The Potential of Zeroes

by Eric Mattys

  Maximus didn’t have a stool at the high table like everyone else did, but he felt happy to stand under the summer stars in the city, even if he was an obstacle to the bar patrons. Being a very good drinker, Maximus felt a personal responsibility to everyone else in the bar as if it were his civic duty. Watch out for those who can’t walk straight. Smile when anyone bumps into you. Help short people find the other members of their party. Do what you can while clinging to chemical euphoria.

  What made him that way? Probably the suburban upbringing, a sort of good ol’boy mentality. Wearing the unwrinkled, button-up shirt and slacks, a costume adorned with firm handshakes, broad smiles, clean shaves, and analyses of local sports teams dropped into conversation. Being likable and meeting people on common ground opened doors. It’s the favorable side of an invisible line that, once crossed, prevents a stranger from helping another stranger.

  Being on the less favorable side of the line makes it possible to look away from a stranger’s suffering. The worst part about the line is that it’s invisible and moves on you depending on the crowd. Camouflage puts you on the safe side of that line, makes you an insider, a member of the club of socially-capable gentlemen, making possible a life of light labor and heavy drinking, the American dream of mediocrity. What does the cordial camouflage costume cover up? A disdain for the life, so lauded by the rest of society, that makes a complete lack of independence palatable. Acknowledging how suburbanites are so interdependent and not very free at all could make you an outsider. Better to keep that hidden. Easy to hide in plain sight at a bar.

  Mew asked, “How many of these people are single and desperately lonely?”

  Neal responded with, “If she’s hot, WHO CARES? Let’s do a shot! I think it’s time for whiskey. Whiskey all around?” Everyone agreed.

  When Mew first met Neal, he expected him to share in his cynicism over the string of events that soiled the image of the United States. But the second Iraq war, the Patriot Act, Hurricane Katrina, the bursting of the real estate bubble, and the expanding credit crisis made Neal laugh. Neal conceded that the American dollars he sent back to Mumbai each month did not enjoy the same strong exchange rate they had a few years ago, and the unpredictable cost of energy frustrated him. But it meant he could justify increased rates in his fleet of taxis whenever he wanted. The rest of it was not his problem. He made money so he didn’t care. Mew thought this attitude made Neal a true American. To Mew’s chagrin, Neal took this as a compliment.

  Neal took off for the bar, dancing and chatting up anyone he ran into along the way, every person a potential friend or customer. Instead of surmising emptiness or thoughtlessness based on the rather uniform nature of the bar patrons, Neal saw an opportunity to uncover each person’s uniqueness through conversation. He smiled, shook hands, and spread business cards like seeds in a rich soil.

  Mew asked, “When did drinking become THE de facto option for a weekend? Are all young urban professionals borderline alcoholics? I guess I’m more urban unprofessional. But is this new? Is this a new trend? Are these people happy? Is this what happiness looks like?”

  Max smiled while looking out over the crowd and replied, “You can’t ask these questions when you’re at the bar, Mew. Those are questions you ask yourself when you’re staring in the bathroom mirror at three in the morning after not finding your significant glass slipper of the night. Here is where the potential is highest for human connection. You have to try to be here, or there really isn’t a point.”

  Neal returned to the table with shots. “What are we drinking to?”

  Terese sang over the din of the bar, “To the endless everything and all the ends we endeavor to endure!”

  Mew tried not to let his face squelch up from the aftertaste of whiskey. “There’s not a single song played here tonight that I haven’t heard ten times before.”

  Max shook his head, losing a little of his good ol’boy zen. “Are you going to complain like this all night?”

  Mew shrugged, “They gonna keep playin’ shitty music?”

  Max clapped his hands. “Alright. Time for a change of venue. I hope you’re up for some walking.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Neal.

  Max herded his friends toward the exit. “You’ll see.”

  They left the trendy Lo-Do bar and headed toward 16th Street to catch the free Mall Ride all the way up to Colfax. As they made their way toward the capitol building, Neal’s uneasy eyes jutted from side to side as the scent of decay wafted from litter and the people in sleeping bags in Civic Center Park. “I don’t want to get robbed, guys. Where the hell are we going?”

