Beer, Wings, and the Age of Tolerance

The bar I call work is hardly the mecca of tolerance in Cleveland. Sure, it's on Coventry, which is supposed to be some sort of safe haven for the freaks, geeks, and average low-lifes of the world. But for the most part it's become a college street - a playground for your average college jock/bar skank. Kids coming from enough money to attend a Jesuit school, or enough pretense to talk loudly about their undergrad at Duke, outsmarting their college employer a million-to-one, or tattoo '216' on the inside of their bottom lip. It's hip, I know. So very painfully hip.

Work has all of the above - the misfits, the jocks, and the superfreaks. We also have the wash-ups, a growing group of 30-somethings dying to live the young life again. They scowl when they suck down $6 bottles of Aventinus and Rochefort 6, babbling about notes of nuttiness and coffee that only exist because it's not from AB and it better taste trendy.

We get most of the wash-ups on wing night, nights I loathe because I can't push a check over $12 without dropping a handjob under the table. It's brutal, made worse when you're trying to strike up conversation out of boredom, because people can only eat so many $.40 wings before they sit back, soaking up table space for the duration of their last feature-length beer.

I offered the standard hello to a table of wash-ups, three guys and a girl. They probably hadn't seen each other in a while, probably hadn't wanted to meet but decided too for the sake of formality. All of them were looking for a friend, a way out. I obliged. We made stupid, easy jokes about beer. They were hoping I'd buy a round. I won't. I don't. We made more jokes. Wash-up #4 said, "Can I get another beer 15 minutes ago." I chuckled. It had been 30 seconds since he finished his last, but I got the joke. He thought I didn't. "I figure if I say it like that you'll get it faster." I made a big show of running to the computer to ring in his beer.

Number four has his hands on his lap, which is right below his tits, when I return with the beer. He's thinking, digging for a new way to make joke.

"Everyone doing okay?" I ask. Number Three smiles at me.
"We're trying to request a song."
"What he really means," says Number Four, hands still on his 'lap,' "is that he wants to get your phone number."
"Oh is that what he means?" I never know where to take this one.
"Yeah, he likes shavies."

Yeah, he called me a 'shavey,' because I don't have any hair. I could have been a dick, said I had cancer. But we were still having fun, still acting like old friends.

"How bout partial shavies? Some of the, uh, fallout you see is natural." They loved that one.

Everyone thinks it's charming - a balding guy waiting tables in a bar. My life must have gone much worse than their own at some point. Number Two, the girl at the table, wanted me to know where it happened for me, why I wasn't one of them.

"Wow, I've never seen a table of guys sit around and hit on our gay waiter before."

I walked away. It wasn't vindictive, or even mean, just an observation. Apparently I'm a trendy gay, the kind that shows up on your favorite sitcom every third episode for an easy laugh. Maybe they keep me around for a month or two because the ratings go up. I'm a big deal - worth pointing out, at least.

Number One caught me a few minutes later. He had a joke he thought I should hear. "You know what my dad used to say? He said there are two kinds of men in this world. Men who drink beer, and men who go home to give oral sex to other men."

The table loved that one too, more than my being a partial shavey. I had been picking out their beer for the last 3 hours, but I'm guessing they still put me in the second group, and it made them happy. Happy enough to leave a $17 tip on a $60 tab.

Number One stuck around after the others had left. "You did a nice job," he said. He shook my hand hard, hard enough to let me know he's a man. "There's a lot of money on that table. Don't let it wander off." He clapped me on the back, hard. Hard enough so I know he's a man. He goes home and lifts a bottle to his lips. He drinks beer.