TOM WAITS FOR NO ONE

For 20 years, I have been punished by inebriated men in questionable hats, the kind who snap their suspenders as they bark jumbled-up Bukowski quotes. They corner me in bars, in stairwells, in dark alleyways under the premise of a cigarette with their annoying (albeit, innocuous) intent. I know what’s coming. But like a child who endures the presence of a clown for the promise of a balloon animal, I hang around just long enough for the payoff:

“Say, you a Tom Waits fan?”