  Annoyed and not slowing down, Max insisted. “You’re not going to get robbed.”

  Mew put his pointer finger over his mouth. “Shhh. Homeless people can sense your fear, Neal. Once they know that you’re afraid, that’s when they’re most likely to attack.”

  “Man, I’m not afraid, but I’ve been robbed. It sucked. This area feels a little robbery-possible.”

  Terese scrunched her eyebrows. “I thought you said nothing in the states compares to the slums back in India.”

  “Pff. Yeah. Poor people in India can’t afford raging drug habits that cause violent outbursts. Slums there are’orrific ‘cause no one’ll give’em medical care. But they’re peaceful ‘cause they accept their place in society. You heard of the caste system? There’s nothing like that here. Might be worse here. If you’re poor in India, it’s cuzofa fucked up system. If you’re poor in the states, it’s your own damn fault. Shit. That’s why I moved to this country; so that I didn’t have to deal with little girls and their children clinging to them, banging on my car window asking for my help, knowing that if I help one, I’ll have to help them all as I lock the automatic doors so there’s no chance of getting their disease and falling to their level in the caste system.”

  Terese blinked and frowned. “Damn, Neal. That’s a heavy image.”

  Neal continued. “It makes you cold, and then when you get robbed in that same environment, it makes you not ever want to chance it again.”

  Terese pauses. “Can you imagine the chain of events that would lead to begging in the streets or robbery?”

  Neal responded, “I don’t have time for that. I’m more concerned with not putting myself at risk.”

  They walked past the capitol building, and Colfax revealed itself as incessant flashes. White and red and yellow vehicle lights bordered by aged neon signs with missing letters, flickering like spastic lighthouses beckoning for business. Bricks over a hundred years old lined with taco stands and Ethiopian cafes and Thai restaurants and American diners and bars and music venues and pawn shops and porn stores and hot painted windows offering huge savings on laundry service. Dead and alive, beat and vibrant, like a graffitied starry sky. An invitation to a reeling oblivion, rough and worn and full of fight.

  Max led them into a Ramada Hotel.

  Neal asked, “Are we getting a room here?”

  Mew responded, “Um… I think the evening is too early for finding a place. It’s only eight-thirty.” The lobby interior entirely contrasted the streets of Colfax. It looked recently renovated. The carpet exhibited a strange softness and newness that made each step a short slide as thousands of plush fibers fell one way or another under an individual’s weight. A flat screen TV above a gas fireplace had CNN on mute mentioning the death toll of another suicide bombing in Iraq. The front desk attendant did not pay much attention. “Here, this way.” Max pointed to a hall. They turned a corner and left the bland, mild-mannered comfort of the well-lit hotel lobby for a dark and somewhat confined bar which felt entirely different from the comforts of the hotel.

  The floors were black and white checkered tile. The ceiling was black. A mural of a woman with short hair and panties holding up oversized boobs made to look like bombs greeted them as they entered. The mural stood out because it was white on
the black of the colonnade in the center of the bar. To the left was a small karaoke stage where a tall, too-thin man with long greasy hair and an oversized white t-shirt that went down to his knees bellowed and howled out Hank Williams’ “Family Tradition” as if his throat was a flamethrower scorching his audience. The benign twang of the slide guitar and gentle, electronic instrumentals contrasted his piercing scream that asked, “Why do you drink?” to which the man screamed lyrics that did not show up on the karaoke screen, “TO GET FUCKED! Why do you smoke? TO GET STONED! I guess I’m just carryin’ out a FAMILY TRADITION.” When the song finished, he shouted to his friend standing in the front and said as if there was a massive crowd, “I gotta represent here. Three oh three in tha house. Just tryin’a keep this karaoke a little real.” He promptly headed to the bar and downed a shot with his buddy.

  On the opposite wall from the karaoke stage stood a man whose entire body slouched. Huge bags under his eyes, the roll of a developing gut, unkempt facial hair unified the man in a lackadaisical malaise. His hat backwards and sweat-stained said, “Coors” in the beer company’s trademark font. He held a bright orange shotgun attached to a video game where the object of the game was to shoot deer, sheep, and wolves as they crossed the screen. He shot fiendishly as each realistically-animated creature appeared. He and his drinking colleagues were at it all evening.

