Liarssaloon

First Impressions

There’s a legend out in Montauk, on the easternmost tip of New York’s Long Island, that a city dude who
wandered into the Liar’s Saloon, a hard-core fisherman’s bar, was roughed up and shot at just because he
entered the gritty hangout wearing a pink shirt.

As the story goes, he was shoved to the floor,
and one of the regulars pulled out a .38-caliber
pistol and fired a single bullet that passed
directly between his legs and bored red-hot lead
into the blackened wood flooring, just inches
from his groin. The terrified, overdressed New
Yorker lurched up and ran from the bar at
lightning speed, the back of his expensive and
fashionable yet feminine-looking pink shirt dirty
from rubbing against the filthy floor. With his
manhood miraculously still intact, he never
looked back as he tore out of the gravel parking
lot in his shiny, late-model Mercedes coup,
leaving clouds of dust in his wake.

On a recent dreary December Saturday afternoon, I entered the Liar’s Saloon wearing a crisp new black
pullover shirt with a small, bright red polo player riding a horse embroidered just above my heart. It stood out
noticeably against the jet-black fabric, projecting a clear message: City boy. I felt all eyes move to my shirt and
the one-inch emblem become as large as the bull’s-eye on an archer’s target. No one looked hostile enough
just then to shoot at me, but still, I self-consciously crossed my arms in front of me as I propped my elbows on
the small U-shaped bar. I tried to make the thumb on my left hand inconspicuously drift up to conceal the
diminutive fashion symbol from the view of the tough-looking customers, who wore rugged clothing.