"Why is it called the Atomic Cowboy?" I asked.
"I don't know," she answered, "but I hate the name. Everybody thinks it's a gay bar."
That inspired an instant phone poll from the Atomic Cowboy, asking people far and wide what kind of place they thought we were in. "Alternative lifestyle-type bar" and "strip club" were the most common answers, although we might have received a bunch of the latter because we were polling people who knew us. In the interest of science, the Liaison for Redneck Relations -- whose "gaydar" is highly evolved, since he lives next door to a transvestite -- asked our waitress (in an extremely sensitive manner), "Well, you've worked here for a year; Is it a gay bar? Not," the LRR quickly added, "that there's anything wrong with that." (After all, official Institute policy is that we welcome all people who can't hold their liquor regardless of color, race, creed, religion or sexual orientation.)
Turns out that the Atomic Cowboy does not cater to any specific lifestyle: It's open to all.
We here at the Institute are feeling pretty open to the Atomic Cowboy. It's a good place to drink, with such standard bar features as pool tables, big-screen TVs and a combination Miss Pacman/Galaga game. For those who don't want to exercise by walking around a pool table, the place also offers a wide assortment of board games, which can become violently competitive as the players' blood-alcohol content skyrockets. I have no idea if there were good-looking women there, because we were too busy drinking and solving the world's problems.
Above all, the Atomic Cowboy is a place where you will learn patience. A savvy waitress will pounce on a new patron, getting him a drink and staying on him all night because she knows that as he becomes intoxicated, his math skills will deteriorate to the point where he'll never be able to calculate a 15 percent gratuity, and he'll leave 25 percent or some other random, exorbitant amount. When you don't have a savvy waitress, it becomes the responsibility of others in the group to ensure a steady flow of booze. When someone is on the phone or engrossed in conversation, you order for him or regain his attention with kicks to the shin or other strategic areas. If one in your group goes to the restroom, you stop him by grabbing an arm -- or, in the case of the Liaison, have your wife grab the nearest appendage -- to make sure he makes his order known.
Unfortunately, there was no one that I wanted to grab any of my appendages that night. Not that it would have mattered because, once I sat down, our waitress avoided our table like the plague. By my clock, it took twenty minutes for my first beer to arrive -- which is about half an hour too long. Adding insult to injury, our waitress brought drinks for the other two people at our table without even asking what I wanted; I thought maybe I had turned into the Fantastic 4 member who's capable of invisibility.
Finally, another waitress took pity on me, going so far as to bring me a free shot that I was pretty sure at the time I didn't need. The next morning confirmed that suspicion: I was one subatomic cowboy.
