So this guy orders a rusty nail, and disappointment moves across his face when the bartender doesn’t ask how to make it. She just moves on down the bar, pulls a few beers, and before long comes back with the drink.
He takes a sip, and with nothing critical to say his face slips into a half-smile, one of those upside-down numbers you earn through years of studied disapproval.
Real pretentious fucker.
Swaggers around any given night in a polo shirt, Harris Tweed jacket and ass-tight, bootleg cut jeans. I’m always curious why he doesn’t finish the ensemble with a ten gallon hat and spurs.
His next move is to jerk his thumb over his shoulder and, to anyone within earshot, he says that little number right out there, that’s his baby. When they look, and they always do, there’s an impressive set of wheels right out the window. Convertible in the summer, hard top in the winter.
And if you’re not immediately distracted by the game, your drinking buddy, or maybe the bartender’s ass, then he’ll tell you how all his cars are classic Mustangs. Calls them his herd; his garage, a stable. And he always has to reiterate ‘classic’, really drawing out that ‘ass’ the second time through, just in case old cars is a concept with which you may not be familiar.
I’ve consistently resisted the urge to tell him about my project car, past restorations, cause unlike him, I’m a grease monkey. I love the build as much as I love cruising around in the finished product. And as much as it might hurt, I really do love that empty garage a few months later, with a crisp cashier’s check in hand and the prospect of something new brewing in my mind.
He buys all his cars at auctions.
As original as possible, and nothing newer than ’72. That way he’ll never have to deal with emissions. Those catalytic converters are so damn expensive, and you know why, cause they’re made out of platinum, and I just nod cause that’s close enough to the truth. It’s his favorite factoid but he never remembers who already knows.
I order another whiskey and before Gina can pull the cork off the bottle he’s pouring his heart out about how he got this great deal on a lamp. Seven-hundred-and-fifty dollars. Which was half-off, by the way. Really brings out the Frank Lloyd Wright in his office, he says, only he frowns when I mention I studied Wright in college. I suppose I wasn’t supposed to be familiar with architecture, either.
I throw back my whiskey and nod for a third.
Cause really, he bought the thing so he can tell people all about the technologically advanced design. So he can drop interesting terms like ‘counter-weight’, ‘cantilever’ and ‘ergonomical’, the last of which, so far as I can tell, has no conceivable connection to a ceiling mounted light fixture, but I let it slide.
This time I just take a sip, feign a smile.
Honestly, it sounds to me like some engineer got bored midway through a bridge design and sketched out a terribly complicated overhead desk-light to pass the time, then another guy figured some asshole, somewhere, would pay way too much for the thing if they actually threw it together. So they did.
All to give guys like this a chance to crow about spending seven-fifty on a light without flinching.
He whips out his cell phone and flips through six different angles of his new, prized, painstakingly detailed lamp. And look how it compliments the design cues of the desk over which it casts its warm glow.
I resist the urge to point out that it’s a little off-center.
And it strikes me that spending seven-fifty on desk illumination, paying two men named Miguel to maintain a stable of classic pony cars, ordering obscure cocktails from cute, barely-legal bartenders; these might be the only things that make him feel brave.
I’d venture a guess that when his lamp goes out, he buys the same two- or three-dollar light bulb as anybody else. Although one or both of the Miguels will likely need to consult an instruction manual before he can get back to, well, whatever he does at that enormous desk of his.
So I let him have his moment, tossing back the rest of my whiskey and thinking, maybe my next project will be a Mustang.
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© Anthony David Jacques MMX
