The village is shacky. There is a tanning bed at the Tee Pee. I hear it is from the 70s. I hear customers have to clean it themselves. The Tee Pee is so named because it is an A-frame structure. It is long and narrow, and its only window is the door on one of the narrow walls - the long walls are windowless. It is dark inside for that reason. There are blacklights all around the bar. A dollar bill that has been through a wash cycle will glow. Other bills do not. A person who does their laundry incorrectly - throws the clothes in, then dumps the liquid detergent in, then fills the machine with water and turns it on - will have glowing streaks on their clothes where the detergent has stained it. A white bra beneath a dark cotton shirt will glow, in the holes between the weave of the cotton.
The bartender Simon does not like Bulgarians or drunk people. He claims to understand Bulgarian. He says Bulgarian women speak to each other incessantly about all of us, in a cruel manner. He says the women connive to catch a foolish man who will give them money to send home. He says the women brag about how proud their mothers are of them, when they have found such a man.
I believe some of them speak of us cruelly.
He's quick with a joke or a light of your smoke and there's noplace that he'd rather be. He empties ashtrays with regularity. He left Talkeetna for awhile but then came back. He controts his face sometimes in a mock-exaggerated-thoughtful expression. "Well now, let's see..." He looks upward, twists his mouth, widens his eyes comically. His facial expressions are a parody but I don't know why. He is nice and self-effacing.
The pool table means there is something to watch. There are two televisions as well, with closed captioning, but mostly people ignore them. Locals go to the Fairview in the afternoons; to the West Rib or the Latitude in the evenings. Perennials go to the Tee Pee. People passing through go to the Fairview in the evening.
I don't get hit on at the Tee Pee. (Getting hit on at the Fairview: "You look good." "Thanks." "You look real good.") I am there to watch people play pool and to have conversations with people I already know. To nod to people I recognize but have never really talked to. Around the pool table, against the walls, there are small cafe tables, elevated to the height of bar stools. It is nice to sit there and stare in the direction of the pool table, nursing a drink, holding a cigarette, and not feel like a social failure because you've got nothing to say.
There's a winding staircase I haven't had the balls to ascend. It's right near the door. There's a hallway where the pool cues are kept and beyond the hallway a room where I hear people used to play poker tournaments. I don't know where the tanning bed is kept. Officially the Tee Pee is a motel as well. The Fairview is too, and the Latitude. The West Rib is not a motel but it is the same structure as Nagleys, the general store. You can buy a ziplock bag of tampons at Nagleys. A postcard, a dusty box of cereal, some vegetables pre-cut in tupperware containers. Nagleys has a separate room full of alcohol. Barefoot wine costs more than ten dollars a bottle. There are local brews in glass bottles and an array of cheap beer in aluminum cans. The usual suspects: Natural Light, Miller High Life. And some ones I hadn't seen before Alaska - Keystone.
It is against the rules to say curse words in the Tee Pee, although the bartender will pretend not to hear you say them until you get on his nerves. Really the rule is a barometer, allows Simon to throw people out when they become too loudly drunk, too belligerent. If the rule is "once you are drunk enough to get on my nerves you will be kicked out," that is easy to argue with. But saying a curse word - that is an objective thing. Either you have said it or you haven't.
There is a white board where people write their names if they want to play winner. There is a Winter Pool Tournament list that has the names of men who were here last winter, who won games.
There is a half-assed Hawaiin theme at the Tee Pee.
No comments:
Post a Comment