The man sitting next to me – older with a beer belly, balding and gray, wearing a blue button down shirt tucked into his jeans – slurred his words and sang out loud to the country tunes he had put on the juke box. When he coughed and sneezed and hiccuped, he would drop his phone on the bar. He might have called the woman sitting next to him (a friend of mine who doesn’t usually suffer fools) little lady. He was the caricature of the sloppy and agitated drunk. You can almost see him crookedly raising a wavering hand with his index finger pointing upwards as he slurs the phrase “… and another thing – hiccup.” He was a mix of rootin’ tootin’ Yosemite Sam and W.C. Fields.
Generally speaking, I try to avoid people like this. But the bar was full and there weren’t any other open seats. The first thing he said to me was something along the lines of we’re gonna remake this place – are ya in? Then as one of his country songs came on, he drummed his fist on the bar and asked if I knew the song. I did not. He seemed surprised and wanted to know why I didn’t know the song. Then he wanted to know if I liked the song. Being polite, I said I don’t know it and would have to listen more closely. When another one of his country songs came on he asked if I knew it and liked it. I didn’t know it. Again he was surprised. I told him I listen to mostly rock and blues. He said I need to expand my horizons – get out there in the world – stop living such a sheltered life. I hadn’t realized that I had tipped him off to how unworldly I was or how sheltered my life was. In fact, I hadn’t really told him anything about my life. It had only been a few minutes, and I was already tired of him. I pretended to watch the baseball game on the TV. The Giants were winning.
I heard a few more comments about how I need to try new things and he can’t believe there are people who only listen to one type of music. I didn’t want to get into it. I didn’t want to tell him that I listen to lots of music, like music is my life type of lots of music. I didn’t want to tell him that I kinda think country music sucks. I kept quiet. He coughed some more – I’ll probably die of tuberculosis next week. Such are the perils of going to a bar.
Then he asked me what I do. I said I do nonprofit work. He repeated the word in a judgemental and questioning tone, “nonprofit?” How can you support a family on that? It’s a fraud. You’re a fraud. How can you make any money if there’s no profit. Against my better judgement I said we get paid, we earn a salary. He said so you make a profit off of a nonprofit. You’re a fraud. You’re all going down. The whole thing is a fraud. Nonprofit? The whole thing is going to come crashing down… Gavin Newsom, all of it is crooked and coming down. You better find another career. You can’t support a family on that – you can’t be a man dong that type of work. You’re not a man. Nonprofit? How do you sleep at night.
The tirade went on, I think someone on the Giants hit a home run. He said something about the nuns and I think he accused me of being a fake Catholic. I pretty much ignored him – didn’t engage in the conversation. Once or twice, I gently interrupted him and said, if it’s ok with you, I’m just going to watch the game. It was probably after the fourth or fifth time that he called me a fraud and said I’m pretending to help the poor and I’m not helping anybody (again, all of this without me saying anything), that I got a little more firm. “Sir, you know nothing about me, my life, or what I do. This conversation needs to end, please stop talking to me.” He grumbled the word nonprofit one or two more times and walked to the other end of the bar where he stood and glowered. I told my bartender friend that I’m not a violent person, but that I was ready to deck the old man (I would never). He replied, “so another one of the strong beers?” Yes, please.
The encounter reminded me of an encounter I had at a different bar when I came out to visit San Francisco before moving here. Then, it was a couple from Florida and they were complaining about the drug use and crime and how bad the city was because of the liberals. They used the word woke a few times. They talked about diversity hires, and DEI, and people with the last name Hussein. They asked if I could define what a woman was (a reference to a sham right-wing documentary), and when I tried to talk about gender and identity, they laughed at me, called me woke and stupid, and said a woman has a vagina and a man has a dick – there’s no debate. When that conversation devolved (because I support gay and trans and all of the people) they called me a gross and a pedophile and stormed out of the bar.
These “debates” all play out the same way. A right-wing zealot starts a conversation innocently enough and because I’m a generally agreeable person and enjoy talking to strangers in bars, I oblige. But then the conversations take a turn – usually when they ask what I do for a living or when they make a comment denigrating other people (homeless, gay, foreigner, etc.) and I try to offer a soft-spoken and nuanced defense of said people. They always go on the attack. They often revert to name calling and bullying. They often lack any facts to back up their arguments – just lots of feelings. Oh so many feelings. Sometimes, they’ll try to enlist other people at the bar to pile on – this happened with the couple from Florida and also with a couple in State College. And because I’m not budging, physically or ideologically, and maybe because I refuse to play their game of raising voices and name-calling, they leave in a huff and I return to minding my own business. Barkeep, another beer please.
I don’t know what to make of this behavior. I struggle to understand why they feel so threatened or why they feel it’s acceptable to call complete strangers names and attack their character. Moreover, why does it always seem one-sided. I don’t know any liberals who go around picking fights at bars. If anyone should feel threatened, I would thinks it’s lefties like me. In many cases, they make it very clear that people like me are the problem. And while I think they’re wrong and projecting and generally not very nice people, I will absolutely defend their right to think and feel whatever they want to think and feel. I’ll defend their right to speak their mind… to a point. But when does speaking your mind cross a line? When do the verbal attacks become harassment?
Not long after the interaction with the belligerent drunk, one of my friends came in and sat next to me. He asked how my night was going, and I said it was a strange start. I told him what happened. He said that’s weird and uncalled for. We talked a bit about politics – he’s more of a centrist than I am, and he’s from Australia so he has some different perspectives. We talked about things like free speech and the current climate. He’s also more of an optimist than I am. He suggested this is all just the pendulum swinging. I said, it feels different this time. MAGA is a different beast – emboldened to lie and bully and gaslight. Maybe the pendulum is swinging, but it feels like this time there are a bunch of people at the top hacking away at the cord. I told him I’m tired of the left playing by the rules of decorum while the other side seems all too willing to throw sand in your eyes and sucker punch you. While we wait and hope for the rule of law to win out, they’re flooding the zone in an attempt to overwhelm the system. We agreed that we’re not going to solve these issues at a bar.
And that’s where I am – wondering if the chasm can be bridged. Wondering how I can get more involved in “the fight” in a meaningful way since some people seem determined to drag people like me into it anyway. Wondering how much longer we’ll push each other to the extremes. I know I feel more dug in after these exchanges, and I can only assume the other party feels the same way. I’d like to be more optimistic, but I think we’re in for a long ride, perhaps a generational ride. As best as I can tell, there’s an entire generation of young men who have been primed to grow into emboldened and belligerent old men. The kids who harassed girls with unsolicited dick picks in their teens have grown into crypto bros who throw sex toys at women basketball players. The ones who have internet handles like Big Balls have been given the keys to dismantling our government. The men designing our collective future through AI seem to have baked into these tools misogyny and racism. In the era of Tr*mp, I’m torn between fighting for what I believe in find and slinking off to my own quite corner of the world, probably a park bench by the water or an unassuming bar stool, where I can mind my own business. Barkeep, another beer please.