I like my coffee like I like my women

says the grizzly bartender, stroking his silver goatee.

The woman across the counter recoils in revulsion, and proceeds to spit on the counter. “Yuck! Men only want sex! That’s all they think about all the time! Sex, sex, sex! I can’t even get a drink, for god’s sake!” She storms out the door and leaves a one star review on Google.

“Sigh,” says the bartender. “One day…” He returns to his cleaning session, delicately wiping the glasses and returning them to the shelf. One’s pub is a lot like one’s soul, he always says—you take care of it, and it takes care of you. But he cannot remember the last time he had so much as muttered that mantra aloud in—what is it, months? Years? Time had lost much of its meaning some time ago, but he can’t recall when.

Then, for a very, very long time, nothing happens. The bartender continues polishing his glasses, often taking breaks to swab his eyeglasses, but never deserting the bar for more than was absolutely necessary for his vision. Without a clean bar, where would he feel safe? Since back then and up until he’d found this place, he had never felt safe. As many friends and enemies as he’d found in his travels, he had never once been in a place he believed he truly belongs in. Not until this establishment rose above the horizon, nearly forever lost in his peripheral vision. But this was home, and he knew it. This was the only home that could ever be.

An eternity passes after that girl leaves the bar. He’s used to it, though—just an idle Tuesday is all it is. Like last Tuesday. Or was it a Wednesday? Is this, perhaps, a Wednesday? What a bemusing diversion, he thinks with a chuckle. Now, back to barkeeping!

The bell rings, and with it comes the sweet anticipation of a new face, and more importantly, a new customer.

Another girl. The bartender places both his hands on the counter, grinning from ear to ear.

“I like my coffee like I like my women,” he says.

The customer giggles. The customer is always right. He wonders, then, whether it follows that his setup is truly worthy of a giggle.

“What can I get for you?”

She raises an eyebrow. “How do you like your women?”

“W-what?”

“You started the joke, but where’s the punchline?”

“Punchline? Punchline… punchline… er… I guess I forgot it.”

She giggles again. “Then why deliver the setup?”

“I… don’t know, actually. Guess it’s become tradition.” He takes his hands off the counter and resumes scouring the dishes. “People don’t usually ask me. They’re either too taken aback by it or they just don’t have the time or patience for a joke.”

“Well,” says the customer, pulling up a chair. “I’ve got the time and patience for a joke. Maybe even a couple. Alll depends how good the first one is.”

The bartender laughs. How strange. He hasn’t laughed in over—

“C’mon, show me what you got!”

He smiles. “Okay, uh… A horse walks into a bar. Uh, my bar. I tell him, ‘Why the long face?’”

The customer titters. “Wow, I haven’t heard that one in a long time! Not one time even, since…”

The bartender nods grimly.

“I forgot how good the original joke is. It’s always used as the epitome of standard, generic, run-of-the-mill jokes, but the punchline is genuinely good!”

“I agree. Humor is so different from what it was back then. Nowadays, everything has to be postmodern. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I’m a sucker for absurd comedy, but when’s the last time you heard a joke that didn’t begin with ‘A man walks into a bar’?”

The customer tilts her head sideways. “You’re a man of jokes, I see.”

“Well, yeah. A bartender’s got to have some jokes up his sleeve. Not just regular jokes, by the way. I’ve got the whole package. In fact—”

“Reddit.”

“Huh?” says the customer.

“Oh, sorry. That’s my frog, Snoo. Looks like he just woke up at this very convenient point of discussion.”

“Reddit. Reddit.”

“To be honest, I only keep him around for one joke. Would you like to hear it?”

“Of course!”

A slight grin creeps onto the bartender’s lips. He starts to feel something. “Well, a chicken walks into a library, and it tells the librarian, ‘Book, book, book.’ The librarian hands it three books, and the chicken leaves. On its way, it meets a frog, to whom it shows the three books, saying, ‘Book, book, book.’ The frog then responds…”

Snoo, recognizing the snarky pause in the bartender’s speech, promptly cries, “Reddit, reddit, reddit.”

The customer laughs once again. The bartender finds her laugh somewhat comforting, almost reminding him of the old times. “Good one! Your jokes are very funny, I must say.”

“Thanks. Well, to be frank, none of them are mine. I just heard them all a long time ago.”

“Then you have good taste.”

He smiles and looks down. “Erm… I’ve got some more jokes if you’re interested. Uh…”

“Reddit.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve actually got them separated into three categories, each represented by these…” He ducks beneath the counter and pulls out three submarine sandwiches. “Sub—”

“Reddit.”

“—s!”

The customer tilts her head again. “Go on.”

“Well, this first sub—”

“Reddit.”

“—here, is just a regular sub—”

“Reddit.”

“I call it the ‘Jokes’ sub—”

“Reddit.”

“Is he usually this noisome?” asks the customer. “Er, I mean noisy. Not noisome. Did you know that noisome actually means smelly, not noisy?”

Wow. A woman of semantics and of jests! How pleasant! The bartender giggles. “Fascinating, the English language. Anyway, I don’t know what’s ticking him off right now.”

