Feed A Fish A Man

I was telling my friend about an interesting night I had at the local bar, and she said, you should write a story about that. It’s too bad you don’t blog. And I said, actually, I DO blog. What a fabulous idea.

The bar in question is fashioned after a British pub; it tends to be pretty crowded on a Friday night (being one of only several bars in town), and given the strange mix of people that is Monterey, can be either a bit of a bore, or really interesting.

This night the bar was full of characters. We ran into a few friends from school and the neighborhood, and ended up talking to some random people–like ya’ do. We were sitting at the bar top, where I ended up next to a cluster of men (again, like ya’ do). It became increasingly clear that the one next to me was trying to start a conversation; when he did it was painfully obvious that he was not very good at starting conversations with girls at bars. I was asked to settle a bet for him and his friends as to whether or not we were MIIS students or not. I clarified that we were (there was no hand shaking, told-you-so’s or clinking of glasses, which leads me to believe that said bet was fictional), and, because I was bored, I politely inquired after his occupation.

It turned out my new found friend was a scientist doing research at a local institution, related to weather. And of course weather is a topic that you can ALWAYS say something about. He specialized in hurricanes. So, making clear that I knew the difference between weather and climate (thanks Professor Williams!) I asked what he thought about hurricanes and climate change, and what he thought about Al Gore using Katrina as a wake-up call regarding climate change. Apparently he didn’t think much of it at all; he launched into a diatribe against Gore and people who made “speculations” (he said this as if it were a dirty word) about things that they knew nothing about.

Now I had mentioned that I was a policy student and that I studied International Environmental Policy; had he put two and two together, he might have concluded that I perhaps had something to say on the matter of climate change, or that maybe I was sympathetic to “speculation” given that it is sometimes all we have to go on in the making of policies–especially when we have to address complex issues that go beyond science, affecting ecosystems, economies and societies. But scientists sometimes don’t put two and two together (being too busy putting together much more complex equations no doubt), and so I sat and listened to the increasingly angered weatherologist (I am making that word up as I go, it may or may not actually mean weather scientist) until he finished. At which point I asked him, but don’t you think we have some kind of responsibility to DO something with all the scientific findings?

Well of course. He intoned. But not him. He just studied weather. Which is different from climate.

Soon after he excused himself to go to the restroom. Before he left he introduced me to his friend, who took the vacated bar stool. This one studied ozone and atmospheric changes. It was apparently weatherologists’ night out. I proceeded to question him in a similar fashion, curious to hear his take on the state of the ozone. This one was a bit more lively, and stated right away that of course climate change was a huge problem, and that we’d bit off a bit more than we could chew on that one.

Bravo, I thought inwardly. Definitely earned a few more points that the last guy. But then he continued, “but what can we do? Not much. I’ve published a few papers, so I’ve done my bit.”

“really…?” I intoned. “You really think that’s all you can do?”

“Well, yeah…” he said.

“You don’t think,” I said, “that we could do a bit more, given that there are countries that are going to disappear, and that it’s more or less our fault?” 

He seemed at a bit of a loss.

“I’m just curious,” I said, quite aware that I was teetering on the edge of spouting off onto my own vitriolic diatribe, and not really feeling up to it. It was Friday night at a bar after all. And I hadn’t had THAT much to drink.

He tried to resuscitate the conversation, but I had more or less lost interest. Soon after, he too fled to the restroom, and a third weather scientists sat down. What is this, scientists speed dating? I wondered, but introduced myself nonetheless and launched into a third conversation.

This one turned out to be quite soft spoken and friendly; he was an oceanographer, so I steered clear of the climate related questions. Eventually another friend of mine showed up, and we all relocated to the patio, ending my brief series of interviews, which I really wish I could have recorded. (In case you didn’t guess, the dialogue is made up based on what I actually remember two days later)

The rest of the night was fairly mellow; one friend had one too many French martinis and had to be carted away by her boyfriend, making her the second one of our friends to fall prey to the surprisingly strong froofroo drink (and seriously discrediting Marja, who had insisted, they’re not that strong—it’s only made out of schnaps or something…).

I did have one more interesting conversation with the friend of a guy who was chatting up my friend. The friend was the guy that you always see at a bar like this on a Friday night; the wasted guy. Clearly wasted. Kept insisting that he wasn’t. But everyone knew that he was. According to his buddy, he had just been dumped. So when he sat down next to me, I felt something like pity, and asked him how he was doing.

What ensued was a lengthy conversation about how his girlfriend had broken up with him because he was too emotional and didn’t understand him, because he had returned from Iraq with some seriously traumatic experiences that he was apparently trying to deal with. I don’t remember too many details, nor would I post them if I did, but suffice to say, it’s something very different to see stories about Iraq veterans having poor access to mental health care than to sit in a bar on a Friday night and see a young guy who should be in his prime, getting wasted and dancing around on tables with a lampshade on his head because that’s what young guys do, instead getting wasted and wandering around with an empty look on his face because it’s probably one of the only ways to numb the pain of what he’s been through. Very different. And no matter what one thinks politically about the war, the fact remains that the country is being flooded with broken young men who probably feel like they have nowhere to turn.

So that was my night at the local bar. It kind of left me wondering why I can’t just make small talk…