(an excerpt)

A few years ago I was living in Montana, a lonely place where bars were the social life. Traditionally, women were bartenders, and everyone entered the brightly lit taverns—children, grandparents, dogs. I found my place at the Oxford Bar. It was open twenty-four hours, had three doors that were never locked, and housed a diner, a bar, a strip club, and a low-limit poker game. People called me Ace because I played cards every night.

I took a lot of comfort in the anonymity of this world. I had no history, no future. I was not a father or a husband. I was nobody special. I was a quiet guy on the fringe of the action. Most of all I was not myself.

It was a difficult time in my life. I was nearly forty with graying hair and a doubling chin. Lynyrd Skynyrd was my favorite band in high school, and in Montana I listened to their music at top volume every day. It’s embarrassing to think about now. I actually bought a hat that resembled the black, flat-topped hat that Van Zant wore. I drove a 1968 Malibu. My marriage was in trouble and I was no longer young.

At the Oxford Bar I prided myself on an association with all manner of scofflaw—gamblers, thieves, hookers, pimps, ex-cons, bad-check passers, street hustlers, pool players, parole violators, small-time drug dealers, combat vets, card dealers, drunks, drug addicts, bikers, strippers, even a pickpocket, an amateur counterfeiter, and one short-con artist who always just missed the perfect mark. I felt safe among my comrades. They weren’t bad people. Mostly they were products of the lower class, self-educated at best, getting by on their own resources. Many led lives that were unutterably desolate. It was not quite the underworld, but more of an off-to-the-side world.