  One of the two televisions behind the bar had some ‘80s wrestling matches playing. A wrestler in electric pink spandex pantalets grabbed the other wrestler in baby blue spandex pantalets and they landed on top of each other with each wrestler’s face in the crotch of the other as they pounded on the platform melodramatically.

  A sign on the wall had specials listed: 50-cent Jell-O shots, two-dollar PBRs and four-dollar wells. Behind the sign were the eyes of a tiki mask hinting at the theme of a previous incarnation of the establishment. The Irish flag hung over the bar as well, adding to the indiscriminate agglomeration that was the place and the people in it.

  “This is the Rockmada.” Max had five Jell-O shots stacked in each hand. “Let’s get started.” They sang songs and sucked down so many Jell-O shots they forgot to count. By the time an oversized, red-numbered digital clock announced ten-thirty, the four friends sang and stumbled to every song on the karaoke screen. Max grabbed Mew, Terese, and Neal in a huddle and growled over the music, “The night’s not over. Now we go to a real dive!”

  They strolled haphazardly back to Colfax and walked all the way down to Broadway, passing people with all their belongings in supermarket baskets. Mew’s eyes rattled slightly with each step. Whenever he passed someone less fortunate on the street, he felt resounding but momentary guilt, and whenever a Porsche or BMW drove by on the street, he flipped them off as his large drunken steps scuttled him forward in the only act of class warfare he could afford.

  Neal staggered. “Thisiz a might bit dangery. Can we getta taxi back to Lo-Do? I’m kinda done seeing how the other half lives, ‘kay?” He laughed immediately after he spoke.

  Mew asked, “Are you afraid, Neal?”

  Max quickly insisted. “Relax. None of us look like we have enough money to rob.”

  Neal responded, “I’m just sayin’… I own a taxi company. Lemme jus’ call one and we’ll be set.”

  Terese said, “Walkin’s part of the deal, Neal. You miss everything when you drive. Walking forces you to really look,” She pointed to her eyes, “and asorb your srroundings.”

  Neal nearly tripped over his feet. “I don’t ‘member ‘greeing to any deal… Plus, I’ve asorbed plenty this evening, and I’m not talkin’ ‘bout scenry, right?”

  Max threw up his hands. “We’re almost there, an itsa nice night out. Just enjoy bein’ drunk and outside in comfortable weather.”

  After a few more blocks, Max signaled for a halt with his hand. Generic sticker letters spelled out “Atrium” above a tinted glass door. The Atrium was one door surrounded by black in a long strip of otherwise lucidly-intentioned storefronts. The glass door had a bell, which indicated when a customer entered or exited. The place felt damp and musty inside. The people inside the bar were not corporate. They did not look the same.

  Neal did not see any of these people as shells in a shells game. He scanned the room. A shirtless man with white hairs extending out of his chest and missing teeth linked arms with some ladies whose broad shoulders and lack of curves defied the traditional definition of female. Neal detected an Adam’s apple on the one with curly black hair. Their skin looked as if an invisible magnifying glass singled them out, baking their freckled cancer-tan permanently. They looked sixty, but they might have been thirty-five. An impossible-to-miss patron in the middle of the room appeared to be nearly four hundred pounds in an oversized, rainbow tie-dye shirt with conflicting salt-and-pepper crew-cut hair.

  The heavy hippie hollered, “Red alert! Red alert! Straight men entering the bar!”

  “We walked all this way for a ga—? Max. They’re staring at us.”

  Max motioned toward the bar. “Go getta drink. You be fine.”

  “What if they want to have sex with me?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Pumpkeen,” bellowed a man with oily, black hair put up in a ponytail and a thin mustache. His cotton, gray, skin-tight shirt accentuated his nipple rings, which startled Neal. Mew and Neal headed for the bar, both treading tentatively in their inebriated condition.

