Fur Babies

K. Jackson
Jul 23, 2017 · 4 min read

My “Best of Summer” Spotify playlist is playing over the loud speakers at Fisher Street. I turn it up loud. It is so loud, table 2 has to ask me to please turn it down 3 times. But we are rocking out, table 2. We are rocking out. I turn it down and now when someone talks the sound is loud and right up close like the local news. **Newsflash** That’s the primary reason why I do not like the local news.

Reese’s band comes on, it’s “My Friend’s Band.” I didn’t know Spotify would pick Reese’s band for the playlist from the many, many bands I played this summer. I get excited, but I quell it. I start feeling cool, or feeling the need to be reaffirmed for feeling cool, rather. I walk up to the coolest couple I see in the bar and I say, “This is so funny, it’s my brother’s band. I didn’t know Spotify would pick it for the list!” Because I add the exclamation point, I lose 3 cool points. “That’s great,” the lady says, and she keeps on talking with the man. I stand there a little while longer. “This is one of my favorites, too. Y’all doing alright?” I ask. They say they’re fine, I move along. I could have told them that I was in that band, too. Maybe then they would see that I am better than this damn bartending job, that I deserve to be hanging out in their sweet circles, though maybe I’d want to and maybe I wouldn’t.

I feel like this all the time. The 65-year-old ex-Navy Seal comes in and makes a perch on his usual stool. His tanned, ham hock arms are shaved from the elbow up to display great big tribal tattoos, he is wearing a wife beater and the hair on his chest curls and falls down the front of his shirt. I can see his nipples through the fabric. “Hey, blahblahblah Navy Seal, blahblahblah, lawyer, blahblahblah rad, cool, Pink Floyd,” he says. I look at him and squint my eyes because people have told me before they are pretty. “That’s great, I’ve heard all this before,” I say with my mouth. “Whatchu got, old man,” I say with my body, over the bar. Not boobs. I’m not talking about boobs, here. I’m talking about actions. Navy Seal looks at me and takes the challenge. Eyes squint, and with a saunter’s speed he takes the celery from the ramekin and crunches it between his teeth. The water the celery has been resting in drips down his stubbled chin. “I like your car,” I say. He has driven up in an Audi, some really cool sleek one with a bike rack on the roof. “Thanks. I like your watch.” And with that, I know. I am bartending, yes, which does require a little flirting at times, but with that, I know that I have crossed the line. By the way he said, “I like your watch.” This is what I wanted, I wanted a little affirmation from the big, tough, drunk, leathery creepy guy. I feel gross, I back down.

But I am stuck behind the bar.

It’s cool, we get through it, we are slow today and so I give him all the individual attention he needs without surrendering my G-spot. I ask him about Sealing, about being a barrister, etc, and we talk music. And again I end up mentioning Reese’s band and how I was in it for seven years and how we traveled and played with cool people. By the way he raises his eyebrows and brushes his sweaty hair back with his sausage link fingers I can tell he is muy impressed. I think to myself that he is the type of person who probably gets impressed by people sometimes, but it is only a reflection of what he thinks about himself. I feel pretty good about myself nonetheless, and I pour him another bottle of wine.

Navy Seal excuses himself for a minute, and I think about how sometimes I’d like to be named Georgia May. I’d like to still be from Wellson, and I’d like to have babies that have grown so much and we come to the beach in the summer and we play cards at the table in the restaurant in-between our bouts on the boat. My babies are salty and tanned, and they have that hair on their legs that looks like rabbit fur close up. And then sometimes I wish my name were Mika Sorensen (that’s pronounced “Meeka”) and I am a minimalist, and well-read, and I wear glasses for reading that nobody else has or has ever seen before, and I wear red lipstick all the time, and I have “outfits,” and I live in a flat above a cafe in a cool, cool city.

Instead I opt for Mika May, aka K. Jackson, friend to the foe, mouth to the many. Turn it up, play it loud.

And so my fears of clubbing (with) a Seal don’t transpire, I’m Audi 5000.

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