Driving Doctor Mayhem

[20] That's a Nice Mustache

I trailed closely behind Doc that night as he strolled through a smelly dive on a side of town that I'd never been to before and, after my experience that night, did not feel a strong desire to revisit. Everyone looked angry. And inebriated. Doc wasn't much help, only breaking our silence to remind me that we needed to stick to the plan.

At this point in my life, I fancied myself wise to the ways of the world, which was a delusion of epic proportions. Sure, I'd been around drunk people before, and I'd even been drunk a time or two, (as hard as that may be to believe) but my experience was limited to post-pubescent teens in smelly basements with red cups or embarrassing relatives at weddings.

So, as we made our way to the back of the bar, I realized just how little I knew about bars.

"Stop making that face," Doc snapped. "It's a little bit pitiful, and not in the useful way."

"You'll have to get used to handling the intoxicated when you're a doctor."

"You'll have to get used to touching gross things when you're a doctor."

"You'll have to get used to not looking incompetent when you're a doctor."

I don't know what I had expected of him, but I guess I'd always imagined that Doc folded himself into a coffin or slipped into hibernation (or both) the minute that I left every day. Now, at an hour so ridiculous that I didn't know whether to call it morning or night, he was more alert than I had ever seen him, for better or worse. Mostly worse.

"Hey, John!" a cheery bartender called after us, causing Doc to give an obligatory wave and grimace when she was out of sight.

Their little interaction led me to a thought that I would spend hours mulling over in the future: Doctor Mayhem had had a life before Doctor Mayhem: a time when he was just John, a time when he did relatively normal things, like go to smelly dives and paint his apartment a color other than black, and maybe celebrate his own variant of Pizza Friday.

And, as little as I knew about Doc, I knew stunningly less about John.

I kept following him through the throng of sweaty people until we came to a pool table surrounded by a few old men. I didn't recognize anyone right away, but familiarity--or lack thereof--never stopped me from talking before.

"Hiya," I chirped, smiling at the hairiest of the bunch. "That's a nice mustache." The man looked at Doc the way that I look at mothers with crying babies in movie theaters.

Doc indiscreetly elbowed me in the side, forcing a smile and turning his attention on the Mustache Man's companion. "Hello, Mr. Mayor."

"Doctor," the short, portly gentleman snorted with disdain.

He was next to unrecognizable, so much so that it took a second or two for me to readjust. This was Mayor Collodi off-duty: tipsy, smelly and glassy-eyed with a skewered toupee to top it all off.

I exchanged a look with Doc. It was pretty damn funny.