me, you might say.” He took another slurp. “Judging from your presence, am I to assume that we are meeting for a story-telling session?”

“What?” I asked. “Did The Traveler not give you a call?”

“Yesterday, I received a call from an unknown number at half-past three—thirteen seconds into the minute, to be precise—and I threw the phone into the river,” he said. He followed up with a slurp.

“That…” I said.

“Odd of you to do, don’t you think?” asked The Writer.

“Not at all. There are individuals whom I do not wish to speak to. When receiving a call from an unknown number, I find myself in the precarious position of having to do away with that phone number, lest my enemies find me.”

The Writer and I nodded. There was a silence filled only by the music playing from the jukebox and The Stalker’s slurp. I thought about bringing this up with The Traveler, that we should perhaps meet at a time when there are other people in the pub. Not that I was afraid of The Stalker, but there were times when I thought that I should be spending my time with someone else.

The door opened and there was a thump. The Writer and I turned around and saw The Student laying face-up on the floorboards at the foot of the door. He was giggling to himself and, even from across the room, I could tell that he smelled like a distillery. “Oh Hell,” I said, getting up and walking towards him. “Hey Student, hard day?”

“It’s been a hard day’s night,” he crooned, “and I’ve been driiiiiiiinkin like a drunk!” He then burst into another fit of the giggles.

I sighed and dragged him to the floor next to our table.

“Hey, mate,” said the bartender, “I know you guys come in here a lot, but you have to take care of that one if you want to stay in. I won’t have anyone getting sick on the rug.”

The Student continued humming away to himself on the floor, and I walked over to the bar. “No worries,” I said, “we shall. Do you have any green tea or juice?”

“We’ve got orange juice.”

“Splendid. I’ll take four bottles of orange juice.”

The bartender put the bottles on the counter. I paid and brought them to The Student. I put one next to him and said, “It’s rum.”

He drank the bottle in ten seconds and let out a mighty belch.

I nodded and turned to The Writer. “Give him a minute or two and then give him the second bottle.”

The Writer sighed. “Must we take care of this imbecile? Really, it’s his fault for indulging too much. A wise man would know their limits and not surpass them—especially at two in the afternoon when—”

“Shut up and do it,” I said.

The Drunkard entered and asked the bartender what time it was. The bartender answered and The Drunkard said, “Fuck it, it’s past noon. I’ll have a whiskey.” He walked to the table. Today, he wore a very interesting shirt that had a picture of a hammer smashing a typewriter. On it were the words, “Fuck Writing.” “What’s up with him?” he asked.

“Dunno,” I said. “He walked in and—”

“Fell in, more like it,” said The Writer.

“Fell in. He fell in the pub like this, reeking to high heaven and shouting Beatles lyrics.”

“Son of a bitch,” said The Drunkard. His face fell and you could see some speck of sympathy on his face—both eyebrows went up, he shook his head just a little bit from side to side, and his mouth went downturned for a moment. He bent down next to The Student and said, “Hey, buddy.”

“She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah,” responded The Student.

The Drunkard nodded and patted The Student on the head. “Fuckin women, right, man?”

“Damn straight, chum,” said The Student. “Buddy ole pal o’ mine.”

The Drunkard noted the bottles of orange juice and nodded. He grabbed the one The Writer was holding and said, “Here, man. This’ll help.”

The Student grabbed the juice and downed it.

The Drunkard stood up, took his whiskey, and sat down next to me. “Poor bastard. You know, Writer, if The Student ever decided to write poetry, you’d find yourself vastly outclassed.”

“Oh?” Asked The Writer. “Oh? And how, pray tell, do you figure—do you reckon—that?” He grew redder and redder.

“First off: Your stories are crap. People want to read about the time it all works out in the end instead of when it all falls apart—”

“But that’s not real!”

“Bullshit. People need hope and happiness wherever they can get it. And The Student there, he’s probably got enough of the romantic in him to blow you out of the fucking water. My bet is that, after the first story, we’ll see a bit of that.”

The Writer snorted. “My ass.”

“Not your ass,” said The Drunkard. “My ass. You couldn’t write a happy ending if you had to.”

“That sounds like a challenge.”

“Might be. Might be.”

The two stared at each other as if they were Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef in a spaghetti western.

The Traveler walked in, ordered a stout, saw The Student and asked, “What’s up with him?”

