Bar Talk

I was drinking beer at a bar and playing a round of pool with a buddy, when the guy playing pool next to us started to talk. At first his conversation was about the music playing on the jukebox. He made a few comments that reflected his appreciation of a song that was playing, then he transitioned into personal stories about partying with Neil Young.

The man had a look to him that was both friendly and tough. He was the definition of polar opposites, and as he told his stories his life was a manifestation of those opposites.

He was partying at Neil Young’s son’s house with the young family. How he got there and who invited him I’ll never know. At a certain point in the evening Neil got up to play his guitar. Everybody was having a good time, Neil, played a few songs, when the man playing pool and telling the story yelled out Southern Man! The room went quite. The man’s friends looked at him like he was dick, and in a matter of minutes the man was asked to leave the party by Neil’s wife. She walked him to the front door and booted him out. He might as well had said squeal like a pig to Ned Beatty.

I did my best to console him. He was still baffled by it years later.

“I’m on you side,” I told him. Why he’d write the song if he ‘s not going to stand by it,” I said.

The man looked comforted by my words, so much so he embarked upon another story. This time he was in Orange County at the house of another famous musicians. I can’t remember the name of the band, some kind of reincarnation of Sublime. The night was wild, great party, so much so the man and his two buddies spent the night at the musicians house.

When they woke up in the morning the house was a mess. There was trash everywhere. My friend and his buddy found some trash bags and started to clean up the place. It seemed like a nice thing to do. He had no idea where his other friend was. He had been missing for some time.

When the trash was picked up, some kids came down from upstairs and said that they were hungry.

“Can you make us some pancakes,” one of the kids said.

“Sure, where the mix?’

The kids told him where the mix was, and the man started making the pancakes for the kids. The musician’s wife came down stairs some time later to find the kids sitting at the table eating their pancakes.

“Wow! You guys are great!” the wife said to the men.

The two men were talking to the wife in the kitchen and my friend offered to make her pancakes. The wife excepted and the three adults were having a good time first thing in the morning. The conversation shifted a bit and the wife was putting out flirtatious signals, at which point my friend’s buddy in a manner of speaking reached out and grabbed her ass. She went cold. The anger shot to her face. She turned and marched up stairs to summons her husband. The famous musician with his hair in a tangle said from the staircase.

“Split!”

And the men were shown to the door minus their friend who had disappeared.

The missing friend was found later that day past out in the wine cellar, having drank the finest and most expensive bottle of wine the musician had. He didn’t know any better he just reached for a bottle of wine and it happened to be the most expensive bottle on the rack.