Bar Character #1: Pilfer

Sometimes you go to bars. Most times you drink at these bars. And if you’re lucky you run across characters, people who color this world so interesting with their oddities that you need to share your interactions with them with as many people as possible to prevent the story of gold from burning a hole in your soul. This is one of those stories. 

Bar Character #1 is a gentleman (pause) that my good friend, let’s continue to call him HotMom72, and I ran into about a month ago. We were watching the Minnesota Vikings play the Green Bay Packers at the Rocky Flats Lounge, located in the outskirts of Boulder, CO.

First: The Rocky. It’s a Packer bar, a place of worship for those who eat, sleep, dream, and shit green and gold. It’s a house-converted bar, a great hole in the wall, dive style right out of small-town Midwest. Anyone who grew up in the heartland will instantly be transported right back. It is not classy. It is not incredibly clean. It barely allows for two men to use the bathroom at the same time, and when this occurs it can get quite awkward, as the door to the stall cannot open unless the person using the urinal moves out of the way. But it’s a piece of home and the people there are way more friendly because they’re just plain happy to be in a place similar to where they donated brain cells in the prime of their adolescence.

I will call Bar Character #1 “Pilfer” and you’ll soon see why. Pilfer looks to be in his 40s. He’s a fan of the Vikings, like me, but he is not wearing any purple. I know he’s on my side because he has come to this discovery multiple times during the snippets of our conversations, multiple times because he is hammered. It’s not an incoming-freshman hammered. More of a seasoned-drunk hammered: you can’t really notice unless it’s a commercial break and he’s trying to talk to you. Nonetheless, Pilfer is lit.

The clock is nibbling into the fourth quarter and the Vikes are down by 13. They’re eating up the field in a possible comeback so nearly everyone is on the edge of their seats, even though the defending champion Packers are undefeated and the Vikings have one win and five losses. Pilfer sits in an open spot at our table of four. We pay him no mind because the television has us by the eyeballs, not to mention we’re both a wee bit messed up. He’s giving us the drunk stare and before the drool comes over his bottom lip, we start talking with him. Two minutes later I get a text from HotMom72 that says, “He’s too drunk to know what we are talking about.” And it’s true. He’s completely unable to follow a sentence from start to finish. In the middle of our “conversation,” he points at our pitcher of beer, which is 3/4 full and rests in the middle of the table.

“Can I have some of that,” he asks and while we recoil from the stranger’s strange request, he brushes the question aside, urging us to not even ponder it with a wave of his hand. “What a stupid question,” he appeared to be saying to himself. “Why would I ask two complete strangers, who I’ve said a total of 27 slurred words to, for a sip of their golden nectar?” This is not how his thoughts were flowing. They probably went something like, “Beer! Their beer. My beer?! No. No. Vikings.”

HotMom72 and I both thought the question was extremely odd. I nearly thanked him aloud for withdrawing it because I hate to tell drunk men “No.” The commercial break ended and we were suddenly sucked back into the game.

About three minutes later I see him, out of the corner of my eye, reach across the table, grab our pitcher with both hands and take a quick sip.

(so hot she makes me want to shoplift)

Did that just happen? Or am I more fucked than I thought I was? A quick glance to HotMom gives me the answer.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask Pilfer with anger in my eyes. “Really? Really dude?”

“What’s yer problem,” Pilfer asks smugly. 

“What? What’s my— What?!?” HotMom and I are floored. Flabbergasted. Before we can count how many bar-etiquette offenses he’s committed, I continue.

“What the fuck, man? Are you an alcoholic? Do you need alcohol so much that you have to steal it?”

“Yeah,” he says with blatant arrogance.

I take him for his word and decide to feel sorry for him instead of eating his face. But I’m furious. I feel violated. Dirty. And this is so not the good dirty I feel whenever I see a cute pregnant woman. It’s a bad dirty that makes me look at him with disgust. It’s a dirty that decides for me that I’m not drinking anymore of that beer or any beer.

His friend was walking to our table when he saw Pilfer pilfer our beer. Friend sits at the table while I’m hammering Pilfer and interjects with the age old, “I’ll buy you a drink if you don’t kill my friend or me.” We refuse his offer purely on principal. Money can’t rectify this grave offense. But we shy away from killing the pompous lush and his sidekick. Friend insists on buying us something, anything. We still refuse. It’s time to sober up, right quick. If a fight is gonna happen, we need to be sharp.

Pilfer gets up and, to our delight, heads outside.

“What’s his deal?” I ask friend, still fuming. Friend says he has no idea what Pilfer was thinking. “He’s been drinking all day. He’s super drunk. I’m really sorry. Probably thought he was among friends.” He still tries to buy us drinks but we say no.

I start laughing to purge the tension and anger from me and we get chatty with friend. Pilfer’s back about 5 minutes later, completely blank to the atrocity he has committed. HotMom and I start messing with him, dancing his sluggish mind in a circle with our wizardry of words and sarcasm. I’m watching him with amusement as he fumbles with a cigarette. He has it in his left hand and brings it to his mouth, but hits it with his right hand, launching it behind him. He’s clueless as to where it’s gone and pity pushes me to point it out.

He gets up to go outside again. I take a deep breath as he walks toward the door and turn back to the game. Then I feel someone’s arm around my upper back, like a side hug. What the hell, my mind is whispers as I look over my shoulder. It’s Pilfer, with both his arms around HotMom and me. What the fuck! He steps back in the nick of time, avoiding a meteor of my most malicious language, and walks outside.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” I ask HotMom who’s as befuddled as me.

“I don’t know, man,” he says while laughing.

HotMom tells me later that Pilfer wasn’t just embracing us, like we were his best, most supportive friends. He was actually catching himself from a nosedive. He stumbled and we were his closest supports.

Some time passes and Pilfer returns after his cigarette. A brat he ordered appears in front of him and he’s delighted. His first bite, according to HotMom, was hilarious. Instead of shifting the brat perpendicular to his mouth, or the “blowjob angle”, he kept it parallel to his mouth, for a side bite. And when he bit down, the majority of the Sauerkraut fell onto the dirty table. He didn’t notice, of course, and without looking he put the side-bitten brat down onto the cardboard boat it was delivered in, missing the center of said boat, causing it to tilt up and spill the rest of the brat onto the dirty table. Pilfer didn’t notice. He stood and wobbled his way out of the room. He didn’t come back to finish his brat. He didn’t come back for the finish of the game and we didn’t see him during our exit. For all we know he was finishing the adult beverages of every unsuspecting fan of alcohol and asking, “What’s yer problem?”

Bar characters can be a treat or a menace. Or both. Pilfer was both and I am happy that every single interaction with him happened. Because I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard at someone.