Southern Man and I are friends; at least temporarily.  It’s Tuesday night in my neighborhood bar and Southern Man is already red faced drunk and expounding on his theories to whomever will listen or at least take notice.  That’s where I come in.  The other patrons are drinking and trying to get laid.  I’m just drinking and watching the clock hands change position.  The beer is cold.  Southern Man interjects something like “I’ll tell you what!” and takes off like a marathon runner in another direction with his story.  Trying to keep up is a bit of a burden.

Southern Man is skinny as a rail.  I wonder if I was ever as thin as Southern Man, even in childhood.  I doubt it.  He wears a mustache unironically and his neck is literally red.  He wears cowboy boots and wrangler jeans with an old work shirt bearing the emblem of a trucking company right above the right breast pocket.  A crumpled soft pack of cigarettes protrudes from the left pocket.  Southern Man exclaims something quite loudly in an excited manner between pulls on a pint of Lonestar beer.  I am unsure of what.  His tone sounds important, but his enunciation leaves something to be desired, let alone identified.

Southern Man tells me a story, but I forget the details immediately.  I forget the characters.  I forget the conflict.  I’m not really listening anyway, so much as I am humoring Southern Man, but I make like I’m paying attention.  I nod when he pauses.  I laugh when Southern Man laughs.  I interject here and there “really?!” or “you’re kidding!!” or “Oh wow!!” and Southern Man proudly nods.  Were there a quiz at the end of this story, I would be in trouble.  But Southern Man is not an educator and this bar is not a class room, except maybe in lessons on how not to live.  Such is life.

The clock hands reposition themselves like a football team and every time I look away it seems they’ve gained another ten yards on the night towards the touch down, or at least the end of the fourth quarter.  I look away from the clock and Southern Man.  The barroom has grown more crowded, I more drunk, and Southern Man is still rambling away, but only God knows about what.  The background noise in the room is cluttered and disorienting.  Southern Man continues to ramble away at my right.  I stare into the bubbles of my beer.

I feel transcendent.

I feel displaced.

I feel removed.

I feel as though my current situation and current location are but a dream.

I feel unaffected.

I feel apart from it all.

I feel like I am floating.

I realize that I am not, in fact, floating.  My legs have merely fallen asleep on the bar stool.  I tap my feet to the floor and the tickling sensation of pins and needles overtakes them.  I laugh to myself and stare back at the clock and it’s progress.  The Bartender calls a time out of sorts: “Would you like another beer?”

“Yes, please.”

Southern Man has grown quieter.  His face has grown redder.  His arms are crossed on the counter top and his beer is nearing empty.  He belches loudly and I swear that I can see his mustache bounce.  His eyes are half opened and when he finally speaks it sounds more like the whinny of a horse than it does the voice of a man.  The Bartender isn’t having this.  I turn my eyes back to the clock and sip my fresh beer while the inaudible background noises mesh with the barely audible foreground ones.

“There’s music in all of this, somewhere,” I think.

The Bartender has taken Southern Man’s keys away from him and called up a taxi cab.  The bar patrons are pairing off for the night and a band is taking the stage.  I acknowledge the progress of the clock and make my way towards the door.

Southern Man hollers something, but I don’t look back.

The morning commute is awash in scattered cellphone conversations, the waft of fresh hairspray, and the thick overbearing scent of recently applied perfume and cologne.

Still drunk, the man plugs his last three quarters into the fare box and stumbles towards a seat.  He smells of a weeks worth of B.O. and three nights worth of cheap vodka.  He plops down in an aisle seat next to a pretty, young, bank teller who can’t even mask her disgust for the sake of civility let alone kindness.

She stares out the window, hands folded in her lap neatly, whispering a silent prayer at every stop light- “Just ten blocks.  Just nine blocks.  Just eight blocks,” ETC.

The drunk passes out.  His snores drown the cellphone conversations like kittens in a tied off trash bag tossed into a river.   The bank teller stares at her watch desperately as she now feels imprisoned in her window seat on the bus.  The cell door is a stinking, sleeping man, blocking her escape through the aisle.  The time is 8:37 AM.

Red light.

“Just five blocks.  Just four blocks.  Just three blocks.”

Red light.

A sharp, odorous, piercing scent fills the air; one of mustard gas and ammonia.  The bank teller clasps her hands over her nose and mouth.  A large wet spot grows in the lap of the sleeping drunk’s dirty blue jeans.

Red light.

“Just two blocks.  Just two blocks.  Just two blocks.”

As the  bus was pulling out into the street from my first morning stop (21st and Guadalupe), it stopped suddenly as a pack of cyclists came from behind and sped past in a swarm thick like flies.  One of the cyclists who had been in the lead when the bus began to pull out slammed on his breaks and screeched to a halt to yell at the bus driver.

“You almost hit me…you…you…you…YOU FUCKING BUS!” he screamed, proceeding to punch the side of the bus a good three or four times between further swears.

It’s going to be the 52nd day of 100+ degree heat for the summer.  People are turning into wild animals.

Yesterday I braved the DPS office for 4.5 hours to get a new ID card.  I haven’t had a Texas ID card yet, and after almost 3 years and a now expired Iowa card, it’s been time to take care of business.  The DPS office is truly an exercise in restraint.  One has to be very calm to not succumb to the mentality of lines.  A woman behind me wasn’t so lucky.  She had driven her homeschooled daughter into town to get a learner’s permit.  She had neglected to bring some of the proper forms and the woman from the DPS office who was floating through the front row of the line to make sure people had all proper forms informed her she’d have to come back.  She threw a fit.

“PEOPLE IN THE CITY ARE SO IGNORANT!” she told her daughter right after the woman from the DPS office handed her a sheet of paper with the items she was missing circled in red ink.