A scuffed cue ball, once the color of the underbelly of an Orca and now the color of a single male’s 5-year old pillow, smashed against the striped 10-ball, which propelled the 10-ball in the direction of a corner pocket. Unfortunately the 10-ball narrowly missed the target and took a ricochet towards the center of the table, with the cue ball ending up on the right side of the table, perfectly lined up for the opponent to finish off the game by sinking the conveniently situated 8-ball near the opposite corner pocket. Damnit. I feared this may happen. Oh well. With two more balls in play and the enemies nearly ashore, I needed to take a risk. I could have played it safe and instead smashed the cue ball off the 12-ball, sending it across the board and as far away as possible from the 8. But what good is playing safe in a dive bar billiards game? Besides, it was only a few bucks we were playing for.
I turned to my partner and apologized. “Sorry pards, I had to go for that one.”
“No worries bro”, my partner, a longtime friend and going back to university days and current city slicker like myself, said. “I wasn’t much help that game. And they hit just about every shot they had. We’ll get em next time.”
“Yeah next time for sure”, I echoed. “Why is it always the dude with the leather hat we lose to? In fact why is he wearing that leather hat on a night like tonight?”
“Yeah he’s gotta be sweating his dick off in that thing. It’s like 100 degrees out.”
Indeed it was a peculiar choice of headwear considering the current atmospheric conditions. Funny that the guy we lost to in billiards was a regular here. Like an endless stream of persisting fruit flys getting snarled by a Venus Fly Trap, we continued to fall victim to this regular. Didn’t even know his name to be honest. He’d mentioned it once. Daniel maybe? He looked nothing like a Daniel. Medici maybe, with his olive skin and flowing jet black hair and Fabio-esque persona with the jean jacket and leather hat. This guy was born to regular a Dive Bar in the most expensive part of town. To run the pool table like mob territory. He was no hustler either. Everyone who went to Dive Bar knew of Daniel/Fabio. But that’s besides the point. My pool partner mentioned he was off to get another hard seltzer from the bar, which was about 3 times as cheap as the ritzy night club across the street, and I told him I was off to step outside for a cigarette. The heat was getting to me, and I could feel the walls of Dive Bar closing in, along with all the tacky decorations that hung on the eroding brick walls. The old phone booth in the corner where junkies did coke in public and the taxidermy moose head that judged your every advance on unsuspecting hipster girls with watchful ruminant eyes and the infinite array of neon lights that made one feel as if you should be donning a glowstick necklace and rolling on molly. I needed a breath of fresh air, and what better to clear the lungs than the wispy smoke of a heater?
Out into the parking lot I went, standing next to the empty paint bucket that now acted as the ash tray, to spark up a Marlboro Red. Not my first choice, but the right choice for tonight. A flick of the Zippo and a touch of the kerosene flame to the unfiltered side of the rolled tobacco stick, and within a few seconds my oral fixation was satisfied and my mind was calm. The air outside was not much cooler than the oven that was the parlor room, but at least it was fresh, and not stale. An infinite amount of air. I stood there by myself and pondered Orion’s Belt when an unfamiliar figure approached me from my right side and came into eyeshot. He was a man of similar stature and station in life as mine, at least I had postulated, except he had a buzzcut and I had a combover. The guy had curious eyes, one’s that signaled the universal sign of loaned tobacco, and before his lips even muttered the phrase “hey man can I bum a cig”, I had already reached for my front right pocket to brandish the carton and lighter.
But when he did speak, I noticed an accent coming from his vocal chords. European, most likely Eastern, although I certainly could not identify the exact country. Maybe Russian or Ukrainian. Some slavic locale. Perhaps Yugoslavian. I couldn’t tell his age, but I assumed he was born post-breakup.
“Yeah man, no problem. You cool with Marlboro’s?” I acknowledged his friendly request.
“Whatever you got works for me,” he retorted with a slight smile and twinkle in his eyes. Definitely a smoker. Definitely forgot to buy another pack. Definitely 5 drinks in and craving a nicotine rush to the receptors of the somatic nervous system. I’ve been there brother. That’s why we’re known as the friendliest lot on the planet. Besides maybe tour guides.
“Nice Zippo. I got one as well. Left it on the table at my apartment of course.” He rued his forgetfulness aloud. I shrugged.
“Happens man,” I said in solace. “Where you from?”
“Durres. A city in Albania. You’ve heard of it?” (I was right)
“Yeah I’ve heard of Durres. Heard it’s quite beautiful. Perhaps a forgotten treasure of the Mediterranean. So what brings you all the way to Columbus Ohio? Not to interview you or anything, I just find the peacefulness of the cigarette outside a Dive Bar is the best place to get to know a total stranger, you know?”
He smiled again. “Absolutely man. I’m working on my masters at the university. Behavioral Economics.”
I perked up a bit. There is nothing better than shooting the shit about Prospect Theory after 6 White Claws and 3 tequilas.
“Economics, eh? I minored in it myself. A few years ago that is. Could never talk myself into pursuing it as a career though. Too dry. Too theoretical. No offense of course.”
