I could see the man and girl at the booth in the corner, talking. I didn’t really understand the whole thing. The only thing I had figured out was that men came into bars hoping to pick up women, and drank, and then the women came in a little later, all dressed up and smelling good and wearing tight pants and low-cut blouses that exposed the tops of their breasts, and it drove the men crazy who were wanting them, and the lucky ones, the ones with money and nice haircuts and good shoeshines got the women, and the rest of them had to fight because they couldn’t fuck. I had figured out that that was it: if they couldn’t fuck they had to fight, and fight they did. A small marathon of face-punching erupted suddenly two bar stools down from me, two guys knocking each other’s heads back and forth with frothy, bloody lips and teeth flying. The bartender clouted one of them on the head and the guy left like a good boy, no questions asked. I ordered another drink and counted my money. I knew there wasn’t enough to last until closing time and it saddened me immeasurably.

I had been introduced to some women a little earlier by a friend of mine who had tried to buy them a drink, but it quickly became evident that they were much more interested in each other. I’m not saying that they were tongue-kissing or anything, but it was pretty obvious to me that before the night was over all of them were going to have a mouthful of pubic hair. It was all they could do to keep their hands off each other, and I had a sinking spell when I found out that they were all very glad to meet me. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them and when one of them asked me to buy her a drink, I didn’t. I could tell by looking at her that she’d been in a mental institution and she seemed to be still a little nutty. I’d talked to a dentist who’d worked in a mental institution for a while and he’d told me some horror stories about patients who’d heard voices inside their mouths and had taken Black & Decker drills to their molars. I didn’t want to get acquainted with a bunch of people like that. I had troubles enough of my own. I had turned forty. All I wanted to do was sit there and drink my whiskey and then drink another one. I wasn’t asking a whole lot out of life that particular night, just to see forty-one.