“Women,” responded The Drunkard.

“Ah.” The Traveler nudged The Student—who gurgled in response—with his foot. “Chin up, buddy.”

“Chin up. Why? Why be happy if you’re so fucking lonely?”

“No, really, chin up. If you puke like that, then you’ll probably choke and die on your own vomit. You’re a pretty cool dude, but the only people who can do that are rock stars; and you’re no rock star.”

The Student scooted his way back against the wall and managed to prop himself up to a slouched sitting position. “There,” he said.

“Good man,” said The Traveler. He sat down at one of the remaining chairs, took off his ball cap, and said, “Okay. Who’s next?”

“I will go,” said The Stalker.

A collective shiver went down everyone’s collective spine. The Traveler, who had been taking off his jacket, put it back on. The Drunkard downed his whiskey and went to ask for another one. The Student belched. The Writer, after handing The Student another juice, muttered a prayer in Hebrew. It was as I feared: With The Student out of commission, the only person ready to tell a story was The Stalker. (True, I could have easily said something like, “Nonsense, my good man, I shall be the one who goes today; for I have a story of such thrilling, swashbuckling adventure that” etc. etc. etc. until someone stopped me. I could have said that, but I really, really wanted to be the last one to take his turn this round.)

“Ah,” said The Traveler, once The Drunkard had returned to the table with three glasses of whiskey. “Well, do you have anything to say before we start?”

The Stalker looked at us for a few seconds before he spoke. “No.”

After My First Seminar

After my seminar the next day, I found myself in a café with a group of British students. One of them, a tall man named Errol, spoke with an accent would could simply call ‘educated’ and he seemed like a living member of Victorian aristocracy. There were times when I expected him to say, “By Jove, I believe you’re right,” or some other sort of thing that would seem dredged from the pages of Sherlock Holmes. In fact, because of this man’s presence, the entire group seemed to be made more British by the man’s aura that projected a bygone era of Empire.

“So tell me,” he said, “how are things in the Colonies?”

The rest of the group fell completely silent. I had to be impressive. (Especially since I had made the mistake of falling for one of the girls—auburn hair, green eyes, body of a goddess and—right, sorry, I’ll continue.) I cleared my throat, searched for the right term. How could I express the sense of hope after the last election? The sense that after eight years of being led astray and being dragged around by nincompoops with corporate expense accounts, everything might just be okay—even if we were in the midst of a horrible recession, and even if there were a substantial amount of loud, pissed off people with guns convinced they were seeing the next Hitler? Yes, it was quite a task, and—“Good,” I blurted.

The Brits nodded. “Ah,” said one of them. “That’s nice.”

Shit. Good? Good? The girl turned away from me to a man who, in his undergrad at Oxford, was on the rowing team. My mind’s eye showed me ruthless banging my head against a nearby white wall in frustration. I looked at the coffee in front of me and desperately wished that it had whiskey in it.

At this point, The Writer entered the café and was, by default, my saving grace. I leapt up, shouted, “Writer!” and beckoned him over with a gregarious wave of my hand. He screwed up his eyebrows under his—new, I guess—gray flat cap, looked behind him, turned back to me, and mouthed, “Me?” I nodded furiously. He ambled his way over, took off his corduroy jacket, and sat down next to me on one of the red sofas. “Everyone,” I said, “this is The Writer.”

Errol asked, “The Writer? Is Writer your surname?”

The Writer grunted. “Never been asked that before.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” continued Errol. “Tell me, is it fashionable to wear corduroy where you come from, or are you just mad?”

His girlfriend, seated next to him on the blue sofa, punched his shoulder. “Stop that, be nice.” She—Dani—was a very nice girl who wore glasses, had blue eyes, and, judging from her continued presence around Errol, had the patience of a saint.

Errol laughed and said, “Just kidding, mate.” He extended his hand, French-cuff shirt extending out from his second-hand RAF flight jacket he wore instead of a coat. His cuff links were Union flags. (As I found out from him later, the flag is not a Union Jack until it flies from a ship at sea. Oh, the things you learn!) “My name’s Errol.”

The Writer showed a bit of tact, shook his hand, and introduced himself all around.

“What do you study, Writer?” asked Dani.

