ALIEN TO MY LIFE

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

Chapter 4: Alien to My Life

As an unpaid bartender at Murphy Northshore Bar, Issac was only required to participate in what Murphy calls the glory part of the gig; the pouring of pints, the engaging of patrons with idle chit chat, the creation of interesting wagers to keep the loyal Cubs faithful coming back, and of course, the collection of customer tips. Working for free provides elements of, well, freedom that Issac failed to fully appreciate when he had the freedom to enjoy it. Back in those carefree times he could say no if asked to cover a particular shift, to leave when he got a better offer, to make work, work around his life rather than forcing life to work around his work. That’s the real game-changer Issac’s managed to go his entire life without having an appreciation for, and to be honest, this new reality is not something he thinks can be sustained long term.

Of all the things that changed when his life so suddenly, unexpectedly, and abruptly collided with inescapable realities he never imagined would so consume him, are the most 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 because of having to do what needs doing. Had his dad not died early perhaps it would have made a difference to Issac’s world view; seeing Vincent leave each morning for work and not return until late each evening would have taught him something about life’s obligations. Having dinners interrupted with pager calls and emergencies requiring immediate attention would have highlighted the essence of responsibility. Had he grown up listening to his dad complain about not being able to drink wine with dinner because he’s on call, maybe Issac would be ale to understand more about the esoteric concept of delayed gratification.

Had his mom worked or had some purpose to occupy her time in a meaningful way, Issac may have witnessed what it means to serve society or be conscientious of the struggles and needs of others but that didn’t happen. It’s as if Issac 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, Issac, an alien to everyday life, 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 help himself from doing both. Really though, if Lenny, Murphy, and Anthony can figure life out, there’s no reason he can’t. The biggest shock to his transition from free part-time work to full-on paid employment is what Murphy calls the back-of-the-house responsibilities; things that Murphy used to have his other paid staff handle for Issac when he was only doing the glory-gig. Before going full-time, Issac would show up at the bar half an hour before the Cubs game started and he’d leave once the crowd dispersed. Depending on how the game goes, it could be after extra innings, but more likely it’d be mid game if they were getting blown out. The consensus sentiment this season is that people start preparing to leave as soon as the starting pitcher gets benched by a reliever because the Cub’s bullpen this season sucks.

At least that’s how he explains it to the head chef as he works on the kitchen’s back table preparing his bar condiments. Since the faithful won’t start arriving until an hour before the first pitch, the chef isn’t overly busy and idles his time talking to Issac. “Why does your jacket say Bob,” Issac asks while cutting a lime into eight equal width wedges, “but everyone calls you Patrick?

“It’s a joke that got started on a Friday during Lent a couple years back” Bob/Patrick reveals. “Some random tourists asks me to make a Po’ Boy and I tell them this ain’t that kind of restaurant. Then they get all uppity and ask what kind of fish sandwich I can make, like I don’t know how to make a sandwich, so, I dish back telling them I can make them Krabby Patties. I think I’m being sarcastically ironic but they’re suddenly all 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, and when they do, I just grill a can of tuna, toss it on a toasted bun and tell them it’s a Krabby Patty.”

“So, that’s what you gave the tourists?” Issac asks in disbelief, focused as much on his current lime as he is on the Chef’s story.

“No, cause like I said, they’re all giddy about having Krabby Patties so I’m on the freaking internet watching Sponge Bob Square Pants cartoons trying to figure out what the hell it is. That’s when Murphy walks by, he sees me on tablet, stops, shakes his head in disbelief and says something about how he never thought he’d see day his cook would be watching cartoons in the kitchen. Then 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 know cause of my kids. Well Murphy studies 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 and the next thing I know he’s calling me Patrick and the name’s kind of stuck.”

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

“After what Murphy said I couldn’t go back to the cartoon, so I slap a couple cans of tuna on the grill, toast a few buns, add cheese and some Gochujang Sauce and call em Krabby Patties.”

“And they buy it?” Issac questions while moving 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, and 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 of the ingredients in proper amounts, so they like actually know the freaking recipe.”

“Holy shit!” Issac laughs, “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, and I say, all serious and all, ‘we don’t serve that kind of sissy shit here.’”

“And then what?” Issac 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 you tell them straight up, ‘we don’t sever sissy shit cocktails like that here, this here’s a proper place, so you gonna want pint or tall pour of Guinness?‘”

“Seriously?” Issac asks.

“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.”

Issac continues slicing lemons with the Chef overseeing, both content with idle the 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, Murph,” Bob/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 thinking you might get to glass polishing any time soon?”

