devil in a woodpile

I biked in 70 degree weather tonight to a little bar near my house to hear this band. Everything from this record label I've liked. If anyone would like to teach me how to play the washboard, please write.

As often happens, somebody decided he wanted to talk me tonight, which I didn't mind. That's one nice thing about being more or less single, not minding when people want to chat. I squeezed onto a barstool between him and an old man at this little bar, and settled in to watch the band. When I sat down, I caught his eye and said hi.  This sort of greeting is something I do quite regularly now that the economy is so bad that it makes me think that natural disasters or terrorists with Kalashnikovs or roof collapses could happen at any time, and it's always better to acknowledge strangers so they feel less inclined to trample you when it comes time to rush for the inward-opening exits. He was wearing a single earring in his left ear that was five pieces of chain maille linked together. It was also our entry point for conversation. He offered me a beer, I politely declined, then I asked him if his earring was chain maille. He didn't seem to understand that I was testing for the medievalist geek connection - I did after all spend an afternoon last week browsing websites for war hammers; I am in the market - and instead said he'd had the links in his ear for twenty years. It still didn't give me a clue to his age, since his face was youngish and bright and he wore a black cowboy hat that hid all (if any) evidence of hair loss. He said he owned the photography studio that did all of Crate and Barrel's catalogue photography, and I made some stupid crack about coffee press glamour shots that was mercifully swallowed up into crowd noise.

We got started talking about bikes and you know where that always leads, for me at least. He had recently purchased a low racer recumbent and a three-speed English cruiser from the estate of an Internet bike personality whose website I've often visited. So I listened to this man explain the mechanics of an internal gear hub in that patient and patronizing way that men talk to women whose brains they don't want to hurt. It wasn't offensive; it was just interesting to observe from a half Corona hazy distance this thing called masculinity. It also wasn't entirely undeserved since I made some stupid comments about post-and-beam construction and then referred to sprockets as "thingies." I liked him, anyway. 

My favorite story of his involved his job long ago as the caller for pig races at county fairs.  I only knew what he was talking about because I happened to see a pig race this fall:

He said that he had traveled around with this county fair and taken care of the pigs. One day one of the pigs got sick because it had eaten up a bunch of woodchips with its slop. The pig got bloated and cried, and was obviously in pain. The only way to help the pig was to (he said this euphemistically) reach into its lower intestine and pull the woodchips out. So he did. And then, "because like dogs and people, pigs die alone when they're sick," he slept in the shed with the pig for three nights. After that, the pig followed him everywhere, like a dog. Once it sat in his lap as he sang karaoke. At the end of the job, he left the county fair.  The pig was transformed into bacon. 

We got to that slushy point where you lay your hand on someone's arm to emphasize what you're saying but you're not really doing that because what you're saying needs to be emphasized.  I decided to leave because I was not prepared to explain to the man at the bar why I was not willing to get beyond that point.  About 3% of the conversation had involved me talking about myself, mostly about my occupation, so it wasn't as if I was ready to discourse about my recent aversion to pussy/interest in only Germans/accumulation of emotional impedimenta and my long-abiding paranoia about the oral transmission of herpes. These things, suitors, are the dragons you slay en route to your broad-shouldered princess. Nor was I prepared to explain in Denglish to a Bavarian man what "It didn't mean anything" meant. So I drained the lime pulp from my Corona and left before the second set. I said, "[Bar Man], it was nice to meet you but I am turning into a pumpkin" and a left with the vague promise of taking him up on a $5 bet to ride his low racer recumbent. He was disappointed that I didn't stay longer, and then he gave me a powerful hug that reminded me of when I was on the boy's wrestling team in high school and accidentally matched with the 265-pound sophomore who bent my elbows in the wrong direction and compressed me like a panini into the Ensolite.  Bar Man is on Facebook, so maybe he'll join the other 343 people whom I barely know but whose profiles I can view. 

The air was chillier for my bike ride home and I nearly got swiped by a black SUV.  Despite this, I got to thinking that Chicago won't be too bad when the weather finally heats up for good.  The live music is cheap and nearby, the pool down the block will have adult lap swim hours every evening, and I have dropped the personality-clashing band for another, better band exclusively devoted to doo wop covers.  I think I found a bike gang and maybe even a girl to, in time, have a crush on.  (A different story.)  Maybe now is the time for the thaw.