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Fiction
Amazing Times at the Pub Agora
John Douglas Mullen is a philosophical bar fly on the wall.
It’s too early for the bar regulars and quiet enough so you could hear that little squeak from the ceiling fan. I love these times, me with my friendly bar rag, relaxed, wiping glasses, and thinking of nothing.
The pub’s empty, except for me and him. I’d say the guy’s early forties, grease under his nails and ground into his fingers, corduroy pants, black tee, leather jacket, rumpled hair escaping from under his cap, a newsboy cap, I think they call it. He’s quietly sitting at the bar, drinking a beer from a narrow cocktail glass. But then this other guy comes in. He’s got small round glasses, you know, like that famous guy John Lemon always had on. Anyway, he’s got a suit on and a white shirt and a loose tie pulled off to the side like he was pissed when he loosened it and gave it a yank. The guy looks soft, not fat, but kind of like dough, like he never did a day of hard work. And his face is oily moist, or maybe it’s sweat, I don’t know. He’s probably forty or so too, but his hair’s going fast and he’s plastered a few of the remaining strands over the top, like no one would notice. When I see that, I always think of Super Glue.
Anyway, he sits two stools from the quiet one and he’s turning, looking around, like he doesn’t want to face me or doesn’t know what to do.
I say, “What can I get you there, Jack?”
He says, “Huh, oh, um, a whiskey, I guess.”
I say, “Scotch, Irish, Canadian?”
“Scotch.”
“Neat?”
“Huh?”
“Will you have ice, sir?” I ask.
“Yes please.” – like a kid when his mother offers jelly with his peanut butter. I plunk a double in front of him with a glass of ice beside it. He seems confused, picks up the double shot, inspects it, and gives me a look like, “What’s this?”
Then the formerly silent guy, eyes fixed on his beer, speaks.
“It’s a double shot of scotch. Dump it on the ice and drink it.”
“Huh? Oh, sure.”
I think, “Cripes, what’s that?” Little did I know.
He pours the scotch into the ice, then throws the double down without waiting for it to cool. His face turns bright red and he forces his mouth shut to keep from gasping.
The leather jacket guy says to me, “Give my friend here a beer.” To Mr Funny Glasses he says, and I remember it exactly,
“Take at least twenty minutes to finish the beer and tell me what you’re doing here.”
The guy exhales, coughs, and says, “Why should I do that?”
“Because you’ve got something in your craw and want someone to talk to. That’s why you’re here, and my friend there behind the bar? Not much of a talker.”
I’m thinking he’s right about that but who’s he, a shrink? Just as I think that, Mr Spectacles says, “What do you do anyway? I mean, you going to psychoanalyze me or something?”
“Psychoanalyze you? Why? You got some deep, hidden story cleverly packed away somewhere you can’t get at?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Neither do I, but if you did, it wouldn’t interest me. So why don’t you just spit it out.”
The guy says, “You’re a pushy bastard.”
“Yah, I’ve heard that said.”
The guy sips a couple of times, very small sips, and then says, “Well, there’s this woman.”
“Isn’t there always? What woman?”
“At work.”
“Ring says you’re married. You having sex with this woman?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Usually for about –”
“Not that ‘how long’. How long have you two been bopping each other?”
“You needn’t put it… half a year, more or less.”
“How many kids do you have and how old?”
“Three boys. They’re eleven, fifteen, and, let’s see, seventeen, I think.”
“Who knows about this woman?”
“Just a couple of buddies.”
“They your cheerleaders?”
“What?”
“You know, slapping your back and telling you what a stud you are.”
“Uh, I guess.”
“Little wifey getting it on too? Maybe with one of your buds?”
“Of course not.”
“Did you actually say, ‘Of course not?’”
“Well, I –”
“Forget it. What’s your problem?”
So, I’m listening to all this with my mouth hanging open. I’m thinking, why’s this guy asking all these questions? And why is the little guy answering them? But the quiet one listens so hard his eyes seem bolted on the other guy’s face. He really wants to know, or he seems to. Most people really don’t give a shit what someone says. It’s like: “How ya doing?” “Well, my dog died today and my mother’s just hanging on.” “Swell. And the wife? She good too?”
