Last night was… odd.

I met a guy on the internet a while back.  I haven’t figured out a way to say that that doesn’t sound like we’re dating.  We’re just friends.  Really.  I’ll call him Bort.

Anyway, Bort and I went through the Seattle Art Museum yesterday afternoon, got some Chinese, and then decided to do some drinking.  I tried to find a quiet little hole-in-the-wall bar I’d been to a few weeks back, and utterly failed.  We wandered through a few blocks of deserted, glass-shard strewn alleys before giving up and heading into the next bar we walked by.  Somehow, we managed to walk into the sketchiest bar I’ve ever been in in my life.  I’ve been in some seedy shitholes… but this was place was scary.

The first thing we saw when walking in was a line of four or five probably-homeless, angry-looking men.  They were sitting on the far side of the room away from the bar, not talking to one another, spaced out across the length of the room.  None of them had drinks–they were just sitting somewhere to get out of the rain.    At the far end, a sixty-five-ish man wearing a baseball cap with “Da Nang” stitched across the front sat nursing a drink.  Something in his face made it clear that he wasn’t entirely sane.  The bar was completely silent.

I sat down and ordered a drink.  Bort went to the bathroom.  I carry a satchel with me most of the time, with a few odds and ends: my camera, a paperback, a pen and some paper–just general stuff it’s nice to have with me.  I put it in front of my bar stool to make sure no one could steal it.  My jacket went on top of it.  I’ve been in places where I wouldn’t be surprised if someone made off with my bag–but this is the first place I’ve ever seriously thought that someone might steal my jacket.

I sipped at my drink, and Bort came back and ordered a beer.  A few minutes went by, and the bouncer appeared to stick a finger in my face.  “You.  OUT.”  I stared at him, confused–I hadn’t done anything.  I looked more closely and found that he was pointing over my head, past Bort, at a dirty looking Mexican guy who was trying to order a beer.

“You can’t come in here.” the bartender announced angrily.

“This is fucking bullshit!”  The dirty little man spat.  “You steal my money and then you kick me out!”

“Out.” The bouncer repeated.  “NOW.”  The bouncer moved towards him threateningly, then escorted him out the front door with a hand on the scruff of his neck.

I turned and looked at the bartender.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Oh, he dropped his wallet,” she replied.  “I picked it up and gave it back to him, and he says that I stole his money out of it, so we kicked him out.”

“When was that?”

“Last night!”  She shook her head.  “He tries to pull that shit, and then thinks he can just show up again the next day like nothing ever happened.  It’s not even like it was last week.”

Bort and I exchanged a glance and returned to our drinks.  A few minutes later, a guy in mirrored wrap-around sunglasses walked into the bar and orders a beer.  This was around seven at night, and it was raining outside.  The bartender demanded that he show her his eyes before she would serve him.  To check if he was on something, obviously… but I don’t even know for what.  Pot can make your eyes bloodshot, and LSD can make your pupils dilate.  Can crack do something similar?  I don’t know.

We finished our drinks and got the fuck out.  As we left, we passed through a half dozen more homeless men who had congregated around the entrance.

Bort and I walked about five blocks south into a less seedy section of Belltown, settling on the first nice-looking bar we came across.  It happened to be an Irish pub.  We sat down, I ordered a Glenfiddich with a Guinness back, and we kept drinking.  I realized that I’d left my leftover Chinese at the last bar, and decided there was no way in hell I was going back for it.  I’m sure it fed some hungry homeless guy.

We proceeded to get drunk, and started talking to the bartender.  She was from Utah, and apparently hates all the crime and dirt around here.  I said something to the effect of “You’re from Utah.  Of course this place seems dirty and crime-ridden by comparison.”

“No.  This place is fucked up,” She responded.  “This bar has been open for four years.  In that time, they’ve found two bodies in the alley behind it.  Four years.  Two bodies.”

I acknowledged her point.  We kept drinking.

Somehow, Bort and I got around to discussing the fact that neither of us is what you could call completely sane.  Turns out, Bort’s just a tad crazier than I am… and has the scarred wrists and mental hospital admittances to prove it.  We talked about that for a while, but most of the details are hazy.  I was pretty drunk by this point.  The main bit was that Bort has been involuntarily committed three, maybe four times.

Bort was starting a new job the next day, so he caught the bus back and I started walking home.  On the way there, I pulled out my camera and started taking shots as I walked.  A homeless guy screamed at me from a bus stop–something along the lines of “YOU!  WITH THE CAMERA!  YOU TOO, MAN!  DON’T YOU FUCKING SHAKE YOUR HEAD AT ME!”  I kept walking.

I stopped off a few blocks from home to get one more whiskey and coke, hoping I’d be able to strike up a conversation with someone and keep drinking.  I was in a good mood despite the unrelenting weirdness, and I had tomorrow off.  Why not keep the night going?  But the bar was half-full and cliquey, so I drank alone and left without saying a word to anyone other than the bartender.

I cut through a parking lot on my way home, and was once again accosted by a stranger–but this time it was a friendly face.  A smartly-dressed young man asked me if I could give him a hand jumping his girlfriend’s car.  They’d just gone out for a Valentine’s dinner, and she’d left her lights on.  I agreed, and said I’d be back in about fifteen minutes.  Of course it occurred to me that I’d be driving drunk, but what were the odds there would be any problems driving my car two blocks, jumping a Jetta, and then driving back?  I grabbed my car keys from the apartment (I drive so infrequently I don’t even keep them with me), picked up my car, and drove back to the parking lot.

The young couple was still there, waiting for me.  The guy motioned me over.

“Hey–why don’t you get in the back of my car.” He said quietly.  “There’s a homeless guy that’s been saying some really aggressive stuff.  The cops are on their way.”

The cops.  Fantastic.  That’s just who I was hoping to see at close range while drunk and driving a car with out of state plates.

We made small talk, and the cops arrived a few minutes later.  The homeless guy shuffled off like nothing had happened.  They caught up with him, and I jumped out of the back.

“All right, you want to jump this thing, then?” I said.  The sooner we could jump the car and I could get out of there, the better.  Preferably before I had any interaction with the cops.

We jumped his car, and I made a quick, uneventful exit.

I can’t but wonder if all of my nights out are going to be this strange.