text: I’m sitting alone at a bar. But, not even a real bar, it’s a bar in a chain restaurant. A Lone Star to be exact. I chose the side to sit that had no other people around it. I look across from me and see a middle-aged couple that’s still trying to show an interest in one another. The man has his arm around a woman who I assume to be his wife, while they both stare at her cell phone with the same vacant smile on their faces. Adjacent to them sit three slightly older than middle-aged men, drinking and talking sports and retirement. Two of them drink beer, but the one of the far end is drinking something harder, like a whiskey or something dark. I think of him as the smartest of the three. In a booth, a woman glares at me from time to time. When she’s not staring at me I look behind myself to make sure there isn’t a TV, or something behind me she might be looking at. There’s no TV. As the bartender offers me another beer a man takes the seat next to mine. We nod to each other while he proceeds to make a mundane joke about the weather to the woman behind the bar. “They say it’s going to rain tonight,” he jests while water drips off of his body, clearly just stepping out of the rain. “Oh no, I hope not.” She replied. She didn’t understand the joke... Across the way I notice a young girl and her friends talking, and eating dinner. While she’s talking she periodically bites her cell phone. I can’t help but think about the amount of germs going into her mouth. I’m not a germ freak or anything, but I can’t help but feel like there are just some boundaries you don’t cross. I wouldn’t just rub my hands all over a public bathroom and then just stick them in my mouth, which is essentially what she just did. Some time goes by as I wait to hear from a friend who I’ve been expecting a phone call from. While I sit and wait I’m silently praying that the guy who sat next to me doesn’t try to engage me in conversation. I can tell he has wanted to say something since he sat down. He seems like the kind of drunk that will spew anything he has to say to anyone with ears. He finally sees his opportunity. A one-armed UFC fighter has come on the television, it was just the kind of thing he was looking for. He looks at me and says, “looks like they got a handicapped fighter. Bet he’s a vet.” “Yeah I was thinking the same thing.” I don’t know why I said that; I hadn’t been thinking it at all. As the fight continued he said all the platitudes you would expect to hear. “See that left?” “Good defense, good defense...” My phone goes off. The friend I’ve been waiting to hear from messages me saying to head over to his house. I call over the bartender and pay my tab. As I walk out I wonder why I bothered to come here.