THE SALTY DOG | Madison Heights | 06.09.03
I've heard that this place was a hole, and I've heard that the waitresses wear no underwear beneath their skirts. But the fact that it looks like a big wooden ship beached in a lonely parking lot in a neglected part of town has finally reeled me in.
It's true: the place is a hole. No bottled beer, only draft, and immediately I am warned that the Bud Light is skunky. And I shudder to report that the underwear thing looks to have good odds at being true. Just the bartender working this afternoon hour, and she's wearing a men's shirt that just covers her bottom; her legs are bare. That she's this daring makes the next step not too big a leap. She's young and wholesome-looking, too. Like a high school baseketball player. Sad to see her dressed like this for an ogling audience. (I admit that I'm tempted to sit at the bar, just for the sport of catching a glimpse that would provide a definitive answer, one way or the other.)
I'm at a table, one of a handful scattered at the end of a boat-shaped bar that takes up the center of this place. The bar is well-manned, all men, eight in total. Six seats remain unfilled. Everything is wood and plank and rugged: we are literally inside a ship. It's very cool, and the coziest ever. Extremely dark, too. I had to feel along the wall coming in, like a fun house. Top Gun is playing on a large screen, and a of couple smalls.
It occurs to me that my draft mug was expensive at $2.50. Add that to the hearty male population and possible naked private parts of the staff, and I wonder if I'm sitting in a kind of strip club wtih beer, rather than a bar with waitress rumors. Are all these guys getting an eyeful when she bends to clean mugs or make a burger? Am I the lone female patron in a ship full of hard-ons? The beer is not cheap enough for me to live with these ponders. Out I go.
THE GREEN LANTERN | Madison Heights (North) | 06.09.03
Okay, this is much better. Er, was until this guy just crammed in next to me at the bar. I had a nice roomy corner to myself. I guess it'll be okay; I have enough room, just a kind of cramped style. And the beer is cold-cold-cold, on special ($2.00 pint of Killian's), and they have potato chips. I like a bag of bar-b-que with my beer. The men in here, as opposed to the Salty Doggers, have an air of recreation, not just escape, and probably have boats and nice carpet at home. My neighbor is kind of bossy, but at least the young bartender has both pants and self-esteem.
Yeah, it's bugging me being wedged in with these two. I can hear too much. It's hard to unfold in my own directions when I'm rivetted by the anger in their stories of court orders and painful divorces. Worse yet, the interaction. One of them has decided that I'm cute, and proceeds to tell me this every few minutes. He uses a tone of surprised revelation, as if my cuteness is a momentary fluke. There's a vague insult in there somewhere... He's the one that made me nervous right off the bat, the one I detected as bossy. He's still making me nervous; these types always do. Because he's like Mike. What is that mysterious quality that is so familiar and trapping? There's some X factor that binds me, pins me in by these people, and threatens danger.
Some conversation later, the answer---part of it, anyway--is revealed: intelligence. It's really down to that. The dangerous equation reads like this: high IQ + deep sensitivity + great wounds + anger + drinking. There you go. It equals up to a person I feel small and powerless around, and indebted to. A hardly charming mix of anger and potential fly-off-the-handle-ness. Or is that part me? Maybe it is the me I want to express, so I'm drawn to these guys to do it for me?
Sam---my new friend, here---meets the criteria of the equation. He's got it. And that's what makes me vulnerable to the dangerous ones: they can see that I get it, and: a) they need recognition desperately; and b) there is, frankly, some base raw attraction. His girl is here now, the one who is not smart enough and he knows he has to "kick to the curb," but who is a great transition during the divorce that becomes final on the 30th, and she's proven his analysis by taking care of him like a baby since she walked in. Two grown daughters, prom royalty nominations, and 30 years later, Sam is getting his freedom from the most intelligent woman he's ever known (ranked 13th in the class of '71) who doesn't care enough about herself to keep him. Is it his drink driving her away, or her slackened self esteem driving him? He says she's never done anything wrong, but that it's definitely over. The house has been sold. He's a journeyman carpenter, 50 years old, starting a new life with $60,000 in his pocket and stupid girlfriend on his arm.
