push

      I paused for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the dim as I closed the flimsy windowless door behind me. I had never been here in the day and my favorite little bar seemed smaller this time.
     Empty, best described the place, just one middle aged guy with a pitcher of beer adorned the dozen ragged circles of vinyl. “Bud Light.” I said just before the bartender could ask me. I sat down at the  bar and the other patron gave me a quick nod and poured himself another.
     Gulp, gulp, ah. My first beer was spent like a first paycheck. I didn't bother to set the glass down. I just handed it over to get refilled. The bartender made his own prediction and met me with a full one by the time I got my arm out. He pointed one finger at his chest, two at his eyes and then one at me. He turned around to put my empty glass in the sink and it dropped to the ground with a mocking crash.
     “Watch out man, that gravity will drag you down.” I laughed. As he reached for the broom.
     “Push you down.” mumbled the other guy.
     “What's that.” I said.
     “ Gravity, it pushes you down. Not pulls.” he re-iterated.
      “Really?” I smiled. Dude's crazy I thought. But I was bored, so I moved to the stool next to him.
     I'm a smart guy, smart enough to know I'm not always the smartest one in the room. Maybe this guy is a genius. Maybe this guy is a jack ass. I had time. I had what I thought was a firm grasp on gravity, so I decided to find out, and maybe have some fun along the way.
     “John” I said as I offered a shake.
      “Bill” he said as he looked at me for the first time and clenched his meaty cracked hand around mine.
     “So how you doin' Bill?” I asked  
     “Well john, I was drinking alone this morning and for once it bothered me enough to get out of the house. I've been here two hours and until now I was still drinking alone. So I'm doin' kinda like that.”       
     “Wow, this guy was bitter” I chuckled to myself, and I was still waiting for him to make eye contact for the second time.
     “Well I'm glad to meet you too Bill. So here's the deal. I've got an all-encompassing, love-hate relationship with gravity just like the next guy, so how about you school me on how we all got it wrong.” I said with more excitement than sarcasm.
     My unsubtle challenge was accepted and he swiveled towards me and motioned for another pitcher.
     “All right John, try and keep up.” he smirked as he wiped the foam from his hairy lip.
     “Gravity doesn't suck like they say. It blows. It blows like an invisible wind. We can see the earth's winds. We can see our winds fighting over which way the leaf blows. our winds have a heat. Our winds have a cold. Our winds have speed and sound, but  gravity's wind is a lonely wind that no one knows. Unaffected by itself, it only us blows, straight, to the ground. “ he sad with great passion and turned up his mug.
     “Bill, I appreciate the poetic imagery but give me some science. How does it work?” I replied with a little less restraint on the sarcasm.
     “Ok John, since its a big subject, you tell me what your big issues are with the theory and I'll do my best to turn your issue into a wish you, hadn't asked. he said, returning my sarcasm and to his beer.
     Man I already liked this guy. He was so bitter it made me feel like a better person just sitting next to him and he had a cleverness to him that made me want more.
     “Magnets Bill, magnets, it's all about magnets. They say gravity pulls us down like a magnet, how can a wind stick us to the Earth like a magnet?” I asked without expecting a good answer.
     “Damn John, how many times can you say magnet in one sentence? Actually, you shouldn't ask how is wind like a magnet you should ask what is different between gravity and a magnet. Yeah a magnet pulls things towards itself and it seems like the Earth does it too but what does a magnet pull? It only pulls ferrous metals, but it doesn't only pull things. It pushes them too. Does the earth push things away too john? Does the earth only pull metal ? No, gravity works on everything, in one direction, even light John. That sounds different to me.” he said with confidence and took another big drink.
     “So Bill, all our brainiacs say pull and Bill says push, hmmm, let me see what should I think Bill?” I smacked back .
     He finished his beer and filled it again. “Back when all the brainiacs thought the world was flat and one dude said no, people believed the brainiacs without a thought. What should they have thought John? Because that's what I think you should think.” he replied with a trace of disdain.
     He was right. Closed mindedness has been a retardant of progress and understanding from the start I thought.
     “Your right bill. They don't really know shit and it scares them.” I offered as a mood lightener.
     “And you're right about that John, most humans have a way of fearing everything they don't understand. Don't even get me started about religion. Their fear spills over into everything. You know John if you give a shit about everything you're gonna run out of shit.” he concurred with the last word in the form of a burp.
     Poet, profit , visionary, and manner-less drunk, wow Bill was a piece of work. He had a confidence you could feel shove away anything he didn't want. I could tell he really didn't care what I thought. I was with him and he still felt alone, it was obvious.
     It was then I realized both, how full my second beer was and the reason for it. Bill was an interesting guy. Interesting enough to make me forget why I was here. I came here to get drunk. Bill had managed to keep more fluid in his throat than words and he had been doing most of the talking. I needed a shot.
     “Barkeep, I need something faster, let me have a shot of Glen Levitt and then two more” I waved.
     Bill held up his half full beer with a swooping motion and put it to his lips as a invitation to join. I cleared my mind of all but not choking for long enough to slam the warm beer, but Bill was already filling his again.
     I returned his swoop with my first shot as an invitation, along with the equivalent words, to keep talking.
     “Right, right, gravity.” he mumbled and gulped freely. “ You need questions John. You can't have answers without questions. Like why does gravity effect everything? Well, it effects everything because everything must have something in common that gravity effects. What does everything have in common, including light? Well, light is only energy so its pretty obvious the thing everything has in common is energy. So gravity is an energy that influences energy. All mass contains energy, so gravity works on all mass even the tiniest like light.” He questioned, answered and hypothesized rhetorically, like he was several people, for what seemed like a long time but I wasn't bored.
     I was actually a little worried, Bill had been making more sense and for much longer than I had thought possible with such a contrary view of such an accepted theory. He went on as we drank and had convincing arguments for how it worked like it did. He thinks we're like balls of screen in an omnidirectional, viscous fluid of energy and that the flow patterns can be explained by the fact that gravity has no effect on itself and can move freely past itself, eliminating high or low pressure zones cased by anything but the objects in the fluid themselves and that this would cause things to group together and to explain orbital tendencies in a direct relationship to their densities, or as he put it “It's all about the size of the holes in your screen John.” .
     I had to go. My shots were gone. I had accomplished my goal. I was drunk. I felt like I would miss Bill. I thought maybe I should watch some discovery channel and look him up again, but I probably wouldn't.
I paid my tab, thanked Bill for the deep conversation to step in, shook his hand again and headed for the door. It seemed a little brighter than when I came in. I bet bill could explain that I thought.
     I walked out into the sunlight. I closed my eyes and looked up. I spread out my arms and stood as still as my buzz would allow and tried to feel. Was I being blown down from above? Was a magnet in the center of the world pulling me down through the bottom of my shoes? I couldn't tell but I could see the distance and the falling curve of the horizon. Its discovery, recent compared to the span of man's existence, offered only proof of the possibility that I had just gotten drunk with a genius.