Pat the Fireman

Perhaps a city is a living thing. Each city has its own personality, after all. Los Angeles is not Vienna. London is not Moscow. Chicago is not Paris. Each city is a collection of lives and buildings and it has its own personality. So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams. -Old Man from "The Sandman" by Neil Gaiman

Published Tuesday, December 27, 2005 by Starry Saltwater Rose | E-mail this post

Patrick at Rudy's Bar and Grill

That’s Pat over there. If his shot glass is empty, it’ll be filled with Polish brandy sooner or later. He’s Irish and a fireman, so there are a couple excuses.

Everyone says different things about Pat. He is an asshole, but he told my boyfriend Lenny that the reason he liked me was because I was a lady. A lady that punched him twice, but still, a lady. Hey, I take my compliments where I can.

He’s terrible with women, which might have something to do with him still living with his mom and dad, but I don’t know the circumstances. Maybe there’s a good reason. The lack of rent and grocery expenses certainly does help pay for beers, but they more often than not buy me a few beers.

I can see how he gets the girls to giggle and throw their brightest eyes at him. He made me glitterbug the first time I met him, but I went home with the man that ended up being my boyfriend. See, Pat’s not boyfriend material. He looks normal and then he looks bad for you—like a shot of tequila.

It’s the blue eyes. Underneath that baseball cap he wears to hide the balding and in the dark light of Rudy’s, you don’t notice them at first. They took me by surprise one day in the afternoon, near springtime. “Your eyes are blue,” I said.

“Yeah?” he said, giving me the “duh” look.

“I never noticed,” I retorted. “They’re nice.”

“Thank you,” he said.

So I’m sure that it’s the eyes. The blue eyes, the lean body and classic lines. I’m sure he’s been in love before. I’m sure he’s been heartbroken. He’s too cynical not to have been.

Pat has colorful, cartoonish tattoos: a Grateful Dead dancing bear, a pen portrait the Pasquale drew of him on a Rudy's napkin, and Tigger dressed as a fireman. I almost fell out of my chair laughing when he showed me the Tigger tattoo. I had just discovered the “Tigger” peeking out from his boxers. He did not seem to appreciate my mirth at his expense. I just thought it was so vulnerable. What a strange way to show the cracks in your armor.

Pat invited me and Lenny to his house for the Fourth of July and we didn’t go. He sounded sour the next Tuesday: “Thanks for coming,” he said sarcastically. As if it mattered to him whether or not we went. As if we were friends.

Sometimes I kiss Pat goodbye on the cheek. It’s the hidden corners around the bend from his angles and turns that makes his blue eyes human. If not lovely.