Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Porky's Dive

A small, grimy, dimly lit room containing a pool table, a juke box, an ATM, a small, staggering throng of men, Janx and I. With the addition of a few beer taps and a wall's worth of bottom shelf liquor, I guess you could call it a bar.

Janx is knee deep in it, hustling free drinks from a mid-life crisis situation. She's making all his dreams come true by listening to his smartphone app ideas. She's running circles around him, but he's too fucked up and stunned by her youth and attention to care.

While I'm genuinely impressed at her ability to talk to anyone, hustle, and have a good time, I don't have the patience for it tonight. I'm getting on a plane tomorrow morning for Switzerland and need to get most of my packing done. I'm going through the list in my head when I'm interrupted.
"You like beef jerky?"
A skinny man with close cropped hair and thick rimmed glasses throws the inquiry my way. I might have thought it had been tossed with the kind of detached casualness of two flies passing time at the same corpse except, despite what his unlikely svelte appearance might suggest, he's got the intensity of a butcher. Sweat glistens on his brow.
"Sure do."
I take a piece from his boney fingers and set my molars to work until savory juice trickles onto my tongue. Tastes like beef and bourbon.
"Mmm. 'S good."
He hands me another dark scrap, with pepper this time. A chewing moment of silence is paid in the destruction of the magnificent and delectable beast with four stomachs.
"You wanna go out back and make out?"
Still chewing, I look the guy over. This time tomorrow I'll be with Fangs, last thing I need is bar fly all over me.
"Thanks. No."
His face twitches in swift, mighty disappointment and he beelines for the door. I wonder how often the very direct approach works for him. I don't feel bad. Between the jerky and his game, I'm sure he does alright.

The leather upholstered stool is empty only for a moment before he is replaced like a shark's tooth. A bigger, younger man wearing a trucker hat approaches. He's less sure of himself than the last gentleman, but he's motivated by his friends over by the pool table and plenty of liquid courage.
"So you're going to Switzerland, huh? Wanna drink or a shot er somethin to celebrate?"
I really shouldn't.
"I'll take a Jameson and a Guinness; Here's hoping I make it to Ireland." 
His childlike grin that follows my toast betrays the fact that he did not think I would accept his offer -- he gives the bar an energetic pound with of the fist to show his rejuvenation.
"One of each, eh? Alrighty, 'tender, put 'em up!" 
Janx leans over, all smile and charm.
 "That's real nice of you, but this lady's gotta get home -- she's still gotta pack."
Bless 'er, she's trying to save me from myself. I divert my focus from the shark's teeth to listen in on her conversation. She's still hustling the drunk. It's a little hard to watch her shoot fish in a barrel. She does it with a shotgun. But believe me when I say she's not trying.
"I'll give you five dollars if you can guess what instrument I play."
The fading baby-boomer staggers back and forth. The task of guessing anything is too great. He just wants her to keep talking.
"I'll give you five dollars to tell me."
He hands her five sweaty, splayed out ones.
She looks at them, looks at him, looks at me, and looks at him again with a grin before putting the money in her pocket.
"I'm keeping this five dollars."
"I want you to."
"But you still have to guess."
"Ghuaghhhh...."
His moan sounds like a slow bleed from the side, like a deer having been hit by a car. He can only come up with cello and mandolin as instrument guesses before he gets bored and starts nervously talking about himself, claiming to have played with the Grateful Dead before and whatnot. He keeps snorting and sniffling, and the way he's talking, I think he's on drugs. Then he looks at me straight in the face and says:
"You are so beautiful. Were you beautiful as a child?"

I put in my notice at the bar. When I get back from Switzerland I'm going to try to find a real job, ideally one that calls upon my intellect, my degree, my talents other than my taste buds, looks, and social graces. I don't want to wake up realizing that I squandered my youth swatting at flies. It's not exactly an honest living, taking their money, playing Rumpelstiltskin, nor is it a service. Either way, I'd rather be in a shit hole like Porky's Dive by hilariously misguided choice on occasion than have the name of it's ilk on the top of my checks.


