By Lorn McKay
When I was younger my parents would take us, my brother and I, to bars. Pool halls and bowling alleys mostly, but sometimes just a place with crappy bar food, flashy lights, and maybe a Terminator pinball table or a Pac-Man arcade game in a dark corner near an empty dance floor. I became very good at both. We mainly went while on ski trips in northern Michigan or some random state I would later forget everything about except some image of a crowded ski lodge, empty airport, small wooded creek perfect for rock hopping, or a random bar.
I always felt somehow on the outer edge of the loop. Like those charts with the overlapping circles. Venn-diagrams. One circle was the adults, and the other circle contained my brother and half cousins. Then there was me. My own little Lorn bubble hanging out somewhere on the outside of both circles, trying to squeeze in between them where they meet, and connect my bubble with their shared space. Trying to make it a three circled diagram. They would sit at a high topped bar table and talk and laugh and have a great time. I would stand in some dimly lit corner popping quarters into the little orange slot, pushing a joystick left, right, up, down. Smooth red, or blue, or white, or yellow buttons under my right fingers as I pretended I was a yellow head running for my life. It helped me to ignore the painful reality that I didn’t feel like I belonged there, or anywhere, except in front of that machine feeding it my quarters.
I still feel that way, only the two circles have changed. Bar employees and regulars, girls and boys, people and other people, sober pool players and drunks playing Pac-Man. I’m still not able to fit in the middle. I’m still not able to find a place where I’m accepted or where I belong. I’m not great at pool but I’ve been untouchable at Pac-Man since I was about seven.
How come I don’t fit in these scenarios where all the facts add up? I’m of legal age, good height, weight, and facial structure. I’m not hideous to look at rather. I can hold my liquor very well. I never become loud, obnoxious, sloppy or violent while drinking, providing I’m not drinking whiskey and no one pisses me off. Yet every time I step into a bar I immediately walk to whoever happened to have dragged me out of the safety of my own home to partake in a night of debauchery (assuming someone actually did drag me out and I’m not just getting away from sitting at home alone), or to a dark corner preferably at the actual bar top (you get drinks faster there, plus you don’t look like an idiot sitting at a table alone). I sit and I people watch and I blend into the wall behind me. I become invisible, something I also mastered by the age of seven.
I had my first legal drop of alcohol three months after I turned 19 at an Irish pub of sorts somewhere in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Being that I’d never ordered a drink at a bar, especially one in Canada, I had no clue what to get. So, I ordered a Guinness because they had it on tap and it’s what another of my companions had ordered. I figured it would bring me into the loop what with that being the hip thing to drink. Shortly after the waitress trudged the two or three stairs leading to the dark booth in the very back corner where we sat, I realized I don’t like Guinness.
Luckily for me one of my compadres traded me beers and gave me something still bad, but less horrid to my taste buds. I immediately felt stupid for having ordered something I didn’t like and couldn’t suck it up and finish. There I was the one person at the table now, not drinking Guinness. I sat in my corner and watched my French Canadian acquaintance, my record label owner acquaintance who was some other sort of Canadian (he was from Calgary. Calgary-an?), and two random Toronto natives that I’d never met before chat it up about God knows what. I felt so awkward and out of place. That was the last time I ever drank in Canada. It’s too bad there wasn’t Pac-Man anywhere for me to beat.
The television show Cheers ran for eleven fun filled years. It gave us all a glimpse into a world where “everyone knows your name”. A world where after a long day at the post office you could go up to the bar and see all of your friends and tell them stories about your day, get advice about life, or talk baseball. It was a world where even the most annoying psychologist’s wife, or the dumbest bar back could still be accepted by anyone else. It showed that you never had to drink alone. That there’s always some place in the world where you belong, no matter who you are or what you do, somewhere there is a place that will accept you for you. And who doesn’t long for some form of acceptance?
Ever since I turned twenty one I’ve longed for my own Cheers. Somewhere everyone knew my name. A place where I could just belong, bar or not, a place to fit in. I do drink, but I’m not a total lush and alcohol really has nothing to do with it. A place where I could sit and listen to good music on a jukebox, and smoke cigarettes, maybe have a couple beers, and people watch. Bars always have the best people watching.
