ALIEN TO MY LIFE

From the R.M. Dolin novel, “An Unsustainable Life – The Book of Isaac.“

Chapter 4: Alien to My Life

As an unpaid bartender at Murphy Northshore Bar in the blue-collar part of Chicago, Isaac was only required to participate in what Murphy calls the glory parts of the gig. This includes pouring pints, engaging patrons in idle chit chat, creating wagers to keep the faithful coming back, and of course, collecting customer cash, tips and wagers. Working for free provided elements of, well, freedom that Isaac failed to fully appreciate when he had the freedom to enjoy such things. Back then he could say no if asked to cover a particular shift, he could leave mid-shift if the game was decided, and he was able to make work, work around his life rather than force life, to work around his work. That’s the real game-changer Isaac managed his entire life to avoid, and to be honest, this new reality is not something he thinks can or should be sustained long term.

So many things changed when his life suddenly collided with inescapable realities he never imagined could be so consuming. Mundane things like having to be certain places at specific times. Having to say no to fun because he has other commitments. Having to forgo doing what he wants to do for what he needs to do. Had his dad not died and he been denied the chance to attend adventure camp perhaps it would have made a difference to Isaac’s world view. He didn’t get to experience his dad leaving each morning for work and not returning until late each evening. That would have taught him something about obligation. He never had dinners interrupted with pager calls and emergencies requiring immediate attention which would have highlighted the essence of responsibility. Had he grown up listening to his dad complain about not being able to drink because he’s on call, maybe Isaac would have understood the esoteric concept of delayed gratification. Had he struggled to overcome adventure camp’s many lose-lose scenarios, Isaac would have obtained a modicum of appreciation for the commitment required just to survive.

Had his mom had some purpose to occupy her time in a meaningful way, Isaac may have witnessed what it means to serve society or be conscientious of the needs of others but that didn’t happen. It’s as if Isaac was put in a space capsule that left his world last week and landed in a parallel universe where everything is, as it was back there except for him. How weird it is to awaken one day to the realization you’re an alien to a life where you don’t know the customs, traditions, and expectations. Obviously, you know these things the superficial way an observer sitting at a sidewalk café understands what it means to be a waiter, or street cleaner, or delivery driver but not in the meaningful ways that define and determine their lives.

So now, Isaac, an alien to everyday life in his new universe, has been left on his own to figure things out and it has at times been overwhelming. He knows he shouldn’t make it harder than it is just as much as he shouldn’t overthink everything, and yet, he can’t keep from doing both. He keeps telling himself if Lenny, Murphy, and Anthony can figure life out, there’s no reason he can’t. The biggest shock in his transition from part-time to full-time work is what Murphy calls the back-of-the-house responsibilities. These are things Murphy used to have his other paid staff handle for Isaac when he was only doing the glory-gig. Before going full-time, Isaac would show up for work an hour before the Cubs game started as the faithful were pouring in and he’d leave once the post-game crowd dispersed. Depending on how the Cubs perform, a game could go after extra innings but just as likely be over in the middle innings if they were getting blown out. The consensus sentiment this season is that people pretty much give up hope as soon as the starting pitcher is relieved because the Cub’s bullpen sucks.

At least that’s how he explains it to the Chef as he works at the kitchen’s back table preparing his bar condiments for the game still two hours out. Since the faithful won’t start arriving for another hour the Chef isn’t overly busy and idles his time talking to Isaac. “Why does your jacket say Bob,” Isaac asks while cutting a lime into eight equal width wedges, “but everyone calls you Patrick?”

Patrick picks out a lime wedge Isaac just tossed into his condiment container because there was a blemish on the skin. “It’s a joke that got started on a Friday during Lent a couple years back,” he explains. “Some yahoo tourists ask me to make po’boys and I tell them this ain’t that kind of restaurant. They get all uppity asking what kind of fish sandwich I’m capable of making like I don’t know how to make a freaking sandwich. I dish right back though, telling them I can make em Krabby Patties thinking my sarcastic irony will put them in their place. Next thing I know, they’re all getting giddy. Now mind you, I have no freaking idea what the hell a Krabby Patty is other than something my kids are always asking me to make. When they do, I just grill canned tuna, toss it on a toasted bun with a piece of lettuce and some tartar sauce, and tell them it’s a Krabby Patty.”

“So, that’s what you give the tourists?” Isaac asks in disbelief. He’s still focused on his lime cutting chore, but the Chef’s story is compelling, and it causes him to slow down.

