Hi, kid. Welcome back to the bar with a piano and no family restaurant, the sinking speakeasy where the non-smoking section is the fucking cellar. The hotel for hitch-hikers on the South of Hell Circular. This is the place where you'll find your applause, where pride is hung out with the mattresses to dry and we lie crouched together and slouching towards midnight, waiting for the click, the fingersnap moment when suddenly we care more about the people who're with us than the day we shared with them and, with the suits taking their rejuvenating hours and the contented sleeping their long sleeps, we are free to feel good about the soiled, beautiful stragglers bringing to the bar their disjointed stories and their leftovers of love.
Welcome back to the bar that meant what it said but can't remember what that was. That's integrity, dig? We just know we told you how welcome you are here, and if we forgot, then we meant it and that's more than most. 'We,' is Pete, the Stepney Psychopath who does the door here and walks the ladies home, and Mike, your barman for this evening. Holy fucking damn it is good to be drunk at the end of the week. It is not exactly a tragedy to find yourself drunk on a school night either, but the mornings are so painful it mars the night before. You dig the 'false dawn'? Okey, this is a conversational legerdemain from the Mean Street phrase book. You know how when you've been tucking into it for a treat or maybe hitting it hard and you wake suddenly to find it's five ayem? Oh, you know it's good, for although you don't want to leave the stained nest of your bed blankets for a piss, when you realise you're awake and it's five and your head is running still with all the right tastes of booze, and you thought it was getting-up time and it's still a late party, that's the false dawn. The part-timers, day-trippers and itinerant imbibers will sleep for hours and wake feeling dizzy but you're ahead of that game and always have been. This is the time to tread with care, toots. Don't get carried away by those young spurs who think they know what they're doing and are still playing games with shots. Don't join them. This is one of the few moments when kids like us get to meditate, the hour of magic for people who get thrown out of holy occassions. When they're snoring the morning and wrapped around each other's sweaty shirts, 'comedy' cosmetic graffitti on their crewcut heads, the drunks are sidling like lame sailors towards the ladies who have interesting stories to tell. You have to remember that you are not going in their direction. If you're not going to rent their cancer wisdom and treasure a healthy heart like it was made of something precious, then fuck all their advice and embrace the insomnia and the poverty. Fuck, have you not felt richer finding paper in your pocket as the last round gets reeled in than any of these rat-race motherfuckers picking like jealous monkeys on each other's suits, the pinstripe abacus of their fucking affluence?
May I address the bar? I would like to recommend some of the things that have made this week go by, and it is time for Pete to eye the doorway for Peelers while we endorse some products. Number one is mobile telephones. It's nice being in touch with people who are in the pub rather than sitting in kitchens or on stairwells wishing they were. It's good to leave it off and pretend you're out, since as they're portable that means out of your clothes rather than out of the house and people so have a habit of making your reputation for you if you don't do it yourself. Next up is Co-op scotch. You know, whilst a rich and dignified barman would never let anything but Jim Beam pass his lips on nights like these, there is something cosy about the drab sugary flare of scotch that gives you a litre and takes less than a Dickens from your purse. I guess Malborors are still behaving themselves, but nothing comes close to a Lucky Strike. Thanks to the you-know-who's who have provided the barman with things he needs, ain't going to show you up in here, but you kids who know what to give know it never goes to waste. On the bookshelf this week we've had A Humument, courtesy of Edinburgh's Pot Laureate. On the jukebox this week we've had The Who and, oddly enough, Pink Floyd. I say oddly enough, but there goes a band you never think you're in