But not this guy. He actually listens. And the little guy really is in some kind of trouble. Anyway, that’s how it seemed.
“What’s my problem? You mean with the woman?”
“Who else?”
“Well, that’s just it. It should bother me, but it doesn’t. I mean I love my wife. My kids are great. We have a good life, all of us. Everybody gets along.”
“So?”
“Well, I think I should feel guilty.”
“Are you guilty?”
“No, I don’t feel guilty at all.”
“I know you don’t feel guilty, you told me that already. I asked, are you guilty.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Look, a guy walks into his neighbor’s house; picks up a kitchen knife; stabs the neighbor to death then saunters away whistling ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’. Is he guilty of murder?”
“Sure.”
“Does he feel guilty?”
“Apparently not.”
“You don’t feel guilty but are you guilty?”
“I guess… I mean, yes, I am.”
“What are you guilty of? What wrong have you committed and against whom?
“That’s it too. I haven’t hurt anyone. Me and this woman, we’re just enjoying ourselves. No promises. No future. And no one else knows, well, except a couple of my buddies. No one’s getting hurt. How can it be wrong if nobody’s hurt?”
Quiet man says, “Well now, my not-so-good man, that’s an interesting question.”
“What?”
“This: Can a person commit a wrong against another without making that person worse off? Tell me, what’s your mother’s mother’s name?”
“My grandmother?”
“One of them, yeah.”
“Susan.”
“I assume she’s passed on. Where did she grow up?”
“In Shahneen, in Ireland.”
Quiet one says, “Well, suppose I go to Shahneen tomorrow, where some people still remember Susan, and I whisper the news through the pubs that Susan came to the States and became a streetwalker. Did tricks in alleyways for dimes and died of VD.”
“Christ!”
“Of course, the good folks in Shahneen have a grand old time passing around that tidbit about Grandma, you know, ‘And she was such a nice little girl.’ ‘I always knew her looks would get her in trouble.’ Things like that. Am I guilty of a wrong?”
“You destroyed her reputation.”
“Does she know that? Come on. Be honest.”
“No.”
“Has she felt anything negative, any pain or sorrow from what I did?”
“No.”
“Have I done her a wrong?”
“Yes. You spread lies about her. People will laugh when they talk about her, no longer respect her.”
“So, even though I affected Susan not at all in any physical or emotional way, I did her a wrong?”
“I guess.”
“You guess ? Got an ounce of conviction inside that bald – ”
“Okay… I’ve… I done wrong.”
“Even though your wife feels no ill effects? Let’s assume that’s true – that she feels no ill effects – though it’s unlikely.”
“Why’s it unlikely? I told you she doesn’t know. She hasn’t been hurt at all.”
“Can a person feel ill effects from cancer while not knowing she has cancer? You’ve brought a cancer into your family. You think you haven’t changed the world she lives in?”
“I guess… I mean, I have.”
“Done wrong to your wife?”
“Yes.”
“You are guilty?”
“But I’ve never felt guilty.”
“We’ve been through that. This isn’t about your stunted emotional growth. You made yourself into a liar and a cheat. You’ve risked the family life that your children and your wife love, something that their happiness relies on. What else are you, but guilty?”
“Okay, okay, but how do I change it?”
“You mean how do you get out from being a liar, a cheat, a bad husband, and a bad father? How do you become a good man? The way out is the same as the way in. You decided to be what you are now. Only decisions from you can undo that.”
“Like what?”
“Step one’s obvious. The other woman, give her a pat on her cheating little behind and send her on her way.”
“I’m the one who cheated. She’s single. She didn’t cheat.”
Quiet guy: “Wrong again, but that’s for another time.”
The other guy says, “I feel better.”
“I don’t care how you feel. You’re the one in the wrong here. You don’t deserve to feel good until you set it right.”
“I mean I understand it now.” At this point, I think it’s over, the guy admits his guilt, will ditch his cheating girlfriend. I already recognize that look.
The quiet guy says, “You understand it now? You think because some stranger finally tells you you’re guilty, that it’s over, nothing left to understand?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said earlier no one got hurt by your little stepping out. What about you, did you get hurt?”