  Terese grabbed Max by the arm as they moved toward an empty table. “Thizis not like any kinda gay bar I been to, Max. I gotta say I’m custom to gay people being more… pretty.”

  Max gave Terese a half-smile. “Stereotypes are for people with no time to listen for the truth, and we got nothin’ but time.”

  She frowned, nodded, and shrugged a little before asking with drunken zeal, “Are we slumming?” She put up finger quotes around slumming. “Izziss slumming right now?”

  “I’m sure as hell not makin’ much more than anybody else here. Are you?”

  “Guess not. I jus’ feel more like an anthropologist than a bar patron.”

  “A drunken anthropologist… yeah. I usually feel like that no matter where I go, but I’m just curious.”

  “Ooohhhhh.” Terese tilted her head straight back still looking at Max. “You’re curious… about guys?” Terese felt unsure if she was teasing or drawing a logical conclusion.

  “No. I’m not into dudes for sex.”

  Terese spilled a bit of her water as she raised an eyebrow. “You don’t feel threatened bein’ in a bar fulla mostly gay men?”

  Max hiccupped. “If you know where you stand, there’s nothin’ to be threatened about. Men get all frightened by possibility cuzit’s possible for anyone to carry out a sex act, homo or hetero. Th’ grips a sexual stimulation and gratification can be so strong that a person forgets who they are, loses all sense of time and becomes discombobulated, ya’know, allowing total vulnerbility. I think lotsa heterosexual dudes fear most the possibility of that vulnerbility so much so they hate it. They turn on that possibility because they fear its consequence. In parts of this country still, being different can mean rejection from society or family or loss of a job. That’s scary. Some men do the knee-jerk reaction of denial, dismissal, and hatred.” Max shook his head. “Sad, but a lot of people don’t know who they are to begin with.”

  “Totally agree. It’s a lotta social condishning…” Terese nodded. “Sex is absurd no matter how you do it. When I was six, my friend tol’ me how she thought babies were made. She said a guy pees into a girl, that’s ezactly what she said. I told her she was makin’ stuff up. When my mom filled in all the details, I told her it seemed like a silly waya doin’ things, which she nodded about, but she said thass just the way the world was.”

  “Yeah… Sex is pretty fuckin’ weird.” Max looked and saw open seats next to Mew and Neal at the bar. “Les go to th’ bar.”

  Max noticed the wood of
the bar was grainy and sticky. He looked at the bartender and thought she could have been a mountain or a volcano. Her angular head came to a rounded point at the top, broadened out at her jaw, and swelled further at her jowls before ballooning. Her mouth looked as if it frowned at all times because of an underbite. She had acne scars on her face while her teeth indicated a long-time lack of orthodontic care. It was not so much tooth decay as it was a general discontinuous alignment of teeth, some appearing longer than others. She was proud to smile because she knew what her smile conveyed, which was warmth and ease. Max put on his good ol’ boy smile, which apparently held less value in this bar because the bartender served everyone else waiting before getting Max his four shots of rum.

  The bartender scrunched up her face and said, “Rum… ew.” Her voice sounded like years of chain-smoking. “I remember when I was a girl. My mom would rub rum on our teeth if they were ever sore. You can see how much good that did.” She laughed. “So one time, my older sister decided to have a lot of rum when I was still a little girl. She passed out in the dirt street outside our home, and me and my brother dragged her to the water pump. We pumped water on her until she got up and started chasing us around, but she couldn’t catch us because she had so much to drink. So I didn’t ever do rum because I didn’t want to become a pump girl like my sister and because it makes my teeth hurt for some reason.” She laughed louder than expected as she poured out the shots. Max told her to leave it open as he turned away with the shot glasses.

  Terese held up her shot glass. “Whatarwe drinkin’ to this time?”

  Mew shouted, “To Moesuddha!”

  “What’s Moesuddha?”

  “I’m Moesuddha,” replied a crinkly voice attached to a bulbous belly. His eyes were wide and round and brown with iridescent blue-green centers. His skin was a deep copper and his curly, coarse hair appeared meticulously straightened. Mew introduced him to the rest of the group, and Max ordered another shot for the new friend.