interlude: last call for drinks at the bar

"Can I get a jug of beer?"

"Nah, man, we've stopped doing jugs now."

"Then can I get two pints?"

"We're not doing jugs OR pints this late at night."

"Then can I get four pots?"

"Fuck it, I may as well just give you a jug."

drunk man outside a strip club at 2am

"Nice hawk."

He was the roundest man I've ever seen, but not necessarily big. His head and shoulders drooped over a belly like basketball as he struggled to light a cigarette. He was so drunk his eyeballs were practically falling out.

He wore an odd assortment of clothes - baggy cargo pants and sneakers, a flannel shirt, horn-rimmed glasses, all things that put me in mind of the phrase "weird nerdy dad". When I thanked him for the compliment, he opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, then just shrugged.

bald middle-aged man at the train station

"Hey, son, come here. Hey. Come here. You should cut your hair like mine. Don't have it like that. You should cut it like mine. You wanna to give the ladies two bald heads to play with."

He wore stubby shorts and a singlet in the middle of winter. His face was round and kinda lumpy, scattered with greying stubble. He had intense, but startling, blue eyes, and clutched his bag like he thought it was about to run off.