Posts Tagged ‘bars’
2 items.
Memo to old guys:Me being too polite to start screaming, “Rape!” in a crowded bar and being in a stationary position for a few minutes does not entitle you to conversation. Seriously. I like to do sketches like this just to keep my hand moving, more or less, and especially when I’m at bars alone. I haven’t done many in the past few months. For some reason, fate has conspired to keep me in the company of other guys during most of my recent visits to San Francisco’s dens of evening debauch… But I think a lot of the stories about those guy companions might make decent comix at some point, so I don’t want to shoot my wad with them just yet… In comix form… Get it? hahahahhahaha.. I shot my wad with the guys in non-comix form. Get it? yeah? Oh, right, it just wasn’t funny. Well, regardless, the above sketch is from last Saturday, when I decided that I needed a bar night by myself for a change, and made my lonesome way down to Castro. I was iffy on what I’d do, and whether I’d draw, and I was making it up as I went, so I didn’t bring a sketchbook or pens. As soon as I got there, though, a fairly cute brown-haired boy started checking me out, I liked the music (As much as I can in a Castro bar), and I decided tonight was gonna be a good, good night. So, I ran to the nearest Walgreens, which never seems more than two blocks away in this city, (Don’t get me wrong, I love this city with all my heart), and I grabbed the pad of paper that seemed like it would fit in my pocket.
As douche bag positioned himself next to me and started telling me he liked my drawings and wanted to know where I was from and what was I doing in Castro all by myself, (Must mean I wanna fuck old guys in red baseball caps with accents of vague European origins, right?) I tried to put the pad of paper back into my pocket and excuse myself but then discovered that it did not, in fact, fit. As a coyote in a trap’ll chew it’s foot off, I tore the paper out of the pad and folded the stack in half so that I could fit it in my back pocket, and I left. I hadn’t sat in my new position long when he arrived again. “Oh, you’re over here now. Haha. So, how do you like the city? It’s cold, yeah?” Haha. Anyway, I drew this cartoon as he was sitting next to me and thoughts of unsavory natures flooded my mind. Cute brown-haired guy left while douche bag was going on with stories of which I understood maybe every fifth word. Would anybody have blamed me?
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Just a quick sketchbook page for today. I have a billion drawings like this, because this is basically what comes out when I’m standing around with nothing in particular to draw. I bring my sketchbook to bars and public places a lot, for different reasons. One of the obvious reasons for bringing it to a bar, of course, is that I can go there and hang out until something happens without just standing on the wall and staring at people all creeper-status. Although, I’ve been known to do that too. The sketchbook-in-bar thing is also good because if somebody wants to approach me, it gives them an easy excuse for conversation. The problem with that is that it’s sometimes a little too easy, and some pretty gross old men have thought they had an in with me if they’d pretend to care about what I was sketching. I have trouble striking the perfect balance between aloof and available.
Most people don’t seem to think it’s strange to see someone drawing in a bar, and some people even seem to think it’s cool, but occasionally I do get somebody who just thinks it’s freakish to see a fellow patron with something in his hand besides a drink or a crotch. I was standing in a bar, I think the same one where I drew this sketch, and some guy comes up and starts talking to me, mostly about himself. He was cute, though, and offering drinks so I feigned interest. He talked about how much money he made, and how much he liked it in LA, where apparently he was from, but explained that he came to San Francisco about once a month to, “unwind.”
“But it never turns out that way, haha,” he said. ” I always think I’m just gonna relax up here, but next thing I know, I’m doing coke offa some guy’s cock!” Yeah, don’t you hate it when that happens? I wish guys would just keep their coke and their cocks to themselves, for chrissakes. “What are you doing with the book?” he asked.
“Sketching.”
He gave me a look a little bit like I had said I was using it to beat stray dogs. “Dude, that’s weird.”
“Why’s it weird?”
“Cause you’re coming to a social place to be anti-social!” he tells me.
“How am I anti-social when I’m talking to your right now?”
His brow furrows, I can sense the wheels turning a bit behind frustrated, blank, but awfully cute eyes… “Whatever, dude. I’m meeting a friend at Lookout. Wanna come?”
I do go to Lookout, but I meet up with another friend and stop talking to the guy, which seems OK by him because his friend has a couple of other friends, and I think the group of them are deciding to get friendly.
A month or two later, I ran into the guy again and am surprised that he remembers me. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “You’re that guy who reads!”
“Um, well, yeah, I read, but I wasn’t that night. It was a sketchbook.”
“Yeah, right, right, you had a book! In a bar!”
I’m starting to feel a little bit like Belle talking to Gaston as the guy puts his arm around my shoulder and introduces me to his passel of of cute 20-somethings; different 20-somethings than last time, of course. “Hey everybody! This is my friend who reads!”
Some sets of bleary eyes wandered in my direction for a minute, I waved and then excused myself. I was feeling like I didn’t really belong there, somehow. I was the guy who reads! I guess that’s what I get for hanging out with somebody from LA, right?
