Angry Bob

I met Angry Bob over the weekend in the Lord Baltimore Hotel bar. I was there waiting for a friend while the whole lounge was infested with pageant princesses and their parents, so I sought out the emptiest corner. To be fair, I also scouted the room for the most interesting-looking person and Angry Bob was it.

I'm sure we made a bizarre pair - a young woman with designer jeans and a cosmo and a decrepid older gentleman with highwater courderoys and an array of random crap - styrofoam cup, cigarettes, plastic bags, ashes - spread out on the coffee table in front of him. I think people around us thought I was a prostitute trying to pick him up, and I didn't care. Let them wonder.

So I asked if the seat across from him was taken. He was lounging on the couch and barely paid me any mind. I started chatting him up as soon as he turned my way, and he tried hard to look annoyed but I could tell he was amused. He had the look of one of these retired people who claim public space as their own so as not to be stuck in the house all day, but not have to spend money to be anywhere either - the kind who take liberties with free crackers and ketchup packets from the grocery store salad bar to save money. (God bless them - I plan on doing the same damn thing while I'm on the road!) He had big blue eyes under his ratty golf cap, white stubble on his face in need of a shave, and his too-short pants were riding up his calves showing pale legs criss-crossed with vericose veins. He was smoking a Winston cigarette and didn't care where the ashes fell. A huge brown shoulder bag was on the floor at his side, as though he had packed for a long, arduous day of sitting in the hotel bar. Not much of a smiler, either, but that made it great the few times he did.

After a few dispensatory questions, like where he was from and did he frequent the bar often, I was glad that he started turning the questions on me. Sometimes if people know more about you than you do about them, they're more likely to talk. So I told him about Cassadaga, the little village where I was born, about my dad wanting to farm, and a little about my road trip. He recommended, in a gravely voice, that I visit Harrisburg, PA - he said it was extremely safe. "You can walk down the street at 2 in the morning and be fine, because there's fucking cops everywhere! Shit! That's why I never went out there."

I tried to ask why this was, but he cut me off and asked where I went to college, and then we started talking about jobs. Angry Bob was the Senior Vice President of US Steel in Pittsburgh during the 1960's. All the men in his family for generations had been in the corporate end of the steel industry, starting with his great-grandfather. He mentioned President this and Chairman of the Board that, and that all of them were raging alcoholics. "Idiot drunks", he called them. He seemed to fit right in as I watched him quickly pull a bottle of cheap gin out of his brown bag and pour it into his styrofoam cup - his speed and attempted furtiveness contrasted his otherwise deliberate manner, and made him look stilted and crazy. "They hate me here!", he said. "I won't buy their crap! That shit-for-brains manager tries to kick me out but I just come back!"

He stopped at one point in the middle of a sentence and just announced, "Honey baby, I could tell you stories you wouldn't believe!".

I countered with, "Try me."

He told me about his uncle, Chairman of the Board of Such-and-Such, who in the 50's had a beautiful black Ford covertible with a gleaming white top, which he let Bob drive when he wasn't using it. "Do you know how many broads I could pick up with that fucking thing?" he croaked. "Jesus Christ!" As he said this he reached in his bag to look for more booze, and started pulling out the strangest things - wads of napkins and Ziploc bags with rubber bands around them. He must have had five neat stacks of napkins from Starbucks.

At some point during the conversation I realized two things - one, I couldn't hear him for crap from where I was sitting, so I moved to the other side of the couch from where he sat (which I'm sure really made me look like a hooker), and two, I had stopped drinking my cosmo in an effort to remember every single thing he said, and every detail about him since I didn't have a pen or paper, or my voice recorder. I didn't want to get even the slightest bit tipsy.

It had also occured to me that this man was incredibly mad at the world. I'll never know for what - maybe his corporate background? - just like many of the angry people in this world. Every now and again this wondering makes me ridiculously sad. No one ever comes out of the womb saying, "I hate everything and I want to be miserable." Something has to happen along the way. And when you think about how many sad, lonely, angry people there really are, that's a lot of somethings. And these people are just out wandering around like so many broken toys. It's heartbreaking.

So Angry Bob and I chatted for a few more minutes until my friend showed up. He told me his plans for the following day consisted of "fucking around", one time ten years ago he had screwed a broad in the bushes behind the Radisson (which was amazing considering he didn't look like he would be capable of doing that 20 years ago), and shit why didn't I just settle down with a nice guy and start a fucking family instead of going out on the road? "How would I meet nice people like you, Bob, if I didn't?"

He didn't have a reply.

When I was finished paying my tab at the bar I snuck back over to Bob's couch. He looked like he had fallen asleep sitting up, so I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and whispered goodbye. He woke up with a start and smiled. "Thanks for talking", he said, blushing. As I was walking away another woman stopped me and asked, "Is that guy here every day?"

I shrugged. "Why don't you go over and ask him?"