The 11 O’clock Blues — Lefty’s Lament
The neon from the Your Host sign sheens on the wet pavement; at least the letters that work do. If you look at it real quick you’d think it says ‘You Lost?’ And most of those that wander into this grease fire in waiting on Main Street are, especially after dark.
The inside isn’t much better. The backsplash stained from ten thousand-onion rings worth of fat splatter. The driven-into-the-floor stools drip ripped vinyl. Battered and berated early editions of the Courier Express plague the counter. The smell of burned eggs and bad coffee inhabit every pore of the drop ceiling. And the fluorescent lights flicker like a strobe light with a hangover. Not much happens in here until after midnight. During the day the boys from the windshield wiper factory would bog down on burgers, fries and fried baloney before heading back to the line. Those of them that still had a job, that is. The folks from the offices, well, they find nicer places – as they tend to do.
But at night! At night this place would transform. Refuge. A refuge for the many with nowhere else to go. But, tonight, those many are few.
In a cracked turquoise booth with a dented Formica table is Lefty; stringy hair, shabby beard, pleather. His pack of Old Gold’s and his feeble cup of coffee splayed out before him – just under the Seeburg Wall-O-Matic jukebox. Across sits another man, soused. An untouched cup of coffee and dry toast remains lonely and deserted in front of him. He’s dead drunk. But thatwon’t stop Lefty from talking to him. Nothing stops Lefty from talking – even picking a song as he flips through the thingy on the wall.
“I’m alright with it. Really, man. Always have been. You know, it’s been with me since I was a kid. Can’t remember who started it. “
“Can’t me-member,” the drunk friend parrots.“Yeah. Can’t remember. But that don’t matter. It’s the way it’s always been. “
He stops flipping the Wall-O-Matic, finds something. He drops in a nickel. And, after a couple of buttons pushed, the theme from “Shaft” plays. Yeah. That’s right.
“It’s been with me. Since I was a kid. Think it was Uncle Donny. Maybe it was. Never mind. I know a lot of folks with ‘em. Probably don’t know where they got theirs. But they stick. Oh yes, they do! They stick. Especially the good ones. I remember, in school. There was always a guytryin’ to mess with mine. Never took. Whatever they came up with, never took. That was good. That was alright.”
Lefty looks down at his empty coffee, then up for assistance. Their ain’t none to be had.
“Damn waitress. But, you know, it took some gettin’ used to, it did. I remember. Back in kindergarten. I was the only one. All the other kids, they didn’t have one. Kind’a made me feel special, you know. Even the teacher, even she called me ‘Lefty’.”
The waitress makes a cameo across the room. Lefty motions.“Coffee!”She ignores him. So he takes up one of the Old Gold’s and lights it.
“Lefty. That’s not so bad. I know guys that got lot worse. Chubby, who ain’t. Slim, that’schubby. That’s funny, you know. Chubby and Slim. Yeah. Then there’s Twitch and Hairball and Snow White. Yous know those guys, right?”
Lefty’s drunken friend farts his response. So Lefty plows on.
“Yeah. Right. They got lot a’ worse names. Over at the Sunoco, there’s Jimmy Andrus. They call him Jimmy Anus. Jesus! Polka Pete. Two-Ton Tony. Martha The Muffin. Half-Wit Willy. The Count Me Out of Crisco, over on Sixteenth. Gasbag Jimmy. Larry Loses A Lot. Johnny The Queer. Johnny The Thief. Johnny Whatchamacallit.”
Lefty takes a drag, then says, “Bill.”
The drunken friend actually looks up at this.
“Bill?”
“Real name is Aloysius.”
The drunken friend goes back to pondering the specks on the Formica as the ash on Lefty’ssmoke is at the point of defying gravity. He motions to the waitress.
“Ashtray!”
She ignores him – again.
“I should expect this, here. Yeah, I should.”
Lefty deliberates for a moment, then dumps his ash in his coffee cup. It’s not serving any other useful purpose at the moment. He takes another long drag of the Old Gold, thinking.
“You know, it had to be Lefty. There was no other choice. It’s like it was chosen by God.”Just as he’s stubbing out the smoke it dawns on him.
“That’s right! It was my pop who gave it to me! I was three or four. Now I remember! Lefty, Lefty, Lefty. But, when I was turning six, and going to first grade we had a talk. You know, I was a sensitive kid and all. And, for a while there, I didn’t want to be called Lefty. But one day he sat me down on the davenport. God, it was hot. I remember. I stuck to the plastic furniture cover like a pancake. But he was serious. He only called me ‘son’ when he was serious. He said,‘Son, the kids might make fun of you. But that’s okay. If they do, just remember, you were born special. That’s why we gave you a special name.’ That’s what he said, alright.”
Lefty lights another, exhaling unnervingly. “Then he told me, if they kept it up, makin’ fun of me, to kick some ass!”
Lefty thinks this is the funniest thing ever uttered! He starts gaggling until the gaggle becomes a cough and cough becomes a hack. After a moment, and a brawl for breath, he’s able to talk –again.
“So, I’m Lefty. That’s okay. Yeah. That’s fine.”
He takes one last drag, douses it in the mud at the bottom of the coffee cup with its lifeless companion. He looks up at the drop ceiling and the fluorescent lights. It could be the cosmos, given the mystified and beatific look on his face. Then a thought jaywalks through his mind.
“One thing. One thing though. I wonder if they would’a called me Righty if that’s the nut I wasmissin’.”
Jeff Wilbur writes, occasionally. Drinks copious amounts of coffee. Smokes some cigarettes now and then and rides his vintage Honda 750 religiously. After 20 years in Hollywood, 15 of which he worked as a TV writer, he moved back to Buffalo where he currently works in a drug and alcohol detox – a step up in terms of the quality of folks he encounters on a daily basis from his former place of residence.