Janx doesn't know which way is up either. Perhaps that's why we are such good company for one another. We were sitting outside the bar, smoking cigarettes, and discussing our lives' paths when she said:
"I dunno. I've been trying to read the stars... but they're in fucking Spanish, man."
Just then, we were approached by a stranger, who asked Janx for a cigarette.
"Not so fast. This cigarette wasn't cheap. You can't get something for nothin' these days."
"What, you want a quarter?"
"I want something better than a quarter. I want a joke. You tell me a joke, you get a cigarette. Easy peezy."
"Ahhh... ok. [pause] Christ. Uhm... I... I don't know any jokes." 
"Everyone knows at least one joke." 
"I can't think of one."
"Not even a knock-knock joke?"
Poor guy was suffering.
"No. Can I please just have a cigarette?"
Janx is not one to bend in her stipulations.
"Gotta play by the rules, man."
"I just came from my grandma's house..." 
"What, G-ma doesn't tell jokes? Come on man, you've got to give me something to work with here. Help me help you."
"She's very sick. And Russian."
"So say something in Russian, then laugh, and I'll pretend it's a joke." 
"I think she's dying. I don't feel like laughing."  
"Well, if you feel like a cigarette, then..."
He looked at her, and she looked back at him. I saw in her eye a glint that makes me wonder if she is a psychological and sexual sadist. He sighed, and started his soliloquy, in Russian. After a while he stopped, but no, he could not laugh. Janx did her best overdrawn fake belly laugh, just to make the situation as uncomfortable as possible.

This is the point at which I stepped in.
"I have a joke for you: Why did the chicken cross the road?" 
Janx's eyes lit up, wide with anticipation: yes -- a player of the game!
"Because it wanted a fucking cigarette."
She took out her bright yellow pack and handed me a cigarette as she stared with dominance and demonstration into the eyes of the stranger. She over-annunciated:
"Hilarious. Now you get a cigarette."  
The guy looked like he was going to cry. I threw the cigarette at him.
"Get outta here." 
He quickly slunk away into the parking lot and became nothing more than a tiny puff cloud of smoke rising from between parked cars.
"Some people man, they got no sense of humor."
"Can't take a fucking joke." 
Bad apples hang out at bars. We're a couple of them.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Cheers

Waxing the lustre of morning's sunlight into the bar rail with a damp terry-cloth rag, I imperceptibly smirk in self-congratulations. I've made it through the early hours, and without incident at that. I stand back and sigh, admiring my work: I can see my own reflection in the wood and I don't find that despicable at all. It'll be another half hour before the lunch crowd comes to muck it up. This is the quiet time, the eye of the storm -- after the flurry of opening and restocking, before the rush of service.  I can afford to steal this moment and keep it to myself.

A sip of coffee. The warm brown liquid hugs me from the inside out with soothing. Okay, organize: One medium, round, orange. One-half, small, pink. One big, long, white. Two long, big, reds. I stare for a moment at this handsome handful, then say to no one, "Bottoms up." One fell swoop, they all disappear. I'm a magician.

Before I forget, I set a reminder for my next round. It will be several hours from now and consist of one medium, round, orange. One big, long, pink.
Ten. Nine. Eight. (I'm already starting to feel it. Must have forgotten breakfast.)

Seven. Six. Five.  (I love this. The swift creep.)

Four, Three, two, one... Blast off
                    and now i'm an astronaut        

 that's better.

____________________________________

I have a problem with the way that psychiatric medications are portrayed in media and perceived in society.
I am not a zombie.