“Ah, my dear,” The Writer said, visibly becoming smug, “I do not study so much as I create. I utilize that creative energy which flows so naturally through the world, capture it, and, like a master potter,” he started miming the act of creating a piece of pottery, “shape it to create what I desire. What the world should be. I,” he paused, took a breath, “am a Writer.”

If The Drunkard were here, The Writer would probably have been unconscious after speaking in italics.

“What a twat,” said the Oxford man. Suddenly, he went up in my esteem. (But still, did I seriously say good?)

“Hey,” I said to The Writer, “how about going and getting a drink?”

“But I just got here.”

“Exactly, so you’re not attached to staying.”

“Well I—”

“Nonsense, let’s go.” I stood, pulled The Writer up, and said to the Brits, “Well, really nice hanging out with all of you—we’re going to have to do this after next week’s meeting.” I pushed The Writer towards the door and we left the building.

Once we were outside, he said, “Now what the Hell was that about?”

“Are you serious?” I asked, moving towards one of the bars on campus. “All that talk about molding the creative energy like a master potter? Man, you have got to tone it down, you look like a prick.”

He stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I seem like a perfectly erudite individual well attuned to their calling in life. If that’s not confidence, then I don’t know what is.”

“Confidence,” I said, “is being able to talk about what you do without glorifying it and trying to make it seem like you’re some supernatural gift to society. And, come the fuck on,” I said, dodging a group of Chinese students and speaking over them, “you’re speaking in capital letters and italics. No one does that. No man with half a brain should ever, ever do that.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “It worked magnificently back at college.”

“Really? Did it? I think you’re full of shit.”

The Writer blushed a bit. “Well, maybe not all of the time.” He fell silent. We crossed the road to the college in which the bar was located. Entering the doors, he said, “I can see your point, and I’ll try to be a bit more subtle in the future.”

“Thank you. Man,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, “you should just bring a tape recorder some time.”

“That bad?”

“Atrocious.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” he said, “why did you wave me over? It’s not as if we’re the best of friends and, to be frank, it surprised the hell out of me.”

“Well, how should I put this? They asked me about the States, and, while I was trying to think of a good response that would impress this really attractive girl—”

“The one with the long brown hair?”

“That’s the one. While I was trying to think of a response, some part of me took the reins of my vocal cords and responded with: Good.”

“Good?”

“Yup. Just good. Not even great, or anything about coming out of an eight-year period of xenophobia and fear, but good. Chipper would have been a better word, but I couldn’t even come up with that.”

The Writer winced. “Ouch.”

We entered the bar. It was a place that was trying very, very hard to be a rock music-oriented bar. They played Foo Fighters and that sort of alternative rock that was popular in the 90s. The floor was black tile, all of the chairs and tables were chrome-plated and really, really uncomfortable—except for a few sofas that were black and padded. Generally, before about six o’clock, the bar was empty.

It seems that the Universe would not allow me to have a one-on-one with anyone in my group; any time there was one person with me, another one turned up—usually The Student looking despondent about women. Today was no exception. He sat at the bar, clutching a Guinness for dear life. I nodded at the bar and said to The Writer, “And there is our studious companion. Let’s go join him, shall we?”

The Writer shrugged. At this point, I wasn’t sure about how he felt in regards to the rest of our party, so I took his shrug as a completely noncommittal response. We walked to the bar and sat on either side of The Student. “Howdy, partner,” I said.

The Student looked up at me. Behind his glasses, in those bloodshot eyes, I knew that he’d stumbled upon another taken woman. “Hey.”

“Problems again?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Never fear,” said The Writer, “based on the Law of Averages, you will, eventually, come across someone for whom you have it really bad and they will feel the same. Just a matter of time.”

The Student sighed. “I know what you’re trying to do, and I thank you for the good intention. However, Writer, I suggest that in the future, you just pat someone on the back instead of saying anything.”

The Writer shrugged, ordered a lager, and rested his chin on his palm, looking around the room.

“Cheer up,” I said to The Student, “you’ve got good health, you’re—at least for the moment—not in any sort of money woes since you’ve got family who are willing to help you, you’ve got a group of good friends who are here for you. In fact, I’d say you’ve got it pretty good.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“So, how about we play some pool? Get you away from the bar.”

“Oh, I’d rather not play,” he said, “but I’ll watch.”

I ordered my drink. The Writer and I took our beers, set them on one of the circular chrome tables next to the pool table a couple of yards away from the bar, next to the windows looking into the courtyard, and set up the table. “I’ll break,” said The Writer. This was fine with me. I was never good at breaking.