“No, cause like I said, they’re all giddy about Krabby Patties. So now I’m on the freaking Internet watching Sponge Bob Square Pants cartoons trying to figure out what the hell a Krabby Patty is. That’s when Murphy walks by. He sees me on my tablet, stops, shakes his head in disbelief and says something about how he never thought he’d see day his Chef would be watching kid cartoons in the kitchen. He points to one of the cartoon characters asking what the hell he’s supposed to be, and I say, that’s Patrick the starfish, which I only know because of my kids. Murphy studies cartoon Patrick a few moments, then says all serious, ‘he looks just like you,‘ and walks off. Well, Tom’s back here, cutting up limes just like you and he hears this exchange. Next thing I know he’s calling me Patrick and the name’s kind of stuck.”

Isaac laughs. “That’s a great story, dude. So, did you make the Krabby Patties?”

“After Murphy gets all in my face like that, I sure as hell ain’t going back to watching cartoons. My only option is to slap a couple cans of tuna on the grill, toast a few buns, add cheese, lettuce, and some Gochujang Sauce and call em Krabby Patties.”

“And they buy it?” Isaac asks in amazement as he moves on to half-moon slices of lemon.

“No man, they totally call me out.”

“So, what do you do?”

“I go over to their table, I mean they’re tourists right, so of course they’re sitting at a table. Anyway, I posture myself to look all arrogant and indignant like any good Chef would, and I say to them, ’what do you think should be in a Krabby Patty?’ Now mind you, I’m thinking they won’t know. Only, next thing I know, they’re rattling off all the ingredients in proper amounts, so they actually know the freaking recipe.”

Isaac laughs so hard he has to stop slicing. “Holy shit! So, what do you do?”

“I lean over so both my hands are on their table, you know, like a policeman telling a gangbanger how things are gonna be. Then I say all serious and all, ‘we don’t serve that kind of sissy shit here.’”

“And then what?” Isaac asks in held suspense.

“I just meander my ass back to the kitchen without saying a word.”

“Wow! Now that’s a story.”

“You remember it in case anybody ever asks for a cocktail you don’t know how to make. Just look em straight in the eye serious as shit, put both hands on the bar so they know better than to mess with ya, and tell em straight up, ‘we don’t sever sissy shit cocktails like that here, this here’s a proper place, so you gonna want pint or a sissy-ass small glass of Guinness?‘”

“Seriously?” Isaac doubts.

“Mark my words, dude, they’ll be drinking Guinness. Of course, you gotta sell it, both hands on the bar and straight into their eyes.”

Isaac continues slicing lemons with the Chef overseeing his progress, both content with idle work until Murphy passes on his way to the office. “Okay Patrick,” Murphy sternly states, “smoke break’s over and I need you to boil an extra pot of potatoes, we’re featuring Sheppard’s Pie tonight. You know how to make it, right, or should I download a cartoon to your tablet?”

“Let it go, Murphy,” Patrick grouses on his way to the pantry. “Let it go.”

“And you pretty boy,” Murphy redirects. “You plan on taking all afternoon to slice fruit or think you might maybe get your ass to glass polishing sometime soon?”

“Right away boss,” Isaac answers picking up the pace.

Murphy briefly watches Isaac work before continuing to the office. “Remember lad, I pay you to work not to be gossiping about cartoons.”

Isaac quickly fills the remaining condiment containers with olives, cherries, and pickled onions. He next fills two bowls with kosher salt and two with Tajín for margaritas; one each for his and Murphy’s workstations. With condiments done, Isaac fills a bucket with hot water and a splash of vinegar. He grabs some dry dish towels and walks to the staging area where four tall towers of glassware trays are stacked five feet high and waiting. Each tray contains between sixteen to twenty-four glasses depending on their size and shape. He begins the arduous process of cleaning the approximately five hundred glasses by taking down a tray, pulling out a glass, dipping it into the vinegar bath before hand-drying it. He then returns the glass to its tray and restarts the process with the next unpolished glass. Before completing the first of many trays, he’s joined by Santiago who silently offers several glass-polishing tips. Murphy believes in starting each shift with nicely polished glassware, says it adds an element of elegance to his bar. Once those glasses are exhausted though, Santi just runs them through the dishwasher and gets them back on the floor as quickly as possible because no one’s gonna notice their second cocktail or third pint’s in an unpolished glass.