“Reddit.”

“But as I was saying, this first sub—”

“Reddit.”

“—is called r/Jokes. You see, jokes are like this sandwich—the punchline is promising…” He points out the lettuce, tomatoes and cheese sticking out the sides of the sandwich. “…and usually…” He opens up the sandwich, revealing the tasty interior filled with meat, condiments and vegetables. “…a satisfying punchline is delivered. But for some people this template is too mundane, and so one day they decided to create a new type of joke, represented by this second sub—”

“Reddit.”

“—which may at first appear innocuously similar to the normal joke…” He compares the identical outside appearance of the first two sandwiches. “…but when you look inside, the punchline is missing, and instead…” He opens up the sandwich, revealing an empty interior previously hidden by the hollow exterior. “…you get an empty, unsatisfying response. For these people, even though the joke itself isn’t very funny, the anticipation of the punchline and the delivery, or lack thereof, is entertaining in and of itself. It’s a much more abstract type of humor, and because these jokes are so against the concept of a regular joke, they’re often dubbed r/AntiJokes.”

“Wow. Sounds fascinating. Could you give me an example?”

“Sure! Let’s see, uh… A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks, ‘Why the long face?’”

The customer chuckles.

“The horse, unable to speak English, shits on the floor and leaves.”

She laughs again, now more wholeheartedly. “Oh, I get it! It’s so serious it’s funny!”

“Exactly! Here’s another one: What’s blue and smells like red paint? Blue paint.”

Again, she loves the anti-joke. The irony is so masterfully crafted it has nearly ascended beyond comedy. “This is great. I love your jokes.”

The bartender nearly flushes. “Th-thank you.”

“What’s the final sub—”

“Reddit.”

“—for?”

“Oh, this one?” He moves on to the final sandwich, which again seems to be overflowing with sandwich goodness, much like its two brothers, except it emits a slight iridescent glow. “This one’s a little weird. You see, for some people even the anti-joke is not enough for their absurd minds, and its supposed subversion of the joke formula merely creates a new template, one that is simply a slightly altered version of the first. So they’ve created yet another type of joke, one that allows much more freedom than the first two—they’re called r/AntiAntiJokes. These can be almost anything—a story, a short poem, a wall of absolute nonsense, a ridiculous blend of jokes and anti-jokes, and so, so much more. And to represent this universe of options, this sub—”

“Reddit.”

He opens the sandwich, revealing the source of the glow to be a portal to the chaos dimension. “—is, uh… um… yeah.” He closes the sandwich and faces the customer again. “Would you like to hear a couple?”

“Sure!” says the customer, tilting her head again in that way the bartender found particularly humbling.

“Okay, well… here’s one: A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks, ‘Why the long face?’ The horse responds, ‘Man, this week hasn’t been easy on me, to say the least. I lost my job, the love of my life rejected my advances, and two other bars have kicked me out for my ethnicity.’ He sips from his glass. ‘It ain’t easy being a horse.’ The bartender smiles in a half-melancholy kind of way, and says, ‘Don’t worry, pal. I’ve been there. Sometimes it feels like you’re in a low spot, but you have to convince yourself that it’ll get better, because it will. No matter how hopeless you feel, how sure you are that you’re stuck in the cave forever, you have to tell yourself that things are going to be okay. It’s the one constant in life that doesn’t change, and you have to hold onto it, otherwise you’ll break apart.’ The horse smiles a little and says, ‘Yeah, you’re right. Can I have another pint, please?’ The bartender replies, ‘Sorry, bud—we don’t serve your kind round here.’ Outraged, the horse says, ‘What? But you already served me!’ He replies, ‘Yeah, a serving of that hot dick!’”

The customer cackles. “Another one! Another one!”

“Okay, here’s a good one: ‘I like my coffee like I like my women,’ says the grizzly bartender, stroking his silver goatee. The woman across the counter recoils in revulsion, and proceeds to spit on the counter. ‘Yuck! Men only want sex! That’s all they think about all the time! Sex, sex, sex! I can’t even get a drink, for god’s sake!’ She storms out the door and leaves a one star review on Google. ‘Sigh,’ says the bartender. ‘One day…’”

“Wait!” she interjects rather rudely. “That’s the punchline! To your coffee-slash-women setup!”

“It is?” he wonders out loud. “Huh. I guess so. Anyway, the bartender returns to his cleaning session, delicately wiping the glasses and returning them to the shelf. One’s pub is a lot like one’s soul, he always says—you take care of it, and it takes care of you. But he cannot…”

And so, he continues telling the joke, and when he’s done, he notices that the sun has already set, and the walls of the pub are coated with a maroon light. Not that that means much—it was seven o’clock when the customer entered—but he is starting to feel a little tender. This girl, he noticed about midway through the joke—she is beautiful. Her long brunette hair swishes in the evening breeze. Her face, which stares so intently at his, seems so familiar. Is this love? No, he thinks. He has to maintain a professional customer–bartender relationship.

