Bar of the Gods

I exited the front door of the scruffy tumbledown four bedroom bungalow and stepped into bedlam. Two old buddies tripped towards me in the short patch of  grass, the small incline proving Everest-like in their drunken state. They both had on bandanas and were stammering like stuck mutton as they confessed their sins. “The cops. The cops are coming!” They slurred as they planted their hands to keep from eating turf. 

“They’re already here you fools!” I hissed, through clenched teeth as I raised one hand to shield the blinding spotlight coming from the squad car that was rolling to a stop.

“Hello there” I yelled, forming a coprophagous grin and waving like a prom queen. I should flee, I thought to myself. Leave these two dimwits to fuddle their way through questioning in the yard.

“I’m going to jail! I think I killed the kid!” OPT brayed from inside.  “Shut up!” I whispered over my shoulder, still smiling towards the street. Someone clanged over the back yard fence in the distance. Likely another escapee from the bar.

My mind was racing. I’d need to stay put. Buy some time.

“What was that?” The officer hollered. He was parked just out of ear shot.

“Hello!” I replied cheerily.

OPT, or, at the time, still just “T” – for his offense was not yet known to earn his full acronym – was momentarily shushed as I ole’d the two feeble-footed friends past me into the relative safety indoors. They continued their guilty admissions and garbled sketches of  whatever bombast they had been involved as if I were a priest who could absolve them before entering holy ground. 

“Can I help you officer?” I said. Still waving and hoping the east wind muted the mephitic smell of all manner of potable inebriant present on the property.

“Where’d you guys come from?” 

“Who, me? I live here. Just the tail end of a  barbecue, sir.” I yelled. 

“Oh yeah? What about those guys?” 

“Them?’ I looked behind me, as if surprised by the inquiry. “Just having a smoke. It’s a non-smoking house here, so…….. Needed to take a walk.” I spotted cigarette smoke pluming from windows of the house. “Just a short walk I’d assume.” I turned back to face the street.

A squad car, with lights blazing, zoomed past the nearby intersection in the direction my crew had just come, capturing the attention of the officer before he looked back at his computer.

 

“Anyone go by here in a white T-shirt? Tan shorts?” 

“My wife’s coming here now? Oh, no, oh god.” I could hear T sobbing inside.

“No……… as you can see from the damage done, officer.” I pointed to the lawn. “We’ve been staying close to home.” He adjusted his driver side spotlight onto the aluminum glinted grass. It was covered in empty beer cans. The beam stopped on a dog rolling around on his back. He was still wearing the Sunday necktie we’d festooned to him while pre-gaming.

“That your dog?”

“Nope. He shows up sometimes and noses through the recycling. Not sure who he belongs.”

“Is that a tie?”
“Appears to be.” I nodded. “Must have been at a formal event.” I laughed. The officer didn’t.

Trash Dog was something of a celebrity at our place. The neighborhood Spuds McKenzie. He only showed up when there was a party. Never sure how he got in. Hung around just long enough to get ample adoration from the gals, then ‘ghosted’ while dragging our trash across the lawn.

The truth is I’d only been home for minutes, just enough time to drop off the limo and take a leak. When I left the crew at the Bar of the Gods  they were in fine spirits. Something must have come apart. Those blurred exits. The singed edges of the page when the night ends.  It can only take a minute. To go from HeeHaw to a MASH Unit.

Jack Tanner came onto the porch from behind me grinning with apple blossom cheekbones. His shirt was cut clean off from his neck to his belly,  flapping open in the breeze. He was a police officer himself. Which was fitting since he had acted like one since high school. “Damn Izz.” He giggled, while putting one arm around me and holding a part of the torn shirt in his other. “This was one of my best Under Armour shirts. Was 40 bucks!”  He squeezed my shoulder harder than necessary, oblivious he’d wandered into a precarious scene. I attempted to shake off the awful smell of his breath. He surveyed the street. I could tell he momentarily contemplated taking charge, then the Coors Light Lizard Brain took over and he removed his arm, patted me on the back and backed away. “Looks like you have things under control out here, Izz. I’ll leave you to it.” He could barely stifle his trademark high pitched giggle.

“Who was that?” The officer said, still multitasking in his car but not removing the blinding illumination. “Groom to be.” I yelled. “This was all for him.” I gestured to the lawn.

“That looked like a white shirt. What happened to it?” 

“Well, you know what can happen to grooms at their bachelor’s party.” I shrugged.

I stole a glance inside. OPT was now in our green suede easy chair covered in water. He was surrounded by people trying to calm him down and was warbling about his wife’s impending arrival and the chance that he just committed manslaughter outside the bar.