With condiments prepped and glassware polished, the next step in Isaac’s pre-shift process is preparing the bar-back. This involves ensuring there’s enough gin, tequila, vodka, rum, bourbon, rye, scotch, vermouth, grenadine, and assorted mixes to make it through game day. After that, he cleans the beer taps as Murphy makes sure the cash register’s adequately robust and the credit card machines properly function. Isaac recently placed Venmo QR codes on the bar so people can Venmo him tips. Murphy’s not sure about the technology; says he’s only allowing it on a trial basis. He’s got this odd belief that the faithful don’t need any of this new age technology getting in the way of their proper bar experience.

Murphy pays Isaac ten dollars an hour so for his usual ten-hour shift it’s a hundred in cash, which isn’t much when you’re life’s upside-down by thousands, but that’s just his base pay. A typical game-day shift begins with two hours of pre-game prep, followed by five hours pouring pints for the faithful. That’s followed by a two-hour wind-down then one hour for cleanup and getting things ready for the next day. While there are no tips during the pre- and post-game periods, when he’s at the bar, Isaac averages a hundred dollars an hour in tips, which adds another six hundred on top of the hundred base pay. Wagers at Murphys tend to run around twenty dollars a pop and Isaac typically makes twenty wagers per game of which he wins roughly eighty percent. That adds another hundred and sixty dollars to his shift earnings for a total of eight hundred and sixty dollars, or an average of eighty-six dollars per hour. It isn’t bad but isn’t anywhere near his needed ‘get-your-life-back’ level.

When he was working for free, Isaac gave his tip money to Murphy because what the hell did he need with it. What he didn’t know was that Murphy passed those funds onto the other bar workers. Murphy tells Isaac on his first paid day that he’s expected to give the waiters, busboys and cooks half his tip money, or else, as Murphy points out, ‘no one’s gonna talk to you, you won’t get fed, and you’ll polish all your own damn glassware’. On top of tip distributions, Murphy takes a ten percent Vig on wager winnings so with those deductions, Isaac’s gross pay reduces from eight hundred and sixty dollars per shift to six hundred fifty-two, or roughly sixty-five dollars an hour. As Murphy points out, ‘it’s a shit-ton better than what McDonald’s is paying.’

The faithful begin to arrive an hour before the Cubs take the field. Some come early to get coveted seats along the bar in front of Murphy’s two big screen TVs or in the back where he has two other large screens. Others come to pregame because once the game starts the turnaround time for kitchen orders is measured in innings not outs and if you come early, Murphy offers dollar bottles of Old Milwaukee and half-price fries as his pre-game special.

Murphy figures tonight will be extra busy because the Cubs are at Comiskey Park to take on their cross-town rival White Sox. Comiskey Park was replaced in 1990 by the much larger Guaranteed Rate Field but no one at Murphy’s is buying into that horse-shit name. Tonight the Cubs are at Comiskey for a cross-town game and the crowd will be a mix of blue-collar Cub and Sox faithful. Isaac completes his pre-game chores just in time to get the tip of his thin black tie tucked behind his knee-length wrap-around apron before he pours his first game-day pint. Murphy insists bartenders wear black slacks with a black belt and black shoes topped with a white button-down shirt. Isaac came to work on his first full day wearing dress shoes and Murphy immediately sent him to Pam’s Pampered Footwear on Cicero near Lenny’s shop to get OSHA approved restaurant shoes. Aside from costing half a day’s pay, Isaac thinks they looked ridiculous, but after a ten-hour shift, he’s surprised how happy his feet feel, so its money well-spent.

Murphy casts his patrons in a multi-tiered construct. On the first tier are the Cub faithful who can be counted on to be at the bar for every game. Occupying the second tier are the Chicago faithful; those who occasionally but consistently pop in for bears, bulls, or blackhawk contests. Tier three consists of his ‘sometime boys’, those who come once in a while just to have a beer and someplace to be but aren’t faithful followers of any teams. The bottom tier is reserved for out-of-towners and random locals who just happened to find his bar because they’re looking to catch their team on one of the big-screen TVs. Murphy tries to accommodate them so long as there aren’t any Chicago games going on. His ‘below-bottom’ tier is for Packer and Cardinal fans. He’ll tolerate them in his bar so long as they’re willing to accept the risks but he sure as hell isn’t putting their games on his TVs unless the Bears are playing the Packers or the Cubs are playing the Cardinals. Since Michael Jordan retired, he doesn’t have a no-television team for basketball, and he’d rather not have the Red Wings or Bruins pollute his space during hockey season.

