I was holed up in my apartment, marooned on a cheap couch with a shattered collarbone, washing down a steady diet of Percocet with cold Coors Lights just to dull the edges. As if the bone-deep throbbing weren’t enough, a crew of relentless contractors descended on the unit directly above me, turning my ceiling into a deafening war zone of power tools and heavy boots. Driven out by the noise, I sought refuge at the neighborhood dive Frazier’s long and low, only to be met by a slovenly bartender who looked like a bloated, hostile Buzz McCallister. This guy was running the world’s saddest, low-rent racket: sneering at me from behind the pine, discreetly snatching my half-finished beers the second I looked away, and then smugly offering to sell me another round. Nursing a broken body leaves you with precious little patience for predatory street-sleaze, so the moment I caught onto his pathetic game, I closed out my tab, slapped a heavy zero on the tip line, and walked out the door.
I wandered back in a few weeks later and hit the patio, where I met Relli Calhoun—the kitchen’s chef taking a break in the shade. Relli was a real good sport, cracking jokes and trading stories on every topic under the sun, and his sharp wit was so natural, I immediately tried recruiting him to pitch pieces for Chainsaw Magazine. Midway through our session, Buzz walked past on his way to clock in, looking utterly stunned to see me sitting there yucking it up with his co-worker. From that day on, he treated me nice-ish. I didn’t frequent the joint daily, but when I did, I’d hunker down for seven- to ten-hour marathons—”blowing off steam”, watching muted B-movies on the overhead TVs, and chatting with the lovely Riki Greenfield and a retired weed trimmer known only in this earthly as realm as Master Shredder.
I was doing well enough financially that I rarely audited my bar tabs, but on my penultimate night there, a $38 tab caught my eye. I dropped a ten-dollar tip and called it a night, only to check my bank statement a few days later and find a clean $78 deducted. Some one added an L to a 1 magically turning a 10 dollar tip into a 40 dollar tip. Naturally, I pondered which fat-fingered hustler working the register felt entitled to slide a hand into my wallet. You guessed it: Buzz.
I returned the next evening fuming, throwing back light beers while quietly calculating what kind of scene I was about to execute. In the south we call this pitching a hissy fit, or throwing a temper tantrum. And i was imagining a Godzilla level, weapons grade, fit that i was gonna pitch. By the time I closed out, I simply leaned over the pine and handed him a cold, dispassionate acknowledgement of his sins: “Hey man, I’m gonna put a tip on here—try not to add anymore for yourself.” Predictably, he lost his fucking mind like any cornered thief, erupting into a full-blown meltdown right in front of the room. “That’s it, you alcoholic piece of shit! You can’t keep track of your money and you accuse me of stealing? You’re 86’d! Don’t come back, I’m putting you on the list!” He was screaming at the top of his lungs, clearly trying to publicly humiliate me. But little did Buzz know, when you’ve endured hundreds of mandatory strip-searches as a ward of the state during two stretches in Florida juvenile prisons, a screaming bartender can’t embarrass you if he tried. I grabbed my beers, yea i had two at this point, turned my back on his temper tantrum, and walked home giggling into the night.
Chainsaw Magazine 