When the joke is over, and she hears the ultimate punchline, she nearly tears up laughing. That’s how good it is. While she laughs, the bartender has to bow down a little to conceal his blush. Again, professional relationship.

“That was great! Did you make that one on the spot?”

“Er… Yeah. I guess I did.” Only now did he realize he was improvising this whole time.

“Are there any more types of jokes?”

“Well, there are three more types of jokes I haven’t mentioned, but uh…” He glances beneath the counter at the radioactive green r/antiantiantijokes sandwich, the rotting r/AntiAntiAntiAntiJokes slice of toast, and the uncomfortably plain r/AntiAntiAntiAntiAntiJ salad, and shakes his head. “We don’t talk about those.”

“Why not?” she asks.

“Well, uh…” Again, he glances at the radioactive green r/antiantiantijokes sandwich, the rotting r/AntiAntiAntiAntiJokes slice of toast, and the still uncomfortably plain r/AntiAntiAntiAntiAntiJ salad, and shakes his head. “They get kind of lazy beyond two anti’s. Just as an example, here’s an anti-anti-anti-joke, though it could very well also be an anti-anti-anti-anti-joke, or an anti-anti-anti-anti-anti-joke: a horse walks. nar.”

“Hmm. Yeah, I see what you’re saying. But there is still some meaning to extract from it, as absurd as it might seem at first glance. The word ‘nar’ seems to be a hybrid of the words ‘neigh,’ the sound a horse makes, and ‘bar,’ the missing word from the setup. Perhaps ‘nar’ is the only way the horse can recognize the establishment he walks into. Otherwise, he’s really nothing more than a horse wandering around aimlessly.”

“Huh,” says the bartender, surprised at her speedy literary analysis. “I never thought about it that way.” And for the first time in what must’ve been eons, he pours himself a drink, places it on the counter and begins lightly sipping of it.

The customer tilts her head again. “What’s your name?”

“Bart. Ender. I had it legally changed a while ago.”

She giggles. “Nice to meet you, Bart.”

He smiles. “What’s yours?”

“Clie Nt. The surname is just an N and a T. I have an odd family history.”

“Oh, gosh! I’ve been calling you ‘customer’ this whole time!”

Clie laughs, although Bart isn’t sure she got the joke. Clie isn’t sure she got it either, but she is too nervous to ask. I’m an omniscient narrator, by the way. Hi.

Anyway, “Um, could I have another beer?” Clie asks.

“Sure.” He pours her a glass and places it on the counter. “Free of charge.”

“You’re sweet.”

Bart looks down in embarrassment.

“Hey,” she says after a short silence. “I just had the strangest thought.”

“What is it?”

“What if our whole existence was just part of an anti-anti-joke? We wouldn’t have any way to know, would we?”

“Well, for an anti-anti-joke to be an anti-anti-joke, there has to be some level of absurdity or comedic wittiness, otherwise it’s just a long story that stems from a punchline. Things have been kind of absurd, though, since you stepped into the bar.” He wears a modest smile. She smiles in response, and now it’s her turn to look down.

“Well, if we do live inside a really long anti-anti-joke, what happens when the joke ends? When we reach the punchline?”

“Hmm,” muses Bart. “Well, I’m going on the assumption that we simply cease to exist, which might seem startling at first, but I believe that if you think about it optimistically, it could seem… okay. Comforting, even. We don’t have to undergo the grief that death so often brings, because we all disappear together. And besides, if all we ever lived for was simply to be the butts of an anti-anti-joke, perhaps we will fulfill our destinies no matter what. By merely existing we are being the best versions of ourselves we could ever hope to be. Is that not heaven?”

Clie puts her hand on Bart’s. It’s warm. “Bart, why do you bartend?”

“Well… gosh, it started so long ago. When I found this bar, it was empty, and yet it was the only place I felt safe in. Everywhere else was… it was like there was a cracked ceiling above the whole world, threatening to collapse on me at any moment, and this bar was the only opening to the sky that I could find. And I walked for so long…” He pauses. “For miles and miles. I didn’t search for this place. It searched for me. And when it found me, it never let go.”

“So what did you search for?” She leans closer, till Bart can feel the warmth emanating from her face.

“Hell if I know. And yet, I get the feeling that after all these years…” He leans closer too, and their faces nearly touch. “I’ve found it.”

“Reddit. Reddit. Reddit. Reddit. Reddit. Reddit. Reddit. Reddit. Reddit.”

They’re gone. While Snoo was distracting me, they disappeared with a brilliant flash of light as their lips met. All that is left are lingering particles of hazel glow, that soon scatter in the breeze of dusk and leave the bar vacant.

Bored by this nonsense, Snoo catches a barfly in its tongue and promptly falls asleep.

Seven eternities later, a frantic man bursts through the doors, huffing and puffing, checking his surroundings. He stands in the doorway for quite some time, and his breathing slowly stabilizes. Then, he looks up at the ceiling, and nearly collapses. He sees a clear light above, and it is not that of the harsh, scintillating sun. It is freedom. It is home. It is the only home that can ever be.

And it is good.

“Reddit.”