Depending on who you asked, the stiffest pours in Portland came from one of three places: Sewickley’s Addition, The Watertrough Saloon, or The Space Room. It just so happened all three were located on the same block of an area of upper Hawthorne known as the ‘Barmuda Triangle’. It was the most raucous concentration of hard drinking establishments in a town renowned for hard drinking establishments. The Tube, Zack’s Shack, The BOG, Angelo’s and The Sapphire Hotel were also within spitting distance. Two blocks and 240 feet of sidewalk contained a focused collection of no less than eight seminal acts. Throw a dart in any direction and you’d hit a drunk dolt tight-roping at twice the legal limit. Those marauding to Hawthorne from our house were doubly dangerous because it was a close enough proximity to walk. So the potential legal constraints one should normally be mindful of, didn’t apply.

The BOG was where we conducted our business on Hawthorne. The Bar of the Gods. And on the night T morphed into “One Punch Todd,” Wara, Scott Tanner, Daniel Kerr, Jiffy Jeff, myself, and a handful of our other best friends, close confidants, and in-laws were in tow. We had arrived at the BOG for what we referred to as a “nightcap”. This disarmingly sophisticated term came with immense flexibility.

According to the website, the BOG is “A Portland Legend praised as one of the top ten dive bars in America.” It made sense the gaggle of us out for Jack Tanners bachelor party would de-crescendo there. Share stories from the sloppy night that ended even sloppier. The fact that its reputation was based more on ambience then alcohol content was part of the draw. Heavy pours tended to generate heavy conflict and we preferred clientele we could charm. The BOG had a little bit of everything but not too much of any one thing. There was no single theme it hung its hat on, which, like the term “night cap”, made it amendable to many occasions. There were pinball machines, a jukebox, a pool table, Mrs. Packman, a heated smoking area, and a happy hour that dated back to the days before everyone had them. It had comfortable booths that were always available and became a second living room for our crowd. If we weren’t at home, we were usually there, or within a wolf whistle of the place.

But those same upper Hawthorne curbs that are lower case by day became capitalized at night. They could get dangerous as cupid reigned down his whiskey-dipped darts of jealousy and blindness. OPT had launched a brawl outside the BOG due to a case of mistaken identity. It took but a single punch
–one flash of chaos– to cause an extinction event. The group disbursed. Spread out. Clamoring in a Darwinian tramp back to our house.

Yet whatever happened on those late-night neon streets, as noisy and raucous as it could be, was usually secondary to the revelry at our house just a few blocks away. Upper Hawthorne was a preamble to the live wire act that was our living room.

The street ballet between the officer and me was finally interrupted by the crackle from his scanner radio. Since he never exited his car, he was unable to hear that our entire crew had reassembled in our backyard where they’d started a soccer match with a fabricated gasoline can and the neighbors prayer flags. As he zoomed off to the scene of our crime, the troupe had already descended upon its next act. Another bullet had been dodged. Another chapter in an ever widening aperture.

If one is lucky, there are a few periods in life when a scene comes together. People collect at the right age and a social ensemble forms. Everyone takes on a role. Nicknames are assigned. There is a sense of belonging. Of being needed and noticed. And there is usually a fulcrum. Both a place, and a person. Or multiple people. Who help organize and conduct.

When reflecting on the arc of life, one can likely tell the time and place where their friends shined their brightest. Where their allure was most compelling, and they orchestrated their greatest gravitational pull. Everyone peeks. Has a period where their powers crest. The moment, an era usually, calls to them and a mysterious alignment occurs.

Our house had a primitive wildness to it, no doubt. And though it could look sophomoric, it wasn’t a second rate scene from a Jackass sketch or a cheap reenactment of Ken Kesey’s pranksters. There was a method to the madness. It was an initiation into a broader field of possibility where people could be truly free. Where any manner of expression and fun loving would be embraced and where one could be a kid or an adult during that confusing time when one is not yet either and expected to be both. The residents of the house took the first foolhardy steps on purpose. Opened themselves up to the mockery of the refined. For life itself, we were still convinced, could be art. And everyone was invited to participate.

But it took stamina. To give flight requires much lift. The conductors must eventually pass the baton of these era’s. No one shoulders the load forever. We alternate our roles as life beckons us forward. Intermingling slips of years when we fall back with the crowd, join the shadows. Or the spans of silence when we are separated. Find new roots. Some never recover. Spend life in a continual spiral longing for a return to those salad years that reign supreme in the narrative of our past. The “healthy” ones, whatever that quite means, find a solemn acceptance that those high pitched notes can’t be sustained forever. As one brackets the past and moves forward with a relaxed grip on their own myth, a new quieter language is formed. With a vocabulary that wouldn’t be possible, if these previous histories hadn’t been pushed to the limit, and just for a moment, peeked over the edge.