By Brian Smith
I’ve been to a karaoke bar three times in my life, zero times sober. The third was in a backlot strip mall on the Southside — Suki’s. It was there that I found a stereotype-smashing good old boy with a 10-karat heart of gold.
Kinya, my friend’s Korean friend, had a birthday to celebrate, so we tagged along with 10 Japanese and Korean acquaintances. Kinya wears wraparound techno-glasses and track jackets. Four people were inside Suki’s when we arrived — two asian businessmen, a man in a camo shirt and Suki, the 4-foot-tall proprietor, who approached us for drink orders before we found our seats.
The karaoke room was separated from the bar by a look-through partition. A few folding tables circled a non-flat big-screen TV. Empty ashtrays and half-Korean, half-English songbooks sat around. The karaoke machine was operated by remote control, Korean only. We were out of place, but getting drunker.
As soon as the karaoke MIDI tunes started playing, Camo Shirt crossed the partition and introduced himself as Brian — we bonded over this. His shirt had a straining, veiny brown horse on the back, with robotic metal legs, emerging from a ring of fake ripped shirt and confederate flag graphics above the word “Ironclad.” It was tucked into his Wranglers with no belt. He was round and sweaty. His cheeks were splotchy red.
“Queue me up ‘Hotel California,’ brother,” he said, swilling his Bud. Some of it crept out the corner of his mouth. I opened the book to look up the number.
“7819, bo’.” He had the code memorized. Some other songs played. I sang about wild dogs crying out in the night, vivid memories turning to fantasies and there being no sound because we all live underground. Some asian girls sang foreign pop songs. The Eagles were next. Brian took the stage.
His rendition wasn’t impeccable, but he sang it with enough soul to pull me in. I couldn’t believe this guy. I was expecting a knee-slapping, drawly, guh-hucking mic-bumble. Instead, Brian was leaking emotion. He shut his eyes, faced the lot of us and gave Don Henley a run for his dirty laundry. His face was illuminated by a red Bud neon and every drop of sweat that fell from his head shimmered in the glow.
He sat back down. Some scrawny white kid in a white XXL shirt freestyled to Coolio’s “Gangster’s Paradise” and Brian wouldn’t stop patting the guy’s back. I sang a sloshy duet of “King of the Road” with a friend and Brian applauded enough for everyone in the room. I went outside for some air when the rapper was leaving.
“Man, I was gonna lay down some more dirty South s—, but my boy kept messin’ with me. That dude, he threw off my game, but that kind of respect. It’s hard to find. Especially from a dude like that.”
I went back inside and found Brian with his arms around Kinya. “Happy birthday man,” he said in that thick, fish-hook-on-my-baseball-cap-bill accent. Then he sang “Take it Easy” by the Eagles. After, he sat down next to me, asked me for a light, and asked if I like Neil Young. I said yes. He queued up “Heart of Gold,” handed me the sweat-soaked mic and told me to sing.