Sandy said it was a quiet night, but quiet in that bar never meant peaceful. It just meant people were measuring their words, weighing them before letting them fall.
Soaky sat in his usual spot, third stool from the end. A tepid beer in front of him, sweating more than he was. Three shot glasses stood nearby, full and waiting, like patient counselors who’d seen enough to know most things don’t improve when you rush them.
The clown nose was on tonight. The flower too. Always the flower.
At the far end, a man had started talking louder than the room required. Not quite a speech, not quite a complaint—something in between.
“…All I’m saying is you can feel it. Something’s off. People know it.”
No one answered him. That was the first agreement, silence.
Soaky didn’t look up right away. He watched the bead of condensation slide down his beer bottle, slow as a thought he didn’t want to finish.
“I used to sit in rooms where a sentence like that would end up in a headline by morning,” he said, almost to the bar itself.
Sandy glanced over, a knowing look passing across her face.
Soaky gave a small nod. “You could watch it happen. Somebody would say something half-formed, something felt more than known… and by the second meeting, it had a shape. By the third, a tone. By print, it sounded like certainty.”
A couple of people nearby shifted, listening now.
“Didn’t always start dishonest,” he added. “Just… got polished that way.”
He reached for one of the shot glasses—not empty yet, just waiting its turn—and turned it slowly between his fingers, watching the light bend through it.
“We used to say—if you wanted people to believe something, it had to hold up. And if it didn’t hold up, it didn’t matter how good it sounded.”
He glanced up briefly.
“Truth came first. Everything else had to earn its way there.”
“There was a man I studied back then,” Soaky said after a moment. “Did the opposite of what we’re becoming.”
Sandy set a napkin down near his hand, quiet as a habit.
“Didn’t dress things up. Didn’t rush to make them louder than they were. Just laid them out clean and let the weight sit where it landed.”
The man at the end scoffed. “That was different. Back then, there were real enemies.”
Soaky looked up, not sharp, not soft, just steady. He tossed the shot back, a small grimace crossing his face as the bitter liquid went down. He set the glass back with a soft tap.
“There’s always something real,” he said. “That’s what gives the rest of it traction.”
The room shifted, like a chair leg finding level ground.
A woman two stools down leaned in slightly. “So what, you think people are just imagining things now?”
Soaky shook his head. “No. That’d be easier.”
He nudged the empty glass back into line with the others.
“Problems don’t disappear because you talk about them wrong,” he said. “They just get harder to see clearly.”
The man at the end took a slower sip this time. “Feels like nobody’s being straight about anything anymore.”
Soaky let out a faint breath. “That part’s older than all of us.”
A couple of low laughs flickered and died.
He wrapped his hands around his beer, as if it were something steady.
“What changes,” he went on, “is how fast a feeling gets turned into something that sounds like fact. Used to take a day. Then an hour. Now…” he gave a small shrug, “…sometimes it’s already decided before anyone asks a second question.”
Sandy leaned against the bar, arms folded. “So what, the newsroom just pushes it out?”
Soaky shook his head slightly.
“Not just the newsroom,” Soaky said. “Everybody’s a producer now. Stories don’t wait to be checked anymore—they just get passed along.”
He let that sit a moment. Then he lifted the second shot, held it there a beat, like he was weighing something, and tossed it back.
“Long as it lines up with how it feels,” he said finally, “and finds an audience… that’s usually enough.”
The woman frowned. “Goes both ways, doesn’t it?”
Soaky nodded without hesitation. “Always does.”
He tapped one of the remaining shot glasses lightly.
“Start calling people names instead of answering them, then you don’t have to do the hard part anymore. And once that catches on…” he let the thought trail off, “…you don’t really have conversations. You just have sides.”
The man at the end exhaled through his nose. “So what, we just ignore everything? Pretend nothing’s wrong?”
Soaky didn’t answer right away.
He picked up his beer, took a small sip, and set it back down more slowly than before.
“Let me ask you something,” he said.
The room leaned just a little without meaning to.
He looked at no one in particular.
“Are we still willing to be uncomfortable in the presence of truth?”
No one answered.
Not the man at the end.
Not the woman two stools down.
Not even Sandy.
The question didn’t ask for agreement.
It just sat there.
Soaky tapped the rim of one of the remaining glasses.
“That man I mentioned,” he said after a moment, “he understood something most people don’t like to sit with.”
No one interrupted.
“He wasn’t up against one person. Not really. He was up against the part of the country that had already decided how it felt—and didn’t want that feeling disturbed.”
The woman let out a slow breath. “So what do you do with that?”
Soaky smiled faintly, tired but not defeated.
“You leave a little room for doubt,” he said. “Not a lot. Just enough to keep you honest.”
The man at the end stared into his drink. “Feels like things are slipping.”
Soaky nodded once. “They always feel that way when you’re paying attention.”
He adjusted the small flower on his hat, careful with it.
“Every generation thinks they’re watching it come apart,” he added.
A pause.
“Some of them are.”
No one laughed.
Sandy reached over and turned one of the remaining shot glasses slightly, lining it back up with the others.
“You gonna drink that,” she asked, “or just keep thinking about it?”
Soaky looked at it for a long moment.
“Not yet,” he said. “Still working something out.”
Near closing, the room thinned the way it always did—quiet exits, soft goodnights, the kind of silence that settles in after people take their noise with them.
Soaky slid off the stool, left a few bills under his glass, and walked out—leaving the last shot unfinished, alone at the bar.
Later, wiping down the counter, Sandy found the notebook again, tucked behind the register like it trusted her more than the world outside.
A fresh page.
Two entries this time.
The first, written steadily:
Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking if something was true…
and settled for whether it felt like we wanted it to be.
Beneath it, added after—darker ink, a little more pressure behind it:
You let disagreement turn into disloyalty,
and you don’t have to prove anything anymore.
Accusation fills in for evidence…
and once fear takes hold,
reason doesn’t get much say.
-Influenced by the work of Edward R. Murrow and Marshall McLuhan—two voices that shaped how I think about truth, media, and the space in between.
Soaky the Clown 