British pool is different than American pool. In the time I have lived in the UK, I have yet to see a pool table with numbered balls. Instead, they have a red set and a yellow set—thankfully the cue ball is the same. The rules for scratches—fouls, as they call it—are slightly different, but, as this is not a manual for the rules of pool, I shall not bore you, Dear Reader, with them. The Writer lined up his shot, studied the triangle of targets, and let loose. With the loud crack of the cue meeting the head ball, the triangle broke apart and The Writer sunk three reds. The yellows scattered around the table at odd angles to the holes. The Writer looked at me, grinned, and shrugged. “Luck, I guess,” he said. He then sunk the rest of the reds in rapid succession. I never got to make a shot.

“Well,” he said, stretching after the five minute game, “that was fun. Up for another one?”

I glared at him.

“That’s a no?”

The Traveler and Religion

Canterbury Cathedral is one of the most impressive buildings that I have seen. If I had to guess why, I would say that it is because the area around it—including the city center—gives off a medieval atmosphere. That’s not to say that there are people dropping dead from the plague left and right—that would be absurd. It is just that one walks around the city center and is surrounded by buildings older than the U.S. by a couple hundred years. I feel sorry for the English, because they are used to this. They are missing out on a legitimate feeling of awe by virtue of living in a country where this is normal. Now, coming from the University’s campus, situated on a hill, the feeling of awe is amplified. The only tall building in view is the Cathedral, and it is quite easy to imagine oneself as a pilgrim on the trek from Oxford or Cambridge or London, or wherever else, clearing a hill and seeing the top of the Cathedral’s tower poking above the town, houses and shops spewing smoke from chimneys.

Then again, I might just be easily impressed.

The grounds of the Cathedral are well-kept, though the building itself is in a nearly constant state of repair—which may be the biggest drawback to being such an old structure. The lawns, courtyards, and gardens are always green and flowering. The grey stone of the Cathedral (those portions which are not hidden behind scaffolding, that is), chiseled by the work of masons over the centuries and decorated with images of kings, saints, and gargoyles, stands as a testament to the importance of religion to humanity over the centuries. If I remember what my professor said from my medieval civilization course, it is a nearly perfect example of what the Gothic architecture was supposed to do: inspire a religious sense of awe in the viewer. Even for someone like myself, who is agnostic at best, the Cathedral does the trick.

Admission is usually £7.50, but as students of the University, The Traveler and I had a free pass in the form of our student IDs. We crossed through the gate, under the carved image of St. Thomas á Becket and made our way into the Cathedral. Adhering to the proper décor of a sense of awe, we kept our conversation to a whisper. “You never struck me as the religious type,” I said to The Traveler, who had been walking around with a very odd, satisfied grin on his face since we passed through the gate.

“I’m not,” he responded.

“Then why do you seem so…” I searched for the word. It eluded me. “With it?”

We passed the tomb of a long-dead bishop.

“There’s something about places of worship,” he said, “and holy sites in general. I can’t really place it. Being religious is the wrong word, since that implies that you have a strict adherence to a singular dogma; being spiritual is the wrong word, since that has a connotation that you go around saying stuff like ‘I am so one with the Deity’ or ‘my chi is really in balance today.’ It’s just…” now it was his turn to search. He stood in front of what I would call the bimah and looked at the podium, the front of which was a golden eagle to represent—I think—John the Evangelist. “Comforting,” he finished. He turned to me, “you know what I’m trying to say?”

I made my way around the choir pews towards the back of the church, where there were around eight stained glass windows depicting miracles. “Not really. I walk into a cathedral like this and I see excessive wealth and the violence perpetrated in the name of God.”

The Traveler thought on this for a bit. “There’s always that, but I would say that such things go into the realm of dogma. I don’t know,” he said, “it’s hard to explain. There’s something that’s separate from that in a place of worship. Something that’s not Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or whatever. Something that just is.”

“That might just be silence,” I said.

“True,” he said. We now stood in front of the place which was the focal point of centuries of pilgrimage, the site where there would have been the shrine to St. Thomas Becket. “That might be what we need most in society: just somewhere where we can go to be quiet and think from time to time. But, then again, it’s a different feeling than I get from just being in a silent place. Take libraries, for example. They’re silent, but I go to a library and I don’t get the same feeling. It’s a fulfilling silence, like you’ve just had a nice warm meal and are looking forward to the cheesecake at desert. That’s what I get out of religion.”

