all the < blank >'s a stage

Ever get the feeling that some series of events has been set in motion purely for your amusement? Toronto: every corner is a free show ...

Last night while lounging on a friends balcony watching the city blink away below, a buddy messaged me and said I should meet him on a patio near my place for a night cap a little after midnight. I made my way over and we staked out our chunk of patio enjoying a cool summer night and casting pointed looks at the bartender who was studiously ignoring us. We opted to belly up to the bar to order a few and while we were there we were dragged into some idle chat with a local barfly who followed us back out onto the patio and invited himself to have a seat.

Being more or less friendly fellows and no stranger to the desire for idle drunken conversation we traded banter with him and inside jokes with glances at each other, when a fourth decidedly shattered man concluded that it would be in everyones best interest for him to join our table too. "Look how beautiful you are!" he declared to the lot of us after shuffling zombie like through the bar and hurling himself with gusto at an empty seat.

He was more or less unable to form a coherant sentance, so he stuck to laughing when we did and uttering the occasional "muth-fuck" of agreement after a break in conversation. "That's a really nice watch", said the first interloper to the shattered man.

"One of you three buy me a beer!", responded the shuffling drunk.

"I'll buy you a beer for that watch", says the first drunk while my friend and I share an amused look. The shuffler struggles out of his watch and hands it over, and chatty drunk straps it on clearly pleased with his good fortune and wanders up to the bar to pay the shuffler.

As soon as he's out of earshot the shuffler suddenly regains the power of speech and tells us "That watch cost me seven dollars, and there's no WAY that girl is gonna serve me". Then tangentally, "I'm queer eh guys, you're cool with that huh?" We assured him he was still welcome at our table and watched with amusement as he accepted his beer from the chatter and proceeded to sip his brew and hit on him with wild abandon, codling his arms and patting him gingerly on the face.

Deciding this was more than he'd barganed for the chatter took his new watch and ambled out making some muted declaration of heading home to smoke a bowl. Which left us with the dejected shuffler who presently inspected his warm half bottle of Coors Light and wobbled his way out with a hearty "fuck this".