“Right away,” Issac answers picking up the pace.

Murphy briefly watches Issac work before continuing to the office. “Remember, I pay you to work not gossip about cartoons.”

Issac quickly fills the remaining 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 stations. With condiments done, he fills a bucket with vinegar and hot water, grabs some dry dish towels, and walks to the staging area where four tall towers of glassware trays stacked six feet high are waiting. He begins the arduous process by taking down a tray, pulling out a glass, then dipping it into the vinegar bath before hand-drying it. He then returns the glass to its tray and restarts the process. Before Issac completes his 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 and sophistication. 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 not in a polished glass.

With the condiments prepped and the glassware polished, the next step in the pre-shift process is preparing the bar-back, which 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, Issac cleans the taps as Murphy makes sure the cash register’s adequately robust and the credit card machines properly function. Back when Issac worked for free, he placed Venmo QR codes on the bar so people could give venmo tips. Murphy’s not sure about the technology; says he’s only allowing it on a trial basis. He’s got some odd belief his crowd of faithful don’t need any of this new age technology getting in the way of their proper bar experience.

Murphy pays Issac ten dollars an hour so for his usual ten-hour shift it a hundred in cash, which isn’t much when you’re 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 at the bar spanning pre-game to post-game. That’s followed by a two-hour wind-down and one hour for cleaning up and getting things ready for the next day. While there are no tips during pre- and post-game periods, when he’s working the bar, Issac averages a hundred dollars an hour, which works out to another six hundred on top of the hundred base pay. Wagers at Murphy’s tend to run around twenty dollars a pop and Issac typically makes twenty wagers per game of which he wins roughly seventy percent. That adds another hundred-forty to his shift for a total of eight hundred and forty-dollars, or an average of eight-four dollars per hour, which isn’t bad but it’s nowhere near needed get-out-of-debt levels.

When he used to work for free, Issac gave all 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 other bar workers. Murphy told him 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 wash all your damn glassware yourself’. On top of tip distributions, Murphy takes a ten percent Vig on wager winnings so with those deductions, Issac’s gross pay reduces from eight-hundred-forty-dollars per shift to five-hundred-twenty-six, or roughly fifty-four dollars an hour, which as Murphy points out, ‘is a shit-ton better than what McDonalds is paying.’

An hour before the Cubs take the field, the faithful start to arrive. Some come early to get the prized seats in front of Murphy’s four big screen TVs, others come to eat because once the game starts the turnaround time for kitchen orders is measured in innings not outs. Still others come early because Murphy offers dollar bottles of Old Milwaukee as his pre-game special along with half-price fries.

Tonight’s gonna be extra busy cause the Cubs are at Comiskey Park to take on their cross-town rival White Sox. Comiskey Park was replaced in 1990 by Guaranteed Rate Field but no one at Murphy’s is buying into that horseshit name, so tonight, the Cubs are Comiskey for a cross-town game and the crowd at Murphy’s will be huge. Issac completes his pre-game chores just in time to get his thin black tie around his white button-down shirt before he has to pour his first game-day pint. In addition to his white shirt and black tie, Murphy insists bartenders wear black slacks with a black belt and black shoes. Issac 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 work shoes. Aside from costing half a day’s pay, Issac thinks they looked ridiculous, but after his ten-hour shift, he’s surprised how happy his feet feel, so its money well-spent.

Murphy casts his patrons into a multi-tier construct; on the first tier are the Cub faithful who can be counted on to come to the bar for every Cub’s game. On the second tier are the Chicago faithful; those who occasionally but consistently pop in for bears, bulls, or blackhawk contests. At tier three are his sometimes-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 of the four TVs. Murphy tries to accommodate them as long as there aren’t any Chicago games going on. His special, ‘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, but 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 Issac too much about the Gabriella wager, of course there are questions and even light spirited teases, but with the Cubs playing the Sox, the faithful are more focused on betting and watching the game than they are on Issac’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 as Issac’s learned that south-side fans are not as prone to betting with their hearts as the Cubbie faithful, so his money is better invested with wagers involving the north-side team.

Part of Issac’s talent for framing wagers that shift the odds in his favor is that he’s loosely determined the average active span of a Cubs game is six innings, meaning the outcome of a game is more or less 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; some of the 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 the uniforms. He’ll say things like, “I would of taken them to win if they were in the pinstripes, but not in the grays.”

