Bracing Results in this Grand Experiment

One night, pushing up to the edifice, soon to be stranger associates and I spelled out the glorious destruction of our pasts in heckling, table-pounding, and an organic and futile fatalism that must have just as well echoed in the Forum the day before Rome burned. You see, we are poised. Ready for something unspecific.

We stumbled into the pub of my choosing, a fringe element to a formerly thriving 'hood that was wholly unsuited for tourists. For I am not a tourist in this place any longer. It was to be our last couple pitchers, having already burned thru our meagre budgets. But we were cognizant that soon they would be growing. The place itself was all old folks, but not tired veterans pushing back and forth checkers chips. These old men and women had lived every day of their lives, superfluous or narrow perhaps, but tenaciously alive.

One of the old men, vibrant eyes and a plastic cup of whiskey, approached our table and commanded respect: "I'm Eddie" he said "I own this place." And he took a seat determined to transplant some street-level advice to younger hims. Not as a drill sergeant, but as a wise old man. As he routed the first free pitcher our way he issued a disclaimer: "I don't know much. But just hear me out on this. I know I'm a little drunk, but from the bottom of my heart: I love you guys." We prodded him, he hadn't even officially met us. "Shut up! What I mean is, I see guys like you and I just wish I could do something to help. You're doing whatever you do and you have the whole world at your fingertips." He was ineloquent, granted, but he had some thing to say. We spent an hour with this man, drinking pitcher after pitcher of his beer, and he told stories about binging with world-champion baseball players and putting out warehouse fires. As the end approached, with no other customers, Eddie admitted to us that he still looked back on his life with regret, there is always more that could be done.
As we went out the back way, in the sterilizing spread of streetlights above us, Eddie brought us into one last drunken huddle.
"Listen, I'll probably never see any of you sunuvabitches again, but take this from Eddie. I'm just old Eddie. Life is to short to do anything but what you want. Just go out there and do it. Don't listen to these assholes. Alright, just live and love and laugh. Ahh shit." He swigged his whiskey and staggered to his Cadillac. My companions had already started to drift towards our conveyance and as a final gesture I hugged this sweaty old bastard and said these words into his ear: "You have served your community Eddie. You've got great kids, you've put out fires and you run a fucking great bar. You are a good man." He looked at me tearfully and we went our seperate ways. Him to finish out his life and watch his grandkids grow up. Me to "Just go out there and do it".