Oregon Tavern Age: Derriere

A new bartender in OTA country greeted me warmly from behind the bar. Female. Brunette. Pony tail. Lean. Cut. Slinky pink top. No bra. Doug fir shoulders. Some slight scars about the neck. No makeup. A face a thousand distant years from OTA.

But too long under the dim lights, grease hoods and the distance could shorten in the blink of a black eye.

I ordered a local malt liquor. The bartender turned around to pull the tap and I saw her attire below the waist: faded and fraying jean cutoffs. They were unraveling right before my very eyes.

Sometimes, just one look, and you are gone.

No, no, no. I was done with all that. I looked away like Lot’s wife should have after leaving Sodom. If I had kept looking, I would have turned into a pillar of margarita salt.

A lifetime ago, I had a brief affair with a bartender in OTA country with a similar derriere. She had a name ripped from the Old Testament and a power ballad from the Oregon Jam era.

Our affair was a total disaaaaaaaasssssster.

I did, however, get a healthy portion of homemade smoked salmon out of the bargain and a valuable lesson that I didn’t properly learn at the time: when the legend becomes fact, don’t pursue the legend. Let the legend titillate and delude. Let the derriere become dust in the wind.

Jim Harrison wrote ten thousand words in his books about this lesson. I’m not sure he learned it, either.