4

I could feel my phone vibrating between the seams of my jeans. I hoped nobody in class could hear the vibration created between cloth and skin, the collateral jingle of my keys. I’ve never recalled my phone ever ringing so long before. Why do I have so many keys? The class went on as I fidgeted as if to pee. The teacher looked at me quizzically.

“Do you have something you want to add?” the teacher asked.

“No. No,” I said.

The class continued talking about – what I couldn’t remember. I could only think about the vibration in my pants. Who was calling? Was it Matt? Was it Evan? What day was it? Wednesday? They’d be at the CIP; it was unofficial international night. People from various different countries out to experience a different country. And I was in class talking about – what was it again? I thought I heard someone say something about surrealism, or was it colonialism? It was some kind of ism.

What was Matt and Evan doing? Knowing them, knowing unofficial international night at the CIP, they were playing pool with some foreign ladies. Ladies that aren’t interested in me, but Matt and Evan will be chatting them up while I try to take the pool game perhaps a bit more seriously than I should. Nobody seems to notice the pool game. Maybe it’s just as well that I’m in class? The chatter blends into clashes between billiard balls and a ringing register.

“Well, that’s a good point, but…” someone said.

I try ordering another drink, or is it Matt’s round to buy? He jumps in ahead, fine by me. The carpet’s matted down, flat as linoleum, but I could still hear the sound of fiber sticking to the soles of feet. The rumble of a propane fire near the entrance melts the chatter. Is it cold enough there for a fire? I think I smell the faint scent of cigarette smoke clinging on plaster from before the smoking ban. Is it a whisky night? No, Matt’s buying, that means tequila with wheels, no salt. Cazadores. The smell of Pub Nachos waft throughout the bar, or was it pizza bread? This many drinks in, it’s difficult to tell.

“The problems concerning that particular ism is that…” someone said.

Evan’s telling that story about getting sucker punched again, and the girl from Ghana is eating it up. All she can see are his tattoos and large beard, a six-foot frame sturdy for fucking. He smiles rather meekly for someone his size, but his body moves closer to hers. The girl from Ghana, let’s say her name is Abena, leans toward him to hear better. It’s international night, and it’s loud. The CIP is a rathskeller and the sound doesn’t know where to run. It bounces off the upside down martini glasses and into a bucket of bleach water full of rags.

Mary must be here somewhere. She’s always down for a game of pool. Matt and Evan, at this point, are too busy talking to women.

Matt’s talking to some girl from Finland and he’s probably telling her a story from his time in the Navy, the time he spent stationed in Iceland. She’ll forget that she’s Finnish, or maybe she just doesn’t understand what he’s saying. He does have a tendency to slur when he’s drunk.

I’m drunk on hypotheticals.

Mary comes down from a smoke in the alley, probably not just cigarettes. I offer to buy her a drink if she plays a game of pool with me.

Bench is working the bar and it’s Evan’s turn to buy. I imagine he’ll order what he always orders, a round of shitty beer and even shittier whisky. A tallboy of Rainier and Beam’s Eight Star. The orange darkness lighting the bar makes the whisky look darker than it actually is. I think it might make it taste better. The smell of stale cigarettes cutting the bitter cheapness of the booze.

Matt and Evan are sitting at the booth sandwiched between the pinball machines and the jukebox. One of them gets up, either one, and walks behind the group of grad students playing darts so he can put money in the juke. The dartboard is frayed and could use replacing. Same for the darts. The Adam’s Family pinball machine is tilted.

Likely, the jukebox is “out of order,” which means that Bench has heard Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt one too many times and decided that unplugging the juke for the rest of the night was in the best interest of his next customer. Either Matt or Evan stands in front of the jukebox trying to shove money into a dead machine. They’re tired of listening to metal. Metal, they might be thinking, isn’t the best music with which to woo women… from any country.

It’s possible that I hear the sound of spilt beer and breaking glasses are getting in the way of conversation, but I think I’m just getting drunk at this point. They continue talking and talking and talking. Now that the music is out of their hands, who cares? It’s as if being misunderstood gives them a free pass.

There’s a vibration, but nobody feels it.