downtown D.C. was feeling the usual summer pinch. For certain bars, the influx in summer tourists just couldn’t make up for the weekly binge-drinking student crowd.
Jake ordered a draft—each glass was selling for seventy-five cents until eight-thirty. He had already saved a quarter from the usual one-dollar Happy Hour price. He downed his beer, called over the bartender, and saved another twenty-five cents.
Maroon 5 played on the sound system and echoed off the walls of the empty bar. Jake realized it was the first time he had ever breathed clean air in the maze-like, three-story establishment. McFadden’s was relatively new, a modern steel and concrete watering hole in the midst of some of the nation’s oldest bars—joints with missing mortar and cracked walls. McFadden did what most bars trying to simulate old age did—they put in wood-paneled walls, threw antiques around the room like a blind interior decorator and, for a finishing touch, turned down the lights. Jake had once been a Thursday night regular, right after his evening class on nineteenth century authors. He looked around the bar and missed being a student, missed the carefree lifestyle that was now a distant memory.
“I’m Matt,” the bartender said, introducing himself. The bartender knew the first rule to pulling in the tips, in the absence of a perky set, was to establish rapport.
“Jake. Nice to meet you.”
“From around here?”
“Born and raised.”
“Not many of those around.”
“No, not too many real Washingtonians left,” Jake answered. “It’s quiet in here tonight.”
“It’s summer. Most of our customers are GW students. It’ll pick up a little later. It’s still early, my friend.”
Jake looked down at his watch. Five minutes after eight. Twenty-five minutes until the seventy-five-cent drafts bumped up to a full dollar. He ordered another.
“Drinking alone this evening?”
“Depends if anyone feels like coming to look for me. We’ll see.”
“No shame in downing a few by yourself,” the bartender answered. He was in the wrong profession to point out any of the AA telltale signs of alcoholism.
“Yeah, well, it’s been a bad year,” Jake said, without elaborating. He wasn’t going to share his life story with a bartender. Drinking by himself was one thing; weeping into his beer with his head on the bartender’s shoulder was something else entirely. A man does have his limits.
The bartender didn’t press for details. When a customer says, “It’s been a bad day,” he tended to ask. When a customer says, “It’s been a bad year,” he didn’t want to know. He brought Jake his third beer in twenty minutes.
“Redskins fan?”
“Absolutely. Hard to grow up around here and not be one.”
The two fell into football chatter, the kind of serious emotional banter that is the glue of the male social infrastructure.
“Snyder ruined the team,” Jake said. “A billionaire businessman with no more football knowledge than you or I.”
“He did do one thing right.”
“What’s that?”
“Hired the hottest cheerleaders in the league.”
“Unfortunately they can’t catch for shit.”
The conversation continued through the return and departure of Joe Gibbs, stupid draft picks, free agency, the upcoming schedule, and predictions for the playoffs.
“No one looks better on paper than the Redskins in April.”
“Amen to that,” the bartender answered, pouring a beer for another patron at the far end of the bar.
The quiet mood of the bar was broken with the entrance of eight twenty-something ladies in a bachelorette party. The group of well-accessorized and fully primped females filled the gap around the stools between Jake and the bar’s only other patron. A brunette from the group ordered eight lemon drop shooters, and the young ladies threw them back with synchronized gusto.
The bartender looked at Jake with a raised eyebrow and a smile. “Looks like you have some drinking competition.”
Jake laughed a little and tried to eye the females without staring.
Matt, the bartending matchmaker, jumped in. “Ladies, let me introduce you to my good friend Jake.”
The group gave Jake a cautious once over.
The bachelorette was wearing a t-shirt with a scavenger-hunt list of items she needed to collect, or tasks she needed to accomplish before the end of the evening. The list ran the gamut: from scoring a kiss, to unbuttoning a guy’s shirt using only her teeth, to getting a guy to hand over his underwear. Lacking an alternative male audience, the women moved in on their prey.
“Hi, I’m Kate,” said the drink-ordering cute brunette with shoulder-length hair. She pulled her friend-of-honor closer so that Jake and the bachelorette stood face-to-face. “This is Paula. She is getting married next week.”
“I figured as much,” Jake replied, lightly flicking the bachelorette’s ridiculous looking tiara with his finger.
“You wanna help us out with her scavenger list?”
“Sure he does,” the bartender answered for Jake before he had a chance to think about it.
Jake scanned the list on the girl’s shirt. A kiss he could do. A public spanking was within the realm of possibility if he kept drinking.
“What about your boxers?” Kate asked.
Jake looked up and tried to remember what he was wearing under his khaki cargo shorts. He turned away, pulled up his t-shirt, and pulled out the top of his boxers. A reasonably new pair with a conservative dark green checked pattern. He turned back toward the ladies who tugged at his waist to get a look at the goods up for negotiation.
“I’ll tell you what. Let me have another beer or two and I’ll think about giving you my boxers.”
The ladies cheered. Paula the bachelorette grabbed Jake’s beer off the bar and pushed it toward his lips. He drank as fast as he could, beer trickling from the corners of his mouth. He wiped the beer from his face and swiped at the drips on the front of his shirt. He apologized for his lack of manners to the heart-breaking brunette with mesmerizing brown eyes.
“If you give me your phone number, I’ll give your friend my boxers,” Jake said, backed by the confidence of four beers.
“Deal.”
“I’ll be right back,” Jake said hopping off the stool and heading toward the restrooms in the back of the bar, beyond the pool table.
“Where are you going?” Kate asked.
“To take off my boxers.”
“No, no, no. You have to take them off in front of us. Right, ladies?” Kate said. More cheers and one “hell yeah” shot from the group.
Jake moved back to his stool. “I’m not drunk enough for that.”
“No boxers, no number,” Kate taunted.
Jake’s reinforcements rolled through the door halfway through his next beer. Tim and Aaron divided the sea of eight ladies who encircled Jake and were taking turns pulling at the waist of his knee-length shorts.
“What do we have going on here?” Aaron asked, dressed in a suit and fresh from another day of summer employment at a Washington think-tank that analyzed world migration.
“Hey guys,” Jake answered. He turned toward the women and made introductions. “Ladies, meet Tim and Aaron.”
The women surrounded the new recruits and began tugging at the belts of the complete strangers. There was something magical about inebriated girls out on the town for a bachelorette party.
While Aaron entertained the ladies with his well-rehearsed pick-up lines and shovels of bullshit, Tim, wearing
