Dolla Dolla Bill Y'all

We were at our happy-hour bar Friday night. It's a seedy bar with beer-stained wooden plank flooring that's only good for three things:

• Zac Brown Band got their start there, playing there for years before anybody heard of them.
• They give a free shot to the entire bar every Friday at 6 o'clock.
• Anytime you mention the joint, someone has a really good story that happened there. The trouble with really good stories is that they often don't come from positive experiences. I know a guy who was stabbed in the parking lot with a drunk guy's car key. He thought his side hurt after the belligerent guy attacked him, so he covered his side with his hand, and his finger slipped into the stab hole. Ack. Another guy I know told me he used to go there when he first moved to the city and didn't know any better and he was approached by a pimp and the ugliest prostitutes he's even seen in his life.

But we love our shady happy-hour bar, despite the stabbings and the terrible, terrible girl band that replaced the Zac Brown Band. We only go there on Fridays for the 6 o'clock shot. The waitress knows us and our food orders by memory. I got my bangs trimmed last week and she noticed and said they looked good.

By this time, happy hour had lasted at least five hours. Harvey and her husband were playing pool with Katie and Schmoozer. I was seated at the table with Swayze, Vince and Vince's girlfriend. Vince is the newest member of the group, meeting Harvey through work channels. The girl band was over and an 80's hair cover band began to play. The singer of the band stopped at our table and serenaded us with a few verses of the song before he continued walking through the bar with his wireless mic.

After he left, I continued my story:

"I went out with this guy once. He paid for everything in hundred-dollar bills. We went out for burgers and tator tots—not an expensive meal—and he paid with a hundred-dollar bill. The waitress had to bring back over 70 bucks in change.

"Then we leave the restaurant and stroll through the neighborhood. He points out an ice cream place and we walk inside and pick out a couple of cones. I open my wallet to pay, but he tells me that he's got this too. I thank him. And you know what he did? He gave the ice-cream place another hundred-dollar bill! He didn't use the obscene amount of change he got only minutes earlier! Who does that?!"

Swayze took a sip of his beer. "You know who has hundred-dollar bills?" he offered. "Guys without bank accounts."

I pointed at him. "You know, I never even thought of that."

Vince turned and faced me. "You should start a dating blog," he said.

I tipped my head back and laughed from the bottom of my stomach. If my friends only knew.