“You’re doing this all wrong.” Martin put a hand on my shoulder as I frantically tried to keep up with the rapid-fire questions coming from the judge’s table.

“First you do this.” He poured yellow beer into the plastic cup in front of me. Then poured another for himself, and topped off everyone else. “Then you do this.” He raised his hand, waving it about like a kid who had to pee, and asked the judges to repeat nearly all of the questions.

Half the tables in the place gave us a death stare.

“People take it too seriously.” Said Ben, one of our other teammates. “We mainly play to annoy everyone else.”

“The only thing we really care about winning are the free pitchers from the beer rounds.” Piped up Kerry, typing away on her laptop, a flagrant violation of trivia rules.

“I’ve seen people go up there like a complainant before a judge. Argue for hours over an answer. It’s trivia in a dive bar. I’m here to kill brain cells, not stimulate them.” To make his point, Ben up-ended the last of the pitcher into his mouth, then slid it over to me.

“Your refill.”

Memphis Note
Ah, trivia. Specifically, trivia at the P&H. One of the most bloodthirsty shows of pointless fact accumulation I’ve ever seen. Where I used to spend every Tuesday, proudly lowering the bar a few pegs on my team “We’re Not Competitive, We’re Belligerent”. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent in this story. Mainly because we weren’t.

“I did it again. Why did I do it again?” I looked over at Matt, eyes blood shot, his lower lids puffy and sagging from lack of sleep.

Matt didn’t respond, instead kept counting out the till, scribbling bits of numbers on a napkin. I looked out through the glass front of the P&H Cafe. The city had long since fallen asleep. It was the part of the night when no one awake was up to any sort of good.

“Thanks for letting me hang out for a bit.” I said, nursing water in a plastic cup.

“No problem.” He responded, flat and even.

I regarded him for a moment. “Man, you must deal with a lot working here. Drunks. The bathrooms. Shitty music.” I pointed at him. “Any of it ever get to you?”

“Only one thing’s ever bothered me.” He counted while he talked. “Some British guy came through once. Had a few too many, mouthed off. Tried to fight me when I told him to go. When I wouldn’t, he spit on me and called me a ‘poltroon’.”

“I could see how that could get to you.”

He stopped counting. “Yeah. What the hell’s a poltroon?”

Memphis Note
The P&H is the quintessential Midtown neighborhood bar. And its bartender, Matt, is a fixture. I swear the man sees so little sunlight he’s translucent. But if you come in there more than once, he’ll know your name. Matt’s one of the good ones.

Oh, and poltroon? It means coward.