Then I discovered a love for a small dive bar in Hamtramck, Michigan coincidentally called “Smalls”, just a hop, a skip, a jump, and about 20 minutes of driving from where I grew up. A small dark, rock and roll bar just outside of Detroit, with a kick ass jukebox selection and 2 dollar PBR’s, my kind of bar. It was the place where just about everyone knew my name. On any random night I could go up there and run into at least four people I knew. Majority of the time they worked there, but whatever. I would grab my stool at the bar top, which was close to the middle between either end. Face the mirror behind the liquor shelves so I could keep an eye on the door behind me. A P.B.R. would materialize in front of me and a tab would be started that generally cost about ten dollars less than what I had actually drank in a night. I would spend the rest of my evening eaves dropping on other people’s conversations, talking to one of the employees I knew, making fun of people, or I would be joined by a random acquaintance that happened to wander in.
For the first few weeks of this wonderful discovery I thought I had found my own personal cheers. I thought I’d fit into one of the circles on that stupid chart and become part of something. A couple months into it I realized I was totally wrong. I still felt like I somehow didn’t fit. That only a couple people knew my name, but that didn’t mean they wanted to talk to me. And for a reason that is completely unknown to me, I’ve just always been the least likely suspect for friendship. The reasons behind this distaste for conversation will always baffle me; I’ve never found an excuse for my lack of popularity. If only there’d been Pac-Man there I would have had something to beat.
In May of 2006 I attended the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, in L.A. This is where I realized my connection to Pac-Man. I had no expectations going into E3, so I was pleased to gain something more than a preview of the year’s upcoming games. While standing in Namco’s booth to pass time while waiting for my companions to get done with their work related meetings (I went there with a game designer). I was playing some cell phone version of my beloved arcade game, and beating the high score, when it dawned on me how the world really is like a video game. Excuse me while I geek out philosophically for a moment. I used to think that life was like a game of Tetris. You’re constantly having these odd shaped pieces thrown at you and you have to put them together and make them fit in order to clear lines and move on to the next level. The farther you get into it, the faster things are thrown at you and the harder it is to clear away the completed lines. You’ve got to learn to think fast and move faster. Now I realize, though life is still like Tetris, it’s also pretty similar to Pac-Man.
Tetris is really more of an overall thing though, going gets tough sort of idea. Pac-Man is like a social philosophy, men are from mars type of thing. Or not, either way, I say its life. Maybe the ghost’s just want to hang with Pac-Man, but Pac-Man’s all “no way dude you’re different, you’re ghosts, you scare people and can be seen through.” This makes the ghosts sad. So they kill Pac-Man when they catch him cause Pac-Man’s a dick. He totally asked for it.
So here’s how that makes sense to me. I’ve never had a best friend since I was about 12, and went to junior high. My best friend since I was two decided to hate me because I started listening to punk rock music and was different from everyone else, with my funny colored hair (typically blue), black clothes, chains and punk rock band t-shirts. She of course was a very smart, normal, preppy type, and those types of kids dominated my school, hell my whole town, the clean cut Abercrombie and Fitch model types, with their polo shirts and khakis. They were always picking on or looking down on people like me, because we were different and I guess different is scary when you’re all the same.
I’ve never had a very tight knit group of friends, I don’t talk to anyone from high school, I don’t have bar buddies that I go out with, or even someone to call when I have a bad day and just need to bitch. No one comes over for pizza, baseball, and beer in my apartment in the summer. I’m like the ghosts. Now I know there were several ghosts all banding together to kill Pac-Man. That doesn’t mean that I’m wrong. Behind the cute ghostly exterior was real hurt and pain of being alone, of being different. I know because I usually feel like a ghost, looked through, unseen, scaring people away, hiding in the shadows, messing with people’s minds or things when they’re not looking. Constantly trying to fit in somewhere, trying to make friends with the yellow guy. Except I’m not 8- bit.
Out here in the windy city I tend to just drink at home. Everyone in my apartment knows my name especially since it’s just me and my two cats. Well, the cats don’t really know it but they know who I am, I’m the keeper of the food. I can play all the Pac-Man I want, as soon as I actually get it for one of my systems. I can drink and not have to worry about how I’m going to get home. I don’t have to worry about smoking bans. It’s like cheers, sort of, I mean there’s little socializing outside of me yelling at my T.V. when warranted or at my cats when they knock stuff over, but it is what it is.
Maybe one of these days my attempts at getting a new job in a bar and put this bartending license to good use, instead of working at the hell-hole that is my current corporate restaurant job, will be fruitful and I’ll find a new place to go.
I’ll make some friends and find a Cheers all for myself. A real place where everyone really knows my name. And maybe I’ll get lucky enough and that place will have Pac-Man in some dark corner, just in case I ever feel like I need to fight some of my old ghosts.
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