THE MEDITATOR
It had become a habit for Jack, ending his morning of work with a walk over to the Casino for a cup of coffee. Days he didn’t work he still went down, there was something he liked about the mid-day crowd in the lounge: there were some real characters in there. First there was Audie, who had been named after the 1950’s Cowboy Movie star. Everyone knew he was a little crazy but all the time he would surprise people by knowing something no one else did. Like the fact that for a long time people thought he couldn’t read and then he would spout out a quote from the Bible that someone had on the tip of their tongue. He was about 60 years old and had a fair sized pot belly, probably due to the fact that no one in the 10 years he had been coming to that lounge had ever seen him consume anything but beer.
Then there was Rob. In his day, Jack had known a few people named Rob and by some quirk of fate it seemed that all of them were pathological liars. Some people might change a detail or two about a story or forget part of it and fill it in to the best of their knowledge, but Rob would completely fabricate nearly everything that came out of his mouth. The funny thing was that no one cared. A good deal of the time they actually enjoyed listening to the guy because he could spin a good yarn. He was the kind of guy who would do anything for a laugh. One time Jack came in and sat next to Rob and they started talking and Rob said that Maria’s boyfriend was all pissed off at him. When Jack asked why that was, though he had no particular interest in the answer that came out of him, Rob said that he had gotten a tattoo of Maria’s name on his shoulder. Then he said to Jack that he had also put his name on his shoulder. Jack was intrigued, and looked forward to confronting Rob when he went to show these supposed tattoos and they weren’t there. So Jack called ‘bullshit’ and Rob took off his coat, rolled up his sleeve and there was a fresh tattoo, which read “your name” in blue ink. Jack looked at him blank-faced. The stupidity of this man, he thought to himself, knows no bounds.
Jack was a fairly honest guy but he never really seemed to find many honest friends. He liked having people around to talk to, though, and he liked to feign interest and fake caring about other’s lives when in reality it didn’t add up to dried shit in his preferred version of reality. Paying the rent, having enough for food and video rentals was about it. He had quit smoking some years back, quit drinking some time after, and now had very few needs. Clothes maybe in the winter, nothing fancy because he worked unloading trucks. Just warm stuff and the odd set of gloves or a new pair of boots every couple of years. He didn’t want a car and didn’t really need much. Life went on like this for most of his 30’s.
Jack reached the age of 37 and after having some cake with his aunt and cousin, his only surviving relatives, he got to thinking about a lot of things. Though he didn’t have the sex drive of a teenager, he wouldn’t mind getting together with a nice looking girlfriend. He even thought that he wouldn’t mind having a kid at some point, but he also thought that he was getting a little over the hill, thinking that when the kid was 11 and needed a father to teach him to shave, how to shine a pair of shoes, how to toss a football, he would be getting to be an old crone. Still, there was time, just not lots of it.
One of the things that made him think was that he spent most of his time in a bar. He went there just about every day, drank coffee and had lunch, made sure to tip well and all but he wouldn’t want to raise a kid with any of the women he knew that hung out there. There were just a few types of women who came to that bar, there were the hookers looking to latch onto some of the big spenders or even better, the guys that won a big pot in the Casino part of the building and came to the lounge to celebrate. Then there were the gamblers, the women who would sit at the Video Poker terminals and stuff in $20 bill after $20 bill and feel somehow superior because they weren’t wasting their time at the blackjack tables. There was the odd young woman just come for a drink, but that was what they were, young women. Nice to look at but not ready to settle down or willing to settle down with a 37 year-old laborer. Then there were the odd female alcoholics, who would be living with or at least sleeping with one of the regulars at some point. None of them would make a decent life partner, but this was all Jack knew. These were his friends. There had to be a better way, and it wasn’t to be found in going after waitresses.