“A warm meal and cheesecake?”

“Funny, isn’t it? Want to go into the gardens?”

“Sure,” I said. We walked out of the cathedral, passed a priest who nodded to us with a welcoming grin—we nodded back. The gardens were neat, tidy, and calming.

“You joke about the warm meal analogy, but that’s the way I see it. A feeling that life’s going to be good after all, that no matter how many times you get down into the doldrums, there’s good in the world, even if it’s just in a nameless silence.” We sat on a bench across from a marker dedicated to an archbishop from the nineteenth century. “I went to a monastery for a week once.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You joined a monastery?”

“No, I just visited for a week. It was free room and board, and I was going through a rough patch—I get those from time to time, where I just feel like the most base, absolute shit on the planet—so I figured I’d give it a shot. There was a British journalist there as well; he stayed in the cell next to mine. We had a vow of silence and everything. Woke up in the morning for Matins, worked in the fields if we felt the need, or just sat around in contemplation. By the second day, the Brit was talking in his sleep, reciting Doctor Who episodes and scores from Premier League matches.”

“And you?” I asked. “Did you walk around with showtunes stuck in your head?”

“No, actually,” he responded. “I meditated about my life. The chanting helped out a lot. I imagined what it would be like to go into a monastery as a young man—cause some of these guys were in their mid-twenties or early thirties—and spend the rest of your life in silence, completely cut off from the rest of the world. The Brit imagined the same thing, I think, but judging from the faces he made at the monks that week, he came to the conclusion that they were insane. I admired them. It takes a lot of self-discipline and -knowledge to know whether or not you can hack it in that sort of condition. I enjoyed that week in the monastery, and I came out of it with a bit of a new perspective on life, but, man, I don’t think I could have done that for my life. At least the Zen monks have koan to think and discuss.”

We fell silent for a while, let the breeze pass by us, listened to the other tourists walk around in their families and chatter to each other in foreign languages. Foreign languages? “Holy shit,” I thought, “I’m a foreigner.” I shivered. “So, a warm meal and self-knowledge,” I said.

The Traveler shrugged. “Yeah. But really, I’d say that, out of all the possible feelings one could have towards religion, that’s not too bad.”

The Epilogue to The Drunkard's Tale

Suddenly, The Drunkard stopped talking and sat back in his seat. He took a swig from his flask, took a drink from the glass in front of him, and started whistling.

“Well?” asked The Traveler.

“Well what?” responded The Drunkard.

The Student leaned forward on the table. “You’re telling me that’s where your story ends?”

“Oh, God no. That would be ridiculous.”

The Writer snorted. “As if you have any idea how to tell a story.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The Writer cleared his throat. “Shall I count off the mistakes you made? No, for that would take far, far too long. I shall, however, say that the entirety of your introduction could have been summed up in no more than two to five sentences instead of the dragging, alcoholism-glorifying dung you threw at us. I mean, really, what was that? Do you expect your audience to slog through such a list without yawning or, worse, chucking your book through a window?”

“And what would you suggest?” said The Drunkard, speaking in a low tone that could only be described as pants-shitting-terrifying. “I instead list off the emotional description one would expect to hear from a Livejournal post from a freshman in high school?”

The Writer matched The Drunkard’s tone as best as he could—which, coming from him, turned into a comical and not at all threatening semi-rumble, “The reader needs some emotion other than the desire to drink.”

“The reader,” responded The Drunkard, “is fully capable of deciding to read something other than the pining love letters of an obsessive, jealous maniac who dumps women because they have the sheer audacity,” he pronounced these words about two times louder than any other, “to wink at a man other than their batshit insane boyfriend.”

“Don’t you dare pretend to be capable of understanding my reasons of—”

“I think,” said The Stalker, cutting through the tension with a steel knife in his voice, “that both of you should stop this bickering before we are thrown out of the pub.” He nodded to the bar, “The bartender is glaring at us and, since you started arguing, the lounge has emptied. Now, as I actually like this corner quite a lot,” he continued, “and would like to return here often, I will say that if the two of you do not stop immediately, you will find several dead rodents in your room over the next two weeks.” He finished speaking with a slurp from his cider.

