The Un-Lure of Easy Money

I love dive bars.

I don't often drink in bars, but a couple of times a year I like to go to this filthy shot-and-a-beer joint near my house. It's not only not fancy, I think there's a blood stain on the pool table's felt.

Why would I like a place with crappy beer, smoke-filled air and a collection of alcoholics who all look like they've had repeated and possibly recent acquaintance with the criminal justice system?

Because you hear great stories in a dive. No pride or dignity prevents these guys from reeling out their own Springer-ready lives.

But this time I got to sort of participate in the story. I'd barely settled down and had noticed a couple of guys putting bloody Mary mix in their beers. Gross. I've known a couple of people who like tomato juice in beer, also known as Instant Vomit, but this is the first time I've seen two guys at once with taste buds that were shot-off in 'Nam.

One of them approaches me, and okay, Vietnam isn't possible for him. At a guess, he was probably born before 1974 but not by much.

'I'll give you $100 to drive me to KCK.'

For those of you not familiar, this is about 20 or 25 miles away, but could mean anything from fairly upscale new houses built out by the taxpayer's whorehouse of Western Wyandotte County to a crack den in the old, run-down part of the city. This guy didn't look like he was headed to anything upscale.

Right off, I'm thinking, That ain't gonna happen. I told him he could get a cab for that. Apparently everyone else drinking there had told him the same thing, and he was just sick of hearing about it.

In fairness, this far out you can generally walk almost anywhere faster than you can get a surly and incompetent cabbie to cart you there. Even if it's 50 miles, you're better off afoot. But I still wasn't going to drive this guy anywhere. He puts tomato juice in his beer—who knows what else he's capable of?

Some time goes by and he tells me he really needs to get to KCK and he'd give me $150 cash. One way.

This wasn't increasing the chances I'd say yes. I thought he was hinky at the first price, and with this offer he surpassed grizzled hitchhikers on the Interstate on-ramp for people who Ain't Getting In My Car. A hitcher is probably, 99.5% of the time, harmless. But the 0.5% of the time when he pulls a knife and wants your wallet, or decides you'd look better hacked up in a rest stop trash can, means I ain't picking him up.

But this guy had the bonus of being practically guaranteed to land me in jail, trying to call my ex to bail me out. That's not a call she wants to get, and while we may not see eye to eye on much, I think I can agree with her there.

'Dude, I promise you won't go to jail,' he tells me. To which I say I'm pretty sure the jails are chock-full of guys who heard or said that just a few minutes before they were arrested.

$200 was the next offer, the guy apparently not pickup up on the fact that he'd have had better luck with a hard-luck story and asking for a free ride. He wouldn't have gotten that, but he wouldn't have spooked me in asking it.

What's so damned important in KCK? Money. Of course. He said he had $500 waiting for him and he needed to get it so bad he'd give me $200 just for the ride. He had to make his child support, he said.

Child support?

I asked when his child support was due. The first he said. I'm like, you've got five days. Surely you can get your $500 without giving up nearly half of it in that kind of time. Right?

So then the guy asks to use the bartenders cell phone 'again.' I hadn't seen him use it before, but I hadn't been there long. He gets on the phone and is saying things like 'Dude, where are you? You're at my house? Come get me at...'

He's telling his pal how to get to the dive and saying 'I'll go out to the sidewalk and flag you in.'

A few minutes went by and someone commented that they wondered if he was going to finish 'that.' 'That' was a 1/3 full liter-mug of tomato-juice tainted beer he had left sitting on the bar.

After a few minutes, the bartender started wondering where he'd gotten off to. With her phone. Some of the regulars chuckled and one said, 'I don't think you're real likely to see that phone again.'

'I bet I won't get paid for those last two beers or those chips either,' she said.