Smart-ass Replies and a Three Dollar Beer

“Hey, where’s your fucking bagpipes?” someone yelled when I walked into the bar.

After you’re heard that about six times before lunch even rolled around, it’s hard to know what to say.  I used a witty retort on the first two, an angry one on the third, dry sarcasm on the fourth and fifth, and now I was stuck with an empty clip in my arsenal of smart-ass replies. 

The fact is I don’t play the bagpipes.  I have a practice chanter in my bedroom--sitting on my dresser--and if I pick it up once a month it’s a good month.  I can barely get the first three notes right and forget about the rest of them.  It still sounds like I’m stepping on my cat’s tail rather than music, and that’s ok.  I don’t wear a kilt because I’m a piper.  I wear a kilt because I’m a man, and I have an arsenal of smart-ass replies.

It wasn’t especially a kilt-unfriendly bar.  The bartenders knew me, the regulars got angry when I didn’t wear one, and the bouncer once told me if he wore a kilt he wouldn’t have time to call back all the girls who gave him their numbers. It was my bar, and some drunk in the corner could yell all he wanted just because Robert Earl Keen was on the juke-box; Keen makes everyone feel like they have big balls.

So, I ordered a house beer (someone in Brooklyn makes it for them and it’s delicious for three dollars) and I didn’t say a damn thing.  If he wanted to start something, he could come all the way down to my end of the bar and we’d sort it out.  Two minutes later that’s just what he did.  I tensed up, and I saw the bartender grab the soda gun in one hand as she undid the top button of her shirt with the other (I’m not sure they were related).

“So, you don’t play the pipes?”

“Nope,” was all I said.

“Well, that sucks.  We’re a man short for the parade this weekend, and I was hoping to sucker you in.”

I looked up at him with new eyes and his smile was big and warm.  He sat down next to me and while the button stayed open, the soda gun went back to its rightful place.

“Let me buy you a beer, man,” he said. And that’s just what he did.