The bartender nodded to The Stalker and brought over another cider. “Compliments of the house,” he said before walking off.

The Drunkard and The Writer glared at each other with red faces.

“I think,” The Student said, “that the two of you should apologize to one another. Clear the air.”

The two combatants muttered apologies at each other.

“Right,” said The Traveler. “We need to lay some ground rules for the future. First of which being the following: All tales must be finished in one sitting. The tale should not be split up into more than one part unless we are interrupted by an outside force—such as The Interloper. As we have not instituted this rule until now, The Drunkard will be allowed leeway in his tale; he shall be allowed to continue his tale in the manner already proscribed under the agreement that his tale shall not exceed three parts, and each part shall be judged as a singular entity in its own right, without regard to the preceding part. Are we in agreement?”

I, personally, was amazed that The Traveler could exercise such a legalistic turn of mind off the cuff. I would have required at least two days to come up with any sort of rule resembling what he just turned out. That aside, we all agreed to the rule he set forth, as it seemed just and fair for each of us be courteous to the rest and not leave everyone hanging, so to speak.

“Good,” continued The Traveler. “Next, in regards to the criticisms immediately following the telling of a tale: As this is, in theory, an exercise in storytelling, we must treat this contest as a sort of workshop; the ultimate deciding factor—in place of a grade in a workshop class—at the end of a workshop being the final judgment of our party. Now, in a workshop, it is imperative for all involved to be courteous to one another and refrain from personal attacks.”

At this, The Writer and The Drunkard grumbled.

Unfazed, The Traveler continued: “All criticisms immediately following the tale shall be made with the preceding in mind. The tales shall be judged on their own merit, with no pretensions to the belief that there is an all-powerful, overriding definition of what makes a legitimate work of literature. If a tale is a fantasy tale, then it shall be judged with that in mind.”

“But fantasy is—” started The Writer.

“I repeat,” said The Traveler, using a tone of voice usually reserved for angry fathers speaking to children who will not stop complaining, “all tales shall be judged without literary pretensions. None of us—especially you, Writer—are Hemmingways or Dickenses or Rowlings or Tolkiens or, etc. etc. ad infinitum. All tales shall be judged to the merits of whatever genre they are in. If a member of our party has an inherent hatred of a genre, then they will refrain from speaking following the telling of a tale, so as to avoid any unnecessary criticism based on biases. I’ve been in several workshops and—”

“What?” spat the Writer. “When?”

Had you not seen the vein poking out of his forehead at that moment, you would have not known that The Traveler was annoyed at the interruption. “Five years is a while to be in college, and I’ve been in enough Creative Writing classes to know your type, Writer. You’re a bad influence for anyone who is putting the Creative before the Art of Writing, if you get my drift.” Indeed, we did. The capital letters were quite audible. “Now, the best writing classes I’ve been in—the ones that produce stories that have been published—are the ones that act in such a manner, the ones that place respect for the author and respect for the story above all else. Are we all in agreement with the suggestions I have put forth?”

Everyone but The Writer agreed, and he eventually nodded and grumbled the affirmative.

“Good, then we shall abide to these rules to the best of our abilities,” finished The Traveler. “As we have all finished our drinks, we have the option of remaining here or going our separate ways and adjourning our meeting for the time being.”

“I think,” said The Writer, “that I need to go to my café for a while.” What he didn’t say was the words “you troglodytes,” though we could all see that he wanted to say such by the contorted, red face he was making. At any rate, he stood, drained the rest of his glass, put on his flat cap, and left.

“And I,” said The Student, “shall head back to campus. Maybe the cleaners have finished my flat and I can cook before the Chinese turn it back into a swamp.” He put on his jacket and left the pub.

“Drunkard,” I said, “are you sticking around?”

He shot a quick glance at The Stalker and said, “No, I’m… uh, going to head off to… somewhere else. You know. Things to do and whatnot.” He practically bolted out of the pub.”

The Traveler sighed, finished his drink and said to The Stalker and I, “I was thinking about poking around the Cathedral for a bit. I haven’t been in there yet, and have heard it’s absolutely gorgeous inside. You two want to come?”

The Stalker slurped from his drink. “I think,” he said, “that I shall stay here for the time being. Get my thoughts in order.” He pulled out his laptop, started it up, and immediately put in his earbuds.

I turned to The Traveler and shrugged. “Guess that means I’m coming with you.”