"What Pope Innocent III Once Said"

It felt as if it had taken him a week to cross the crowded smoky barroom, and when finally  the Professor reached the bar and climbed up on a stool, he looked to the right and to the left for someone to expound to. This was the longest bar he had ever sat at, it seemed to extend to infinity to both the right and the left. Was he at the middle of the bar? It was hard to say. But what mattered was that he was at a bar, which was all he had ever wanted in all his life.

"Whaddaya want?" said a bartender, a big fellow in shirt sleeves and a bowtie.

"Hello," said the Professor. "How are you?"

"Who gives a shit how I am?" said the bartender. "I'm a fucking bartender, that's how I am, for my sins, which were many, apparently. Now what the fuck do you want, because as you can see I am busy back here."

"I wonder do you have a bock beer."

"You can stop wondering, because, yes, we have a bock beer."

"Splendid," said the Professor. "And my second question is –"

"And I hope it's the last," interpolated the bartender.

"Ha ha, yes," said the Professor, "my second question, and I shall try to make it my last, is I wonder if I may run a tab."

"Relax, big guy, all the drinks here are on the house."

"Oh, dear God," said the Professor. "Then is it true, am I in paradise?"

"I'll let you be the judge of that."

"Ha ha, yes, well then, could I have a bock draft?"

"Sure."

"Could I have a large one?"

"You can have whatever the fuck you want."

"Then I'll have the largest glass of bock beer you have, please."

"One imperial pint of draft bock, coming up."

The bartender went away.

"First time here?" said a man to the Professor's left.

"Yes," said the Professor.

The man's face was the color of an old gunny sack, and it appeared to be of the same texture. He wore glasses which magnified his eyes in such a way that they appeared to be two mud-colored amoebae pressing against the lenses. But he wore a jacket and tie, and a concrete-colored trilby hat and so presumably he was a gentleman.

"I take it you are an academic," said the man.

"Yes," said the Professor, although it had been over two decades since he had been fired from his last teaching job.

"So also am I," said the man. "I wonder if perhaps you read my article, 'The Semicolon; Is It Really Moribund?' It was in the Reader's Digest Digest."

"The Reader's Digest Digest?"

"Yes, it was a short-lived offshoot of the Reader's Digest, aimed at readers who wanted material even more digestible than those in the parent publication."

"Well, I'm sorry to say I missed that article."

"A pity. I truly believe it was the last word on the semicolon. What is your own line of country, if I may be so bold as to ask?"

"European History, primarily pre-Renaissance. Perhaps you read my monograph, 'The Albigensian Heresy: Its Mysterious Origins', which appeared, in regrettably severely truncated form, in The Late-Medieval Quarterly?"

"Sounds utterly fascinating, but, alas, I'm afraid I've never even seen a copy of the Late-Medieval Quarterly. Oh, your libation is here."

The bartender had laid down a great tall swooping glass before the Professor, filled with a dark liquid and topped with a thick foaming white head.

"There's your bock, buddy," said the bartender.

"Oh, thank you, good sir," said the Professor, and he quickly took the enormous glass in both hands, lifted it, brought its brim to his lips, and drank.

Yes, he was in paradise.

When he laid the glass down, one-third of it now empty, he turned to his new friend.

"They call me the Professor," he said.

"My name is Doktor," said the man with canvas-colored skin, and he spelled it out. "I am also a doctor, of philology, therefore I am known as Dr. Doktor."

"May I clasp your hand in donnish good fellowship, sir?" said the Professor. 

"It would be my pleasure, Professor," said Dr. Doktor. 

The fingers of his right hand had been touching the stem of a partially-emptied martini glass, but now he disengaged them, and he took the professor's proffered hand. Dr. Doktor's hand was thin and bony, the Professor's hand was fat, but the two mismatched appendages embraced, briefly, with neither trying to overpower the other, and then they separated, with a faint husking sound.

"I can envision us having many long and in-depth conversations," said Dr. Doktor.

"I also," said the Professor. 

"Because what is life but the wagging of tongues, the pretending to listen to the blatherings of others while one waits for one's own turn to blather?"

"Fueled by the alcoholic beverage of one's choice," said the Professor.

"Of course," said Dr. Doktor. "And let us not forget cigarettes. Speaking of which –" He lifted a pack of cigarettes from the bar top. "May I offer you a Husky Boy?"

"Don't mind if I do," said the Professor.

And soon the two gentlemen were smoking and drinking and gabbing like old friends, neither of them listening to the other, because what did it matter what anyone said? It was the talking that mattered, not the words that were said.

At last the Professor had found his place in the universe, and, as Dr. Doktor droned on about dangling participles and the subjunctive mode, the Professor could feel in his bones the great droning boredom of all the other people in this enormous bar, talking, not listening, drinking, smoking, talking some more about nothing and everything, repeating the same old phrases ad infinitum, and, yes, this, this was heaven, at long last.

"Don't you agree, Professor?" said Dr. Doktor.

"Oh, yes, entirely," said the Professor. "It reminds me of something Pope Innocent III once said. Would you like to hear it?"

"Yes, of course," said Dr. Doktor, and now once again it was his turn to let his mind wander where it would, and to enjoy his martini and his cigarette while the Professor's voice droned on, blending with the voices of all the other bores in this heavenly establishment.

{Please go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}