Birthday At The Baranof

I should maybe have known that the evening was going to get weird from the get go when we went to pick up Nicholas and I saw a picture of him and his older brother that looked EXACTLY like a picture of me and my little brother from years ago. I mean same sort of clothing, same coloring...

We went to this bar called the Baranof. The front of the place is this same sort of restaurant/diner that I remember from childhood in a town that didn't have a name so they just called it 4 Corners since two major "roads" intersected there. The back was the sort of dive bar where the regulars have their names on brass plates at their regular place, and they all leave for their league bowling game together - stumbling and still carrying drinks. It was my kind of place.

I don't know if it was the flashback aspect of the fake leather booths, or the whiskey or the fact that the roof of the back deck of the place was made with that same ridged, green plastic sheeting that my grandfather had used on the deck at his house, but at one point in the evening, I had this sudden realization that I was in Seattle. I know it sounds weird, but it was this profound, sudden "kick in the eye" sort of moment - like I had felt lost there for a bit and suddenly realized where I was.

I was having fun, I was drinking and singing Queen's Fat Bottom Girls to co-workers, so I wasn't really paying attention to the table of three that had sort of drifted away from the rest of the group - birthday boy Nicholas, his neighbor and Biffy. At about the point that I saw this twisted form of anger/envy coming from one of those in our group, the evening was ending and ending strangely.

The neighbor was leaving, but she was walking back home. She was walking from 85th and Greenwood back to the bottom of Capitol Hill. If you don't live in Seattle, you have no idea what that means, but it's far. It also involves crossing a lake. Nicholas was leaving as well as he didn't feel right about her walking that distance alone. And Biff had become that kind of inebriated where words stop working. The last time I had paid attention, she was drinking Bud Light in a bottle, so this was confusing.

Everyone else seemed a little shocked at the early departure and walking of the guest of honor, but I was focused on the well being of Biffy. I knew that sort of drunk, I have been that sort of drunk. It's the kind of drunk where you rely on your eyes to communicate as using words will create evil magic, but you can't see further than a blurry foot in front of you. It's the kind of drunk that borders on hallucinating. It's the sort of drunk that makes you realize that the god of drunks had his eyes elsewhere that evening, maybe a tavern in Akron.

I wrangled the non functioning Biffy and a remote controlled airplane gift (that had been left behind) home. And as I was fading into sleep on the couch, I had a thought that seemed totally plausible in that sleepy, free-form relaxed mind sort of way: somehow, I had brought this weirdness on myself...