Dirty Socks, Phone Charger

===LETTER FROM PORTLAND===

So yesterday this guy walks into the bar. I know. What a beginning.

But anyway. The guy is tall, and he's kind of swaying from side to side. He's got a moth-eaten sweater tied caddywampus on his shoulders. He's carrying two dirty white socks and a phone charger. He kind of wanders around, looking lost.

I ask him, hey dude, what's up?

He says, with a tipsy surfer inflection, "Not much, man, I'm just getting my bearings."

He's got really bad teeth, I notice.

At first I think he is drunk. Then I realize that he is just permanently spacey. He sits down at the bar and orders a PBR. He tries to rest his socks on the bar, but I tell him they've got to go in his pockets, now. I can smell them. They are pungent.

He proceeds to introduce himself to a young lady sitting at the bar, one of our regulars. She starts laughing at him. He asks her why she's laughing.

"Because we've known each other for fourteen years, at least."

She proceeds to tell him how for about six months in 1996 or so, they were very close and hung out all the time. She proceeds to describe to him the details of his own life: the members of his family, the location of his house, the posters in his bedroom (mainly Beastie Boys).

He doesn't recognize her. He confirms, however, the things that she has just been saying about him. Afterward, in a kind of a daze, he goes to the jukebox and starts playing Beastie Boys songs and dancing by himself, swinging his socks around in the air.

The young lady tells me that this is not the first time they have had this conversation. She says that she has run into him at least three or four times at another neighborhood bar, and each time he always introduces himself as though they have never met.

She says that they used to smoke pot together, but their friendship lapsed a long time ago. She says she thinks he has since messed up his brain with drugs. Based on his groooovy demeanor, I am inclined to agree with her.

Later though, another regular comes into the bar. She sees the dancing sock dude and tells me that he was in a car wreck, and that afterward his brain came out all funky. Who am I to say? But maybe his altered state is the result of a combination of drugs and brain trauma.

Anyway that might explain why he didn't tip. Why does no one ever tip?

JR