“Me? No, I don’t… well unless you call great sex getting hurt. Ha !”
Quiet guy says, “When exactly did you decide to make it your life’s work to be a creep?”
The cheater: “That’s not –”
“Never mind. Tell me. Do your boys respect you?”
“Sure.”
“How do they show it?”
“Why? What’s that got to do –”
“Just tell me.”
“Well, let’s see. They ask my advice. They tell me what they’ve accomplished. They brag about me. Tell people what a good dad I am.”
“This respect makes you feel good, think more highly of yourself?”
“I guess. It makes me feel important, like I’m someone special.”
“Do your children know who you are?”
“Of course they do. I’m their father.”
“They know you’re kind to them and that you’re smart. They know that you can’t shoot hoops worth a shit and you throw a ball like your grandma, Susan.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I’m a philosopher. Anything they don’t know that could change whether they respect you?”
“I don’t think… ah, you mean the woman?”
“Bingo. You’ve held out on them. You bask in the respect you think you have from them. In fact, they are not giving that respect to you at all – they’re giving their respect to the person they think you are. They don’t respect you, the person who, among other things, is a liar and cheat and willing to threaten their happiness just to get laid. When you did that, you became another person, a cheat who doesn’t care enough about them to do the right thing. Their respect is for the man you were (or may have been), not the one you are.”
The cheater finally gets angry. “So they need to know everything about me before they can respect me?”
“They don’t need to know how many hairs you’re pretending to have on the top of your shiny bald head. But to respect the real you, the person you really are, they sure as hell have to know if this father of theirs is a liar and a cheat.”
“Christ.”
The quiet guy says, “It will never be you they respect until you make it right.”
“How?”
“You know the answer. You chose to make yourself who you are. Choose again, this time to get back to who you were.”
“Should I tell them?”
“If you need to. But the main thing is to mark this day in your calendar and start doing the right thing. You’ll know when you deserve their respect and, by the way, your wife’s love.”
Mr Spectacles takes off his glasses and wipes them with a paper napkin. I think for a minute he’s gonna cry. Then he says, “Shit, do I pay you or something?”
“Put a beer on the tab for me then go straighten yourself out.”
After the balding guy leaves, I say, “What the hell was that?”
He says, “Just a little conversation. He was confused. I helped him out.”
I say, “You called yourself a philosopher. Are you? I never met a philosopher.”
“Well, now you have.”
I say, “You don’t look like a philosopher.”
“Should I wear my tweeds next time I come in for a beer?”
“What do they do, I mean philosophers?”
“They do what I just did. Get underneath things, where the confusions or mistakes come from. Try to straighten things out.”
I say, “I never thought of any of those things you asked him.”
He says, “And I can’t mix a daiquiri.”
© John Douglas Mullen 2026
John Douglas Mullen is a philosopher living in Dresden, Maine. His books include: Kierkegaard’s Philosophy: Self-Deception and Cowardice in the Present Age; Hard Thinking: The Reintroduction of Logic to Everyday Life; and The Woman Who Hated Philosophers.
• This story was provided by After Dinner Conversation, an independent nonprofit that promotes philosophical and ethical discourse by publishing short fiction: afterdinnerconversation.com.
Questions For Consideration
1. The philosopher asserts that a person can commit a wrong against another without making that person worse off. Do you agree? Or can you think of a counterexample to disprove it?
2. What if the experience the cheating man gets from his extramarital affair makes him a more attentive and confident husband? Is it still bad? Is a wrong still a wrong even if there are secondary benefits?
3. The philosopher says that another wrong is that the cheating man’s boys are giving their respect to the person they only think he is. Under this framework, to what degree do parents have an obligation to divulge their good and bad history to their children (at age-appropriate times)? For example, would a parent be required to tell their children (at an age-appropriate time) that regretfully he punched a homeless person and stole their bike 20 years earlier?
4. Given that the cheating man came into the bar because he felt bad for not feeling bad, does that mean, deep down, that he knew that what he was doing was wrong? Or did he come into the bar because he was simply confused about the disconnect between his feelings and societal norms? And does it matter which reason is correct?
5. Do you think the story accurately displays what philosophers do? What’s the difference between the philosopher in the story and a therapist?
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