It's true: the place is a hole. No bottled beer, only draft, and immediately I am warned that the Bud Light is skunky. And I shudder to report that the underwear thing looks to have good odds at being true. Just the bartender working this afternoon hour, and she's wearing a men's shirt that just covers her bottom; her legs are bare. That she's this daring makes the next step not too big a leap. She's young and wholesome-looking, too. Like a high school baseketball player. Sad to see her dressed like this for an ogling audience. (I admit that I'm tempted to sit at the bar, just for the sport of catching a glimpse that would provide a definitive answer, one way or the other.)
I'm at a table, one of a handful scattered at the end of a boat-shaped bar that takes up the center of this place. The bar is well-manned, all men, eight in total. Six seats remain unfilled. Everything is wood and plank and rugged: we are literally inside a ship. It's very cool, and the coziest ever. Extremely dark, too. I had to feel along the wall coming in, like a fun house. Top Gun is playing on a large screen, and a of couple smalls.
It occurs to me that my draft mug was expensive at $2.50. Add that to the hearty male population and possible naked private parts of the staff, and I wonder if I'm sitting in a kind of strip club wtih beer, rather than a bar with waitress rumors. Are all these guys getting an eyeful when she bends to clean mugs or make a burger? Am I the lone female patron in a ship full of hard-ons? The beer is not cheap enough for me to live with these ponders. Out I go.
THE GREEN LANTERN | Madison Heights (North) | 06.09.03
Okay, this is much better. Er, was until this guy just crammed in next to me at the bar. I had a nice roomy corner to myself. I guess it'll be okay; I have enough room, just a kind of cramped style. And the beer is cold-cold-cold, on special ($2.00 pint of Killian's), and they have potato chips. I like a bag of bar-b-que with my beer. The men in here, as opposed to the Salty Doggers, have an air of recreation, not just escape, and probably have boats and nice carpet at home. My neighbor is kind of bossy, but at least the young bartender has both pants and self-esteem.
Yeah, it's bugging me being wedged in with these two. I can hear too much. It's hard to unfold in my own directions when I'm rivetted by the anger in their stories of court orders and painful divorces. Worse yet, the interaction. One of them has decided that I'm cute, and proceeds to tell me this every few minutes. He uses a tone of surprised revelation, as if my cuteness is a momentary fluke. There's a vague insult in there somewhere... He's the one that made me nervous right off the bat, the one I detected as bossy. He's still making me nervous; these types always do. Because he's like Mike. What is that mysterious quality that is so familiar and trapping? There's some X factor that binds me, pins me in by these people, and threatens danger.
Some conversation later, the answer---part of it, anyway--is revealed: intelligence. It's really down to that. The dangerous equation reads like this: high IQ + deep sensitivity + great wounds + anger + drinking. There you go. It equals up to a person I feel small and powerless around, and indebted to. A hardly charming mix of anger and potential fly-off-the-handle-ness. Or is that part me? Maybe it is the me I want to express, so I'm drawn to these guys to do it for me?
Sam---my new friend, here---meets the criteria of the equation. He's got it. And that's what makes me vulnerable to the dangerous ones: they can see that I get it, and: a) they need recognition desperately; and b) there is, frankly, some base raw attraction. His girl is here now, the one who is not smart enough and he knows he has to "kick to the curb," but who is a great transition during the divorce that becomes final on the 30th, and she's proven his analysis by taking care of him like a baby since she walked in. Two grown daughters, prom royalty nominations, and 30 years later, Sam is getting his freedom from the most intelligent woman he's ever known (ranked 13th in the class of '71) who doesn't care enough about herself to keep him. Is it his drink driving her away, or her slackened self esteem driving him? He says she's never done anything wrong, but that it's definitely over. The house has been sold. He's a journeyman carpenter, 50 years old, starting a new life with $60,000 in his pocket and stupid girlfriend on his arm.
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