Bouncer at Kilroy’s Sports Bar is crowd favorite

It’s 4 p.m. and Roger Willemin, the bouncer at Kilroy’s Sports Bar, asks two guys for their IDs, putting it up to the natural sunlight.

Bouncers are the gatekeepers to the bar social life because they are the ID checkers, the doormen and the people who let you in.

Roger is every guy’s best bro and every girl’s best friend. He’s your first sighting at the bar that becomes a familiar face after many visits.

He’s the stranger whom students think they know, and a man who will watch your back if someone tries to start a fight.

He said it’s part of his job description.

***

It’s a warm, slightly breezy afternoon. Hours before the sun drops and the booze starts flowing, Roger talks about his popularity, his desire to move higher up in the world and his hesitance for showing love to the thousands of students who kiss his check and give him hugs on a nightly basis.

“There is nothing special about me except for the fact that I’m a nice guy and people like me. Being a nice guy makes me a doormat for everybody. They walk all over you.”
He’s also a nice guy who hands over fake IDs to undercover cops.

“It’s my job. We all have a job, right?”

He eats his dinner, which he calls breakfast, by himself in the empty bar.

It is hours before the line forms at the door, when the plastic wrap is still covering the tops of liquor bottles.

A girl walks in a few minutes later and tells him that her friend left her ID at the bar, and she needs to pick it up for her. It’s 5 p.m. A couple more people walk in.

Once again, Roger is reminded that just because he might be the most popular guy at Sports, only a manager can let someone pick up someone else's ID.

Roger wants to move up in the chain, but he doesn’t see that happening until he furthers his education.

“If by next summer I’m not on the track with that, I need to change my situation,” Roger said.

***

Roger doesn’t drink because he likes to remember things. He wants a social life, and as he puts it, “Going to the bars is all there is to do in this town. Everything has a close time, nothing is open 24 hours except Steak ‘n Shake and Denny’s.”

He wants to fit in without pounding shots, and the closest he can get without officially joining the party is socializing with every person at the door.

Some students once told him they wanted to take a poll about who was more popular at IU: Roger, or an IU football or basketball player.

“It’s funny. I wonder who would win,” Roger said.

Students cheer for these players from the sidelines and wear their jerseys to class, but it’s Roger who knows their names and smiles the widest of smiles when they walk into the bar.

“I have no idea what I want to do with my life, all I know is that I don’t want to have a job. I want to have a career, and you can’t have a career without a high school and college education,” Roger said.

Before he gets that career, he checks students’ IDs as his eyes wander to the sides to make sure no one is causing trouble inside. You can tell he enjoys the thrill. His feet move in place. He’s ready to run inside if he has to.

***

It’s about 1 a.m., the crowds start strolling to Sports, girls’ arms are linked with boys’ as they take out two forms of ID and hand it to Roger.

If you’re younger than 21, it leaves your hands as slowly as possible, and Roger said he can tell.

He’s not an amateur. When he holds up your ID — the smaller you next to the larger you — he looks at faces. He analyzes bone structure, eye and hair color
and height.

Roger, 28 years old and originally from South Bend, rolls up his lime green shirt. He pulls up his baggy pants that make him look even shorter than he really is. His shoelaces are the same green, making him stand out as a bouncer.

When girls try and hug him, he responds with a delicate tap on the back, and when guys lean in, his posture becomes perfect as if he is trying to show he’s a real
man’s man.

His earpiece is in as he puts one finger to it, either trying to hear what someone on the other end is saying, or because he wants to look the part.

***

It’s now 1:30 a.m. and Sports is packed. Girls are dressed in ’80s gear from a theme party they went to earlier.

“I love you Roger,” a young wide-eyed girl slurs to him as she looks for her ID in her bag that is crowded with numerous lipsticks, crumbled up dollar bills that never made it into her wallet and a BlackBerry with a bright pink case.

She hugs him as if she hasn’t seen him since last year.

“They give me hugs, but how much do they really know about me, and how much do I really know about them? You’re not sending me gifts on my birthday,” Roger said.

He keeps his distance because he can’t get attached to thousands of new students each year.

They come and go, and he stays.

He has been working at Sports for three years, five days a week, from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m.

Roger came to work at the bar when his brother who worked there went off to Iraq.

He helped him get a job as a bar back.

Roger said he keeps everybody at a distance, because “everything is temporary in a college town.”

“I will probably be more memorable to them. So many come and go, and you just get overwhelmed by the memories.”

His memories might overwhelm him, but on a Friday night as the line of students wrap around the block, he looks far from overwhelmed.

“It’s hard to gauge a friendship in a setting like this,” Roger said and paused to elaborate. “You know, a wasted setting.”

***

It’s getting late in the night, and the clock hits 3 a.m. The floor is pounding with high heels tip toeing around the two-floor complex.

Roger wanders throughout, but never gets in the middle of the crowd.

People don’t walk, they wander, swaying a little bit to the left or right, laughing at jokes that aren’t funny, trying to order drinks after last call and slowly making their way out when they realize the lights have been turned on and the cleaning men are already sweeping away their mess.

It’s now 20 minutes before everyone has to leave, and Roger stands in the street as if traffic doesn’t exist, talking to his boss and to a police officer.

A young guy walks past the black rope. Roger runs after him as if he’s committed a felony. It’s a false alarm.

He has a stamp. He just left his ID at the bar.

“I just have to make sure. Just doing my job,” Roger said as he shrugged his shoulders.

At 4 a.m., he will go home. He will be back at 4 p.m. the next day, and it’s only a few hours later that students will see his face again.

“No bars are as big as Sports in Bloomington,” Roger said. “I’ve never been to one as cramped. I don’t like getting stuck on people, and here I can disappear into the crowd. It’s like going into a rave. I can flow through the crowd real easy and not be found.”