For the most part, the first-tier faithful don’t raze Isaac too much about the Gabriella wager, of course there are questions and even light-spirited teases, that’s to be expected. With the Cubs playing the Sox, tonight the faithful are more focused on betting and watching the game than they are on Isaac’s love life. On the surface one would think that with twenty percent of the crowd made up of Sox fans, it would be fertile ground for wagers, but Isaac’s learned south-side fans are not as prone to betting with their hearts as the Cubbie faithful. This means his money is better invested with wagers involving the north-side team.

Isaac’s talent for framing wagers that shift the odds in his favor stems from the fact that he’s determined the average active span of a Cubs game is six innings. He’s found the outcome of a game is determined by whatever the outcome is at the end of the sixth inning. If the Cubs are ahead at this point, they’ll likely win but if they’re behind, there’s little hope. Of course, as a Bayesian-based gambler, that’s just his starting point. His additional clairvoyance involves things like if the opposing team has already gone to their bullpen, is the wind blowing in or out of Wriggly, are the Cubbies wearing their classic blue pinstripe over white uniforms or their light grays. He can easily entice the faithful into a wager by talking about uniforms. He’ll say shit like, “I would have taken them to win if they were in the pinstripes, but not in the grays.”

Of course, the faithful dismiss this kind of foolishness and come away confident that anyone wagering based on uniforms is so uniformed about the intricacies of baseball wagering, they can’t possibly predict the outcome of any bet. This is the first of two mistakes they’ll make when wagering Isaac. The second mistake is betting with their heart instead of their head. Since Murphy’s Northshore is a Cub’s bar and the faithful are true believers with the same unyielding commitment to their side as early Christians being led into the coliseum, Isaac’s able to entice them into ridiculously stupid wagers that have almost no hope of working out to their benefit. His success rate has been so phenomenal, there’s a growing intensity among the faithful to take even higher risks against Isaac just to be the one who can eventually brag about bringing him down.

That’s the reason so many faithful have been eager to get in on the Gabriella bet, it’s not that they want to see Isaac lose at love or have his relationship with her necessarily end, it’s that they just want the chance to win a bet against him. What they fail to realize is that they’re betting with their heart instead of their head because if they thought about it, they aren’t betting against Isaac, they’re betting on an element of his life for which he has no control. It’s akin to wagering on the Cubs, you’re not actually wagering for or against them, you’re wagering against the guy you make the bet with. In this instance the Cubs are merely the vehicle used to determine the outcome of your bet. It’s the same with the Gabriella-wager, what people are actually betting on is the fragility of love and Isaac is just the poor schmuck used to determine if you’re a cynic or romantic.

At least that’s how Isaac’s decided to frame things when it comes up. He’s constantly getting teased and harassed about what Gabriella’s likely to do now that knows Isaac’s broke and must work to survive. The faithful think they have a stake in his love life, but Isaac believes he’s finally figured out how to counter their aggression. What he’s still working on as tonight’s first pint is poured, is how to turn their aggression into secondary wagers biased in his favor. The one thing that’s become crystal clear from his financial crisis and being an alien to his life, is that Isaac can’t count on Gabriella helping ease his transition. She’s solidly stuck back in the world he jettisoned last week and the question he’s decided to delay until after the wager’s over is whether there’s a place for someone from his old world in the new universe he’s been compelled to take refuge in. A less pressing question is whether he can or will ever return to his old world once this crisis is behind him.

One could appropriately argue Isaac should have those deliberations now, but really, how can he when he’s yet to understand if traveling back is even ever possible. Also holding him back are the wager rules that say he’s not allowed to have contact with Gabriella until the five o’clock deadline on Tuesday. The rules do however, caveat that should Gabriella contact him he must respond because not responding could influence the outcome of the wager. This rule has led to a lot of consternation among the faithful surrounding whether responding is just as likely to influence the wager’s outcome as not responding. By the time the first pint is poured there’s still no definitive determination as to how such a matter is to be resolved. This is why in the long-standing tradition of Northshore bets Murphy is the decider. Regardless of how he renders verdicts in such disputes, his rulings are not only final, but they’re also not open for future litigation.