Of course, the faithful dismisses this kind of foolishness and come away confident that anyone wagering based on uniforms is so uniformed about the intricacies of the game and baseball wagering, they can’t possibly predict the outcome of any bet, which is the first of two mistakes they’ll make when wagering Issac. The second mistake is betting with their heart instead of their head. Since Murphy’s Northshore is a Cub’s bar and the faithful, true believers with same unyielding commitment to their side as early Christians being led into the coliseum; Issac’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 Issac just to be the one who can eventually brag about bringing him down.

That’s the reason so many faithful were eager to get in on the Gabriella bet, it’s not that they want to see Issac lose at love or have his relationship with Gabriella necessarily end, it’s that they just want the chance to win a bet against him. But once again, they’re betting with their heart instead of their head because if they thought about it, they aren’t betting against Issac, 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, the Cubs are merely the vehicle used to determine the outcome of your wager. It’s the same with the Gabriella-wager, what people are actually betting on is the fragility of love and Issac is just the poor schmuck used to determine if you’re a cynic or romantic.

This is at least how Issac’s decided to frame things should it come up. Since the now legendary wager first got going about what Gabriella will do once she learns Issac’s broke and must work to survive, he gets teased and harassed by the faithful who think they have a stake in his love life, and he’s finally figured out how to counter their aggression. The thing he’s still working on as tonight’s first pint’s poured is how to turn their aggression into secondary wagers he can win. The one unfortunate thing that’s crystal clear from his financial crisis and being an alien to his life, is that Issac can’t count on Gabriella helping ease his transition. She’s still solidly stuck back in the world he jettisoned last week and the question he’s decided to delay until after the Gabriella-wager, is whether there’s a place for someone from his old world in the new universe where he’s compelled to take refuge.

One could appropriately argue Issac should have that deliberation now, but really, how can he when he’s yet to understand if traveling back to her world 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 caused to a lot of controversy surrounding whether responding is just as likely to influence the wager’s outcome as not responding and by the time tonight’s first pint is poured, there’s no definitive determination as to how such a matter is to be resolved, which is why in the long-standing tradition of Northshore wagers, Murphy is the decider and however he rules in such disputes is not only final, it’s not open to future litigation.

It’s long been established that in places where men gather, wagering of some kind occurs, places as diverse as golf courses, bowling alleys, poker rooms, church socials, workplace meetings, picnics, protest rallies, weddings, funerals, etc. 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.

Over multiple years involving highly contested disputes, Murphy has demonstrated a King Solomon like wisdom for peacefully adjudicating disputes and settling wagers. Even in some of the most infamous wagers that went uncontested Murphy provided input. Case in point is the disastrous wager Lenny made with Darwin on that silly bet involving Sammy Sosa 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 he’s welshed on his bet or that Darwin took pity. Murphy didn’t have the authority to intercede because Darwin won the bike fair and square and Lenny wasn’t about to welsh, however, Murphy’s wisdom is so highly regarded in the Northshore area no one’s going to ignore his counsel when he does decide to intervene.

In the same Solomon-like way, Murphy’s simple handshake the night Issac came to negotiate altered the entire landscape of not only Issac’s life, but the perspective within which he’s quickly coming to filter things. If there’s one take-away from Issac’s first week as a paid full time bartender, it’s that beyond the overt mechanics of the full bouquet of obligations, expectations, and responsibilities that come with full time work, there’s attitude changes on psychological levels that never get talked about; at least not in the social circles Issac’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 Issac 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 Issac, who’s successfully avoided real work his entire life, there’s a remarkably satisfying feeling with being so exhausted after a ten-hour shift you can barely walk upright. It’s the same oddly 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. Clearly, his newfound euphoria doesn’t mean he’d want to be doing this kind of work at fifty, and it’s also why he now understands why Murphy hires people to do things Issac used to think he ought to be doing himself.

When Issac 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, just with pouring privileges; like the host at a frat party who has to be sober to make sure the kegs stay connected and the cocktails keep flowing. Once he transitions to a paid bartender though, everything changes, even how he talks about work because now you are legitimately part of the cogs that cling to the ever-rotating gears of windy city blue-collar industrialization. It causes a naive young idealist like Issac to be so filled with worker pride he could be persuaded into doing something as foolish as joining a union, which is why Murphy wisely agrees to pay Issac in cash, to keep such nonsense from matriculating into his bar.

It has been an intense night at Murphy’s as the Comiskey crowd for some odd reason has grown to match the Cubbie faithful in attendance and the wagering has been escalating with risk being set aside in the name of home-team pride and city-wide bragging rights. There’s two out in the bottom of the sixth with a runner in scoring position and the go-ahead run at the plate. Issac’s been carefully watching 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 the lead, Issac’s wagers will tilt toward untapped patrons. If they fail to score, he hits familiar 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.