“None taken, it has its low points. I quite enjoy the dryness though. Something therapeutic about plodding through textbooks that are going to be obsolete in a few years anyway. Can you believe they still teach supply and demand in micro?”
I chuckled. It was quite amusing to see another cynic in the field. We’re all the same really. Well most of us are. There’s a few who are so optimistic about the wealth of our nation they go onto start multi-billion dollar companies. The rest of us are crabs in a bucket.
“Yeah it’s hilarious. I had a professor who started his lecture day 1 on supply and demand. He started describing it in the driest of detail, as if he was reading straight from the textbook. Even drew the stupid cross-hatch chart on the board. People were taking notes. Then about 15 minutes in, he stops dead in his tracks, turns to the class, and says: “you know this is all bullshit right? Complete bullshit.” Then he walks over to the whiteboard, draws a giant X through all of the work he just did, and throws the textbook he was referencing in the garbage can. I knew right then and there it was going to be a good semester.”
“That’s great. Do you know who the professor was?”
“Yeah, he was Dr. [redacted]. Crazy guy. Smart though. My favorite is when he would go on schizophrenic conspiracy theorist lectures about coked out bankers rigging financial markets to make out with a healthy profit at the expense of the common man. Which is somewhat true of course. But it’s a stale take. We’ve all seen Margin Call. Everyone knows what goes on behind the curtains. We know how the sausage is made. But we still gladly eat it, with mustard and sauerkraut.”
“Ha. In Albania we would call that Ćevapi.”
“Sounds delicious man. I quite enjoy the cuisine of that region of the world.”
I paused for a second and then switched back to Economics. My mind was racing now. Thank you Mr. Marlboro man.
“You know, as crazy as he was, Dr. [redacted] was right. Not necessarily about his ideas but about his approach. He refused to go by the book. Practice, not theory. Real world, not hypothetical world. Nothing is perfect, everything is chaotic and warped to a point where reality is like fantasy. I wonder how many guns and gold bars he owned.”
“Probably enough to survive an apocalypse.”
I looked down at my ‘Boro for a second and thought, then took another drag.
“Take this entire exchange for example, revolving around this cigarette.” I held it up in front of my face, and my dear stranger watched intently. “I mean in all actuality, this cigarette would be part of a secondary market, one where manufactured goods and services are re-sold for a profit by a capitalist. But I gave it to you for free. Surely I could have charged you a dollar or a nickel or another round at the bar or whatever other unit of exchange I deemed fair. But I didn’t. And had I asked a price, you might have paid it, or you might have passed on the offer and shopped around for a better price. You might have exchanged your time for a short walk to the convenience store. My offer had built in convenience of course, but with a price. And I likely would have charged you more for a single cigarette than what you could have purchased if you bought an entire package for yourself. For $8, you can get 20. Maybe I charge you $1. That’s a 250% markup. Is that 250% markup worth 10 minutes of your time? Would you wait another 5 minutes for another lowly smoker like myself to emerge from the shadows so you could ask him for one? What if he wasn’t amicable as yours truly and said no? Supply and Demand Theory says we both should act rational.”
The Behavioral Economist thought for a second then spoke with ease. “Well of course we’re not rational. We have it worse than animals in the department of rationality. Nature is rational. We’re emotional. And because we’re emotional you’re now a dollar poorer. Everyone knows this. It’s obvious. But you’re right. Despite the understanding that humans are crazy, we still operate under the belief of built-in rationality. A conditioning we carry from birth to death. I suppose that’s why I’m in school. Studying the varying degrees of irrationality in real-world economics so I can acquire a well paying job to provide for myself and a theoretical future family is pretty rational, no?”
“Yeah I guess. So what you’re saying is…. that your price is a dollar? Would you like another cig?”
This comment got a roar out of him. He nudged me and laughed. “Good one brother! I will pass on your offer though. I really shouldn’t be smoking these anymore. A rational version of myself would never drink alcohol so he never would be tempted to smoke a cigarette so he could avoid interacting with a local nicotine arbitrage trader at the Dive Bar.”
“You know you should consider yourself lucky. I once sold 3 cigarettes to a guy for $10 at a bar. I think he was with his girl though. The cost of not being able to provide sustenance is priceless so really he had no choice.”
“Now that is very Austrian of you. You know what? A PhD sounds awful right now but I’ve considered it after grad school. And if I do decide to pursue it my thesis will be called “Smoke and Mirrors: The Economics of the Dive Bar Cigarette Market”. That might even win a Nobel Prize. They sure do like their tobacco products in Scandinavia.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for that one. It was a pleasure chatting with you man. I need to get back inside to the pool table. I’m hankering another loss to the guy who is clearly more skilled than me. Best of luck with school.”
I ashed the remaining stubble in the bucket and strolled back inside. My dear stranger friend lingered outside for a bit finishing his. I chuckled to myself.
Cigarette Economics. Put that one in your pipe and smoke it.
Onwards,
Tony
Humble Wordsmith
Writer Boy
Nicotine Arbiter (I’ve mostly quit)