An ESPN talk show played. No sound. Thank Christ. I didn’t have to hear terrible grammar. A man doesn’t want to hear that when he’s drinking in a dive bar.

Another talk show played on another monitor. No sound. A picture of a Kardashian was on. Which one? I didn’t know nor would I ever know. The host was no doubt talking about the Kardashian Ass Conglomerate Empire. I didn’t want to hear that drinking a beer in dive bar. No man does.

I sipped a craft malt liquor. I looked around the joint. In a previous lifetime it was a dive Mexican restaurant with a dive lounge that was certainly an OTA hangout. Yes, there was and is such a thing—OTA country in Mexican restaurant lounges. The same held and holds true in some Chinese restaurant lounges

This place, however, no longer qualified as OTA country. That ended long ago. Wimp rock played through the speakers. They used to call it easy listening music. Non OTA people were doing things on their phones. An old lady played video slots.

Oh to seen the heyday of this OTA Mexican restaurant lounge in what used to be a working class neighborhood. You ate the suspect burrito, you drank cheap beer and rotgut margaritas, and you were shitting your pants on the drunk drive home.

I don’t have an OTA Mexican restaurant lounge story, either in Portland or at the Oregon Coast. But I do have one for a Chinese restaurant lounge, in the Rose City, 30 something years ago when the Portland was cheap, gray, and sleepy and the homeless drank fortified wine, didn’t play on their phones, and didn’t make art.

The story goes like this: it went down in the Hungry Tiger, just off SE Burnside and 28^th, I think. (I will not Google for confirmation.) It was 1988 or 89 and I was living off SE Belmont. The Hungry Tiger was even then a legendarily dive Chinese Restaurant because of its cheap food and fishbowls of boozy drinks. They must have had 10 or 15 on the menu, all colors of the rainbow, and you were only allowed to purchase one because I suspect each drink—if drink is the word—contained 6-7-8 shots of liquor. I never ordered one but often watched customers consume a bowl and then barely make it out the door.

I was just beginning my teaching career then, and occasionally graded papers in the Hungry Tiger or other inner SE joints on weekend afternoons. I had a little circuit and I always walked.

One afternoon, I was sitting at the bar of the Hungry Tiger, drinking a beer, grading something, when an OTA man walked in, stood at the bar next to me. A bartender emerged. The man ordered a raw meat patty on a white plate. He said he wanted to see the blood run.

Incredibly, the order was accepted, and without any hesitation. The man sat down. He did not order a drink. I looked at him. He stared straight ahead. I no longer recall precisely what he was wearing, but I do have a vague recollection he wore a suit of some kind.

The order arrived. The man ate the patty with his hands. He did not use a napkin. I am not making this up. He paid his bill, stood up, and walked out of the Hungry Tiger. I wasn’t writing in those days, except in my journal, but I knew one day I would write about this incident, and here I am 30 or so years later doing so for no other reason that it simply must be documented. As I look back on it now, it was one of my first brushes with OTA life in Portland, but there were more and I hope to recount some of them later. The hi jinks at Kelly’s Olympia certainly deserve some ink.

Not too long ago, I passed an Oregon Tavern Age joint in the big city. How did I know it was an OTA joint? The cheap plywood siding painted turd brown and the hand painted sign on the siding, that’s how.

At the time, I was too busy to stop, but made a mental note to return.

A couple weeks later, at four in the afternoon on a Sunday, I walked inside the joint and was greeted by a blast of air conditioning. The interior was spacious, one big room with tables in the middle and gambling machines and video games soldiering the walls.

I ordered a craft malt liquor at the bar. A hunched male bartender, classic OTA, amiable, with slicked back gray hair, served me. I took a seat and surveyed the room for clues. Clues to what? One never knows in OTA country. I whipped out my notebook and thought about writing.

“Detroit Rock City” by Kiss played on the jukebox.

Two OTAs, a man and woman, sat together at the bar and drank double screwdrivers. Their cozy demeanor suggested they were a couple. Cozy seemed an inadequate adjective. They had their hands all over each other! It unnerved me momentarily, then I got over it. They were going for it. Why not?

I caught a drift of their conversation. He had to go to work at 3:00 a.m. at a gas factory, so why not have another double screwdriver? His girlfriend, too. The bartender whipped them up in a jiffy and they continued their groping.

The joint’s decor was unforgettable except for a painting of Scooby Doo drinking a martini on the wood paneling. Whatever inspired this masterpiece of OTA art was lost to the Canadian mists of time.

I also noticed an old wall telephone, red in color. It was one of those ancient lines that used to connect directly to a cab company. I would have given anything to listen in to one of those call, say, from 1978.

The drink special was a tequila sunrise Jello shot. $1. The food special was a shrimp basket. $10.99. I imagined consuming that combination and my stomach rumbled.

An obscure Cure song came on.

I looked over at the bar and saw a monitor showing four different views of the parking lot and side streets. This being the summer of 2021, no doubt I’d soon see someone get shot. That wouldn’t go down to well with a craft malt liquor. Shit scotch would be more appropriate.

A poet was on her way to join me. That somehow didn’t seem poetic in OTA country, but sometimes strange things do happen, like when an OTA Trump supporter concedes that Joe Biden doesn’t have a secret weather machine in the basement of the White House that he can mastermind to the benefit of the liberal agenda on climate change.

A country song came on. I’d never heard it before. It had a lyric that went, “Sheila, pour me another tequila” and I liked the sound of that.

The OTA couple at the bar were sneaking kisses and copping feels. They were a goddamn country song themselves except they lived in a big city. Maybe the poet could write a poem about that!

I jotted some nonsense in my notebook. I looked at the couple again. They were kissing! I don’t want flagrant displays of public affection by OTAs in OTA country! I’d rather watch an OTA take a bowel movement.

Wait! Amend that. Why can’t they make out and flaunt it? Why just kiss? Why not bend her over the stool and really get it on? Why not give the son-of-bitch a hand job? The world is coming to the end, you know?

The bartender came out from behind the bar. He was fishing kimchi out of jar with his fingers and eating it. How do I know it was kimchi? It said so on the jar.

“Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones came on.

The bartender was eating kimchi with his hands, an OTA couple was making out at the bar and drinking double screwdrivers, and Mick Jaggar was singing about a gin-soaked barroom queen, snorting coke and getting laid.

Was I losing my mind?

The door to the joint opened. In walked a gnarled elderly man with a cane wearing a blue ball cap two sizes too large for his noggin. The bartender and the OTA couple greeted him with enthusiasm and called him Old Jack. I took a gander of him. He was 200 years past OTA.

He was told he was looking good.

“I’m always looking good,” he said.

He was asked why he hadn’t been around.

“I’ve been getting shitfaced at home,” he said.

He was told there had been concern for his welfare in his absence.

He grunted and sat on a stool at the bar.

The bartender asked if he wanted the usual.

Old Jack said, “Yes, the one and one.”

Seconds later Old Jack was drinking Jack Daniels Red on the rocks and chasing it with a pint of Budweiser.

“All Along the Watchtower” by Bob Dylan came on.

The poet entered the bar. She was carrying a jar of flowers. The OTA couple were swapping tongues; Old Jack was sipping whiskey; the bartender was swigging pickle juice from the jar of kimchi.

And yes, I was losing my mind.