Barry's World
While Behrman's critics view him as a fast-talking huckster - that is, when they're not accusing him of either breaking promises or outright lying - his friends see him as a pint-sized bundle of charm, amusement and schmooze, always grabbing them around the shoulder or hugging and kissing them, grinning like he just won the trifecta, and usually armed with some corny, probably salacious quip or practical joke (like a golf putter with a blade shaped like a penis). "Barry's a character," one of his friends tells me with an uncontrollable chuckle, which is the typical response when Behrman's name is mentioned. But love him or not, anyone who's ever known him will tell you that Barry Behrman, a self-admitted control freak, plays by his own rules. "He lives alone in Barry's World," opines former Virginian Charlie Williams, who has known Behrman for over a dozen years and has in recent years become his leading critic. "And in that world, nothing can touch him or take away that smile. Life is always wonderful."
He seems to do what he wants when he wants. I experienced this first hand one night, when we went out to dinner at a hot spot along the Chesapeake Bay called the Lynnhaven Fish House. Pulling up to a packed-to-the-gills parking lot, Behrman suddenly saw a car backing out. Despite two forbidding signs - a Do Not Enter and a One Way pointed in the opposite direction - he went straight for the spot by driving through the exit. When I confronted him on this afterwards, he defended himself by saying, "Hey, I didn't run over anybody. There wasn't a lot of traffic. And I didn't have to honk my horn to get some old ladies out of the way."
He walks around bouncily with an air of invincibility and entitlement, like a politician who's held office for many years. And in these parts of Virginia, he's indeed something of a celebrity, a big fish in a small pond - both for having the best poolroom in the area as well as for putting on one of Chesapeake's biggest yearly events. He's known locally as BB, and in every nook and corner, he knows somebody. A bar owner here, a waitress there; a cashier here, the guy who pumps gas there. No matter where he goes, if he's not yelling a Hello at somebody, somebody is yelling one at him. And he presses the flesh wherever he goes and shoots the breeze with everyone from the owner to the janitor and smiles unendingly every step of the way. He's so well connected around here that there's little he can't get with a wink and a nod and a poke in the ribs. Which might've led to his undoing, filling him with a false sense of security, because in the end, no amount of masterful schmoozing could keep him from being tossed in the klink.
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