The Hub

“Well, what we’re really talking about here is vagina dentada and penis elongata.”

I almost choked on my Amber Bock. Brian, his buffalo burger halfway to his lips, froze. Bjorn was mid-puff on his corn-cob pipe, and the smoke curled slowly towards the water-stained ceiling panels. He busted out laughing, slapping Kerry on the back.

“What?” said Kerry, feigning innocence. “That’s really all it comes down to.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “Could you repeat that?”

“It all comes down to vagina dentada and penis elongata.”

I cracked up. It’s a typical Dead Cow night, and I’m surrounded by guys who are at least ten years my senior. Coworkers. The bar is downtown, or what is called the downtown. We’re not in some sprawling urban city, though; the reality is that this place has apparently become better after the flood (which is really hearsay; I wasn’t there for it), but it’s not great. Like Anyone in Anycity, America, I had found my few haunts: the co-op, where they cook up a mean curried beet stew; the coffee shop, where the coffee gave me indigestion but the location made it convenient, and this bar. I don’t know that I can say I was a real Regular there, because the bartenders didn’t know my name, but they definitely recognized me, which was, as far as I was concerned, good enough.

The bar was smallish, tables on one side, bar on the other with tables and a dart board in the front and tables, juke box, pool table, and bathrooms in the back. The menu was small but surprisingly diverse; I was surprised to see a Chef salad, quesadillas, and buffalo burgers all on the same menu. My favorite was the grilled chicken, though, with fries, cooked to the perfect tenderness. Top that off with a couple of Amber Bocks and you’ve got a gut bomb for sure, but well worth it.

These guys helped me keep my sanity in a city where I truly did not belong. It’s a place that you love because you were born there; you stay because you’ve married someone who doesn’t want to go, or you resolve to “stick around until…” and then you’re dead. I wasn’t born there, I had no family there, I was not married, but it contained my livelihood, a teaching job, as well as a school full of wonderful quirks, not the least of which were this group of dudes surrounding me now.

If you’ve never moved to a place that is completely foreign to you and where the people are strangers, I encourage you to have that experience. I don’t know where else I could discuss the virtues of Joseph Campbell, sub-zero winter camping, Norwegian language, and the newest weird student excuse within the same conversation. The commonality among us was certainly not our ages, genders, or even the school in which we all taught; it was, in its purest sense, the perfect mix of personalities. We argued, we laughed, we vented, and dammit, you don’t find that with just anyone. I love where I’m at right now. But I miss those guys and their pipe-smoking, beady-eyed vegetarian teasing, flannel shirt wearing, liberal-loving ways.