People sometimes say I'm quiet. I have a lot of thoughts. I quess I'm breathing shallow. I'm thankful I finally stopped gasping.
___________________________________

CONVERSATION WITH P-DOC

- How are the meds treating you?
- Well, at first I was experiencing a certain side effect, but then it went away... I think it had been helping, actually, so I'm a little disturbed that it neutralized. I was calmer, more pleasant, better rested, I think.
- How would you describe the side effect?
- Feeling "high as fuck".
- ...
- I miss that.
- Ok.
- Can we bring that back?
- Are you drinking?
- A little.
- ...
- Some.
- ...
- Excessively.
- Alcohol is a depressant, and it will counteract the meds. If you drink, all you have left is bare, naked brain. That's why they haven't been working for you anymore.
- ...
- What you were feeling wasn't "high" -- that's close what a normalized brain might feel like. Your brain doesn't make serotonin or dopamine like it should, so you wouldn't know that.
- Huh... so you're saying it sucks to be me.
- *sigh* I'm saying that you're something like Van Gogh: a highly creative individual with manic depression and anxiety mood disorders. Back in his day, there were no psychiatric medications... What I'm saying is, if you continue to treat your imbalances with art and alcohol, you're going to cut your ear off, or worse.
- There's some true romance.
- There's nothing romantic about syphilis and insanity. 

______________________________

Everyone knows Sam "Mayday" Malone's story from Cheers: He was a Red Sox relief pitcher with a drinking problem that ruined his career. He bought a friendly establishment called Cheers and made a new life for himself as a sober barkeep, ensuring a Sisyphean fate eternally reminding him of his shortfalls, masked by the hi-jinks of the wacky regulars. However, it's Diane's story that I relate to and is often over looked.

In the first episode, she is swept inside the dive by her fiancé and boss, a university professor to whom she is assistant. By the end of the episode, she has been abandoned under Sam's watch at the bar with a half consumed bottle of champagne while her lover has fled to Barbados with another woman. Her entire world shattered, she sighs and rolls over into Sam's barely professional arms and he takes the prissy, verbose, overeducated Diane on as a cocktail waitress at Cheers. This topsy-turvy, odd couple dynamic drives the early portion of the series.

My own professional track also having been derailed in a mirroring fashion, I may have been watching the series as motivational material -- a little fantastical fiction to adopt and get into character for work.

I, like Diane, don't belong in the bar. But if I imagine the laugh-track and the moral-of-the-story to take home at the end of every shift, I can trick myself to think it quirky, fun, and therefore bearable. Every day I count the sticky, wrinkled bills in my pocket, which helps greatly. Identity differentiation, cosplay, theater, anything... A few more days, a few more dollars I didn't see before. Keep it to that. No investment, no attachment.

It's not an uncommon feeling that food and beverage service industry jobs are more demeaning than sex work. But while the pay would be greater at that, there are several external factors that keep my clothes on professionally. Fangs has stated that he would have too many fires to start, for one. Next, I would have to shift professional role models from Cheers' Diane to YouTube's Jenna Marbles. Perhaps the generational gap is too broad for a sensical comparison to be drawn, but let me assure you, the slope starts at sad and descends into a valley of much worse.

Sobering up hasn't been an issue since I adjusted my meds and discovered a surprising fondness for non-alcoholic beer. I like having a clear head now. Whiskey and I are ex-lovers, parted on good terms, with the very brief and occasional stolen fling... but we don't make more of it than it is. We aren't meant to be and I know that now.

Sure, occasionally I get the urge. But I have to look at the bottle and say to it: "You, Sir, will not make me feel better."

All the same, I am a bartender. I have a craft, a trade, a nightly one act. In tribute to Fangs, Cheers, and professional ennui, here is my take on a Boston Sour -- a scotch cocktail for everybody. The egg white whips up into a frothy cold meringue and gives the drink a pleasing viscosity on the tongue. It's gotten great reviews so far at the bar, and is heading towards menu permanency. I invite you to try it out for yourself and do your best-worst fake Boston accent while you enjoy it.

BOSTON SOUR
2 oz. Johnny Walker Black Label
3/4 oz. honey syrup (1/2 honey, 1/2 water)
2 oz. sweet and sour
1 egg white

Shake all ingredients vigorously with ice for about 20 seconds. Strain in chilled sour glass (or wine glass). Garnish with orange slice and skewered cherry. Cheers.