tim puts on a hat. he puts it on and tilts the brim a little down in the front and a bit to the left. it showcases his eyes a girl once told him and he’s been doing it ever since he began shaving his head, his eyebrows still thick and lustrous. he thinks they make him looking haunting. something straight out of a book, haunting eyes and a fifties styled brimmed hat. while pouring shoots at the bar he works he wonders sometimes if he should’ve been born then, when men were men and women knew their place. he wouldn’t be one of those kind of men, but he would’ve fared better off then because he would’ve been different than the others. instead he was born in the city, where all sorts of people have come and gone, and he thinks he’s pretty much figured them all out. just by looking at them, how they sit, how they order, what kind of drink they drink. like some lower east side bukowski, he leans against the liquor cabinet with a book in his hand, jots down a line or two, thinking he too will write his way out of this, but never leaving. real men like him never leave where they were born.