In places where men gather, wagering of some kind always occurs, places as diverse as golf courses, bowling alleys, poker rooms, church socials, workplace meetings, picnics, protest rallies, weddings, funerals, etc., you name it. There are no clear ways to resolve differences that arise and given sufficient time, differences always arise, usually manifesting as endless arguments, overt campaigning, and covert Machiavellian alliances. The only place in the greater Chicago area where such differences are cleanly and definitively resolved is Murphy’s Northshore Bar. Murphy rules with absolute authority and if you don’t like it, you’re free to drink your pints at the next bar over.

In decades of resolving highly contested disputes, Murphy has demonstrated a King Solomon like wisdom for peacefully setting terms all betters can live with. That doesn’t mean everyone walks away happy, but things usually end with all sides able to return to the bar and place future bets. In some instances, the bet itself is uncontested, but Murphy intervenes because the method of payment is in dispute. Case in point is the disastrous wager Lenny made with Darwin on that silly Sammy Sosa bet where Lenny puts up his cherished 68 Harley Shovelhead against Darwin’s five thousand dollars. Murphy holds Lenny’s title and Darwin’s cash and when Darwin comes to collect, Murphy counsels him on the wisdom of finding a way to let Lenny keep his Harley while not making it seem to the rest of the faithful that Lenny’s welshed on his bet or Darwin took pity. Murphy didn’t have the authority to mandate in this matter because Darwin won the bike fair and square and Lenny wasn’t about to welsh. Murphy’s wisdom is so highly regarded in the Northshore area though, no one’s going to ignore his counsel when he does intervene.

In the same Solomon-like way, Murphy’s simple handshake the night Isaac came to negotiate a job altered the entire landscape of not only Isaac’s life, but the perspective within which he’s quickly coming to filter things. If there’s one take-away from Isaac’s first week as a full-time bartender, it’s that beyond the overt mechanics of his bouquet of obligations, expectations, and responsibilities that come with the job, there’s attitude changes on psychological levels. Stuff that never get talked about; at least not in the social circles Isaac’s been a part of during his short life.

These attitude changes are so simple and subtle they mostly go unnoticed, things like the distinction between getting up wanting to go to work and having to go. It may seem like a difference without distinction but to Isaac the dichotomy’s as differentiable as the difference between being marooned on a windswept Alaskan beach in January and dancing down Duval Street in Key West on Mardi Gras. It probably sounds pretentious and perhaps even insulting to guys who have been punching a clock and grinding it out since high school, but for Isaac, who’s successfully avoided real work his entire life, there’s a remarkably satisfying feeling that comes from being so exhausted after a ten-hour shift you can barely walk upright. It’s the same odd kind of satisfaction he now has riding the L after midnight, like he’s become as integral a part of the city as the pillars holding up the tracks he rides along. His newfound euphoria doesn’t mean he’d want to be doing this kind of work at fifty, but he now understands why Murphy hires people to do things Isaac used to think Murphy should be doing himself.

Back in the day when Isaac worked for free even his attitude toward customers was different. Before being paid, bartending felt like he was the same as all the other guys in the bar, just with pouring privileges. It was like he’s the host at a frat party who’s responsible for ensuring the kegs stay connected and the cocktails keep flowing. Once he transitions to a paid position everything changes, even how he talks about work. Now that he’s legitimately part of the cogs that connect the ever-rotating gears of Windy City blue-collar industrialization it causes naive idealists like Isaac to be so filled with worker pride he could be persuaded into doing something as foolish as joining a union. This is why Murphy was wise in agreeing to pay him in cash to keep such nonsense from matriculating into his bar.

It has been an intense night at Murphy’s as the Comiskey crowd unexpectedly has grown to match the Cubbie faithful and the wagering has been escalating with risk being set aside in the name of home-team pride and city-wide bragging rights. The Sox have two outs in the bottom of the sixth with a runner in scoring position and the go-ahead run at the plate. Isaac’s been carefully assessing the crowd measuring their mood against the Bayesian clairvoyance he’s carefully curated all season. He’s identified probable marks to entice on both sides of a probable outcome. All he needs is the current batter to do whatever he’s going to do to know how to formulate his wagers. If the Cubs get the batter out, they end the sixth with the lead, which means it’s likely they win the game. However, if the Sox get a hit to push in a run, the game’s tied with a chance to take the lead. Should the inning end with the Sox in front, Isaac’s wagers will tilt toward untapped patrons. If they fail to score, he hits familiar faithful ground with time-tested strategies. Either way, the batter at the plate is going to determine the extent to which he goes home a winner.