« something different | Main | i'm a frickin' clydesdale. »
meanwhile, back at the pub...
January 19, 2005
ahh, home. but not home. i allowed myself the indulgence today, feeling the need, knowing i've been generally more disciplined, and knowing that i could restrain myself now. so, after work, i came down to the pub, fado's, alone, with a self-imposed limit of two beers and a $2.95 plate of sliders (three tiny but yummy burgerlets of caramelized onion and beefy goodness). all in the name of writing, of course - sort of a date with myself to be alone with pen and paper.
there's one booth in the back corner, a small light over my left shoulder, but shielded so that i can lean back into darkness. there's a thick wooden tree-trunk pillar before me, and a railing and stage to my right. with a candle and my iPod, i am an island, just offshore from a half-dozen real worlds.
i listen to my ipod when it's loud, or, in quieter times, i listen to the quieter music they play, when it's not unusual to hear aimee mann followed by jeff buckley followed by u2, then some sinead o'connor.
fado's is a corporate bar, quite frankly. i've heard the interior is produced and shipped from ireland, which seems a bit odd. there are locations in atlanta and seattle and elsewhere. but it's not tgi fridays, no starbuck's, even. i've found that chain or not, corporate or not, it comes down to the people that work there.
the people here, from club-boy caesar, to the lush and luminous esther, pixie-like melody, the very british, effortlessly charming ("heather, my darling, what can i get for you?) duncan: they all have my back, all have smiles and hellos for me, all under the friendly eyes of wade and brian, the managers. they seem to feel more a part of the place than they might elsewhere - some of them, like duncan and others, have been here for years. i see them in their off hours eating here, and some have even hung out with my friends and me.
the people here have always been quick to help and genuinely friendly, to a consistent degree i haven't even found at the local bars i like to go to.
the atmosphere here is dark and warm. near my corner at the back of the pub, at the back of the long bar, under a copper bail labeled "the office," british, irish, and scottish expatriates have gathered for as long as i can recall.
between them and me stretches a canopy of true, rough-hewn wood, some 18 inches thick, supported by a trio of massive tree trunks. countless times now, i've sat alone or with heather or fread at the bar table built around the farthest of the trunks from me. even more times, i've sat with friends old and newly met at the long corner table in the very corner to my left. and many more times lately, i've sat right here at this small table on the cushioned bench, watching, sipping beer, and writing.
memories can be made anywhere, but some places are more fertile than others, for reasons that go beyond business structure and the other factors one might use to discriminate.
seven or eight years ago, i started coming here with a friend from work. i had a hard time with it at first, mired between loathing the young/professional/beautiful people that crowded there to ogle each other and trade bullshit, and my fondness for my friend debra, who immediately and effectively connected with the less-affected crowd of accented men that gathered regularly in the "office." debra and those people won out.
and so, for a time, the bar became a center of social activity for me, even though i was mostly an observer of most of it. but it still proved a point of connection, with no better illustration than the meeting of sheila and david.
sheila was my neighbor, a diminutive, perpetually cheerful nurse, and a recent divorcee when i met her, who was still saddled with the unlikely and unfortunate married name of... "pooser." i became fast friends with her, and her little dog, too, a determined little boston terrier named "inga."
sheila became, and remains to this day, a confidant, her usefulness in that role actually enhanced by the fact that she now lives in seattle, so that even at 1:00 in the morning, i have someone i can call to kvetch to that will be, at most, only slightly annoyed with me.
when she was here, though, we had a lot of fun. she would laugh and clap her hands like a kid when we'd go driving fast in my little convertible, careening around corners, and even laughing when she admitted to being occasionally frightened.
she wasn't clapping or laughing on our second-fastest drive together, though, doing 110 up loop one at 3:00 in the morning. she had called me, in serious pain, needing help to get to the hospital. hours later, i watched as she underwent the spinal tap that revealed a case of spinal meningitis, an unenthusiastic first experience for both of us. in case you were wondering, an actual spinal tap is apparently not as quite as funny as the movie.
months later, sheila rushed over to my apartment with her massive medical kit to patch me up and rush me to the hospital when a game of basketball led to a hard foul, which led to a fight. ok, not so much of a fight as, let's say, a pummeling, since i never landed a punch in defense, but had my nose broken and the rest of my face bludgeoned fairly well in a matter of seconds.
that is a story for another time.
but we had a great time at the hospital, a lot more fun than we were able to have with the spinal tap. i played dead, soaked with blood as i was, and she took pictures. we giggled when the social worker at the hospital came down to essentially find out if sheila had done all this to me in some domestic dispute.
but, as usual, i digress.
so, one night, i came to fado's with my friend debra. at some point, i left, and sheila came in minutes later, looking for my friend karen, who i had no idea was a friend and coworker of sheila's.
as sheila walked through, a girl that i think debra knew was talking to one of the british regulars, trying to dispel his notion of a lack of dating prospects in the city. in a risky attempt to demonstrate, she grabbed sheila, whom neither she nor debra knew, and offered her up as an example.
i must apologize for the painful obviousness of the coming cliche, and even the style in which i am so likely to present it, but i now have to fork over some dough (happily, of course) to buy a ticket to seattle to see sheila and david get married this may.
for years, i only returned here to fado's sporadically, and never at my own suggestion. changes pulled me away and our particular group of regulars apart to an extent. curiously, for some time, splits in a couple of fado-born relationshipsresulted in two groups of people becoming regulars at two other pubs across the street from each other, sixth street becoming a sad sort of mason-dixon line.
a little over a year ago, i came to work a block away from fado's, returning to a building i had worked in 12 years earlier.
i came here, reluctantly, for a quick lunch one day. then we came for the occasional happy hour. i came for a trivia contest, then several more, my teams usually dominating under a variety of names, including "the swift goat veterinarians for trivia", "dick cheney's lesbian daughters" (in which i was an honorary lesbian member), "the ken jennings experience", and "zell miller is a putrid whore".
these names all made sense and were very clever and timely in their day.
we came for a happy hour and my friend and boss, fread, won the guinness-pouring contest, scoring some money, some cool schwag, and passes for the legal division to attend the st. patrick's day party. there, i went up to and chatted up a girl, something that was new to me in those early and exciting days of last year.
more importantly, when i began to rediscover writing, i found not only liquid jet-fuel here, but comfort and familiarity, as if the ghost of my muse lived here.
it's a rare place where i feel ok being alone, probably because i don't feel alone. in some small measure, i feel at home. for many, for most people, home is one place, maybe a few. like other things we seek in life - balance, meaning, hope, even love, a sense of home is shaped by choice, time and memory, but there's also just a feel, a vibe. for me, i find home mostly in people, but also in a small number of actual places. the bottom line is that home is where i find it, when i find it. it's just wherever i find myself being the most myself.
so here i sit, in a corporate chain bar. i drink my lager and lime. i have music, i have friendly faces, and i write, pages and pages at a time, and sometimes, like tonight, i smile and almost laugh with joy because the words, great or not, come pouring out of me. perhaps things will change here, or i'll change, or something might pull me away, but for tonight, for now, this is just fine.
Posted by Rob at January 19, 2005 11:10 PM