An OTA man and woman sat across from one another at a table near the bar. He drank a Bud draft. She nursed a well scotch and soda. They were a couple. I’d seen them in here a dozen times and they always kept to themselves and talked quietly.<\/p>\n
I sat a table away writing a letter. Television played a hot rod show with the sound muted. Crap country was on the radio.<\/p>\n
We were the only customers in the joint. It was noon on a weekday and rain was imminent. I could feel it in my sinew, and of course, the elk and gulls already knew.<\/p>\n
A few days earlier, the Kavanaugh confirmation \u201chearing\u201d had engrossed the nation and ripped through American life like an army of chainsaws through a forest, a very sick forest, I might add.<\/p>\n
Their conversation drifted over to me like wispy clouds. They were talking about Kavanaugh and Ford and lying and liars. There were Fox News talking points and I distilled a a general agreement between them\u2014Ford was a fraud. But I didn’t sense they were cheering.<\/p>\n
Then the agreement disappeared, like a cloud undergoing instant evaporation. Their weather had changed abruptly, deadly, like weather can change at sea and kill boats an crews. I couldn’t discern why but I sure wanted to know why.<\/p>\n
She stood up, and prepared to leave. She sat back down and worked the scotch. All I caught this time were table scraps from a story from his youth. Something about being drunk in high school with a girl, she got sick in his truck from drinking, and they had sex, more or less. I think the man was wrestling with the idea or nuances of consent, then and now.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t hear a word of the woman’s response, but she was asking questions, I heard that.<\/p>\n\n
An OTA man and woman sat across from one another at a table near the bar. He drank a Bud draft. She nursed a well scotch and soda. They were a couple. I’d seen them in here a dozen times and they always kept to themselves and talked quietly. I sat a table away writing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4459,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15],"tags":[101,922,21,27,23],"class_list":["post-4458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-tavern-age","tag-dive-bars","tag-kavanaugh-hearing","tag-oregon-tavern-age","tag-ota","tag-taverns","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4458"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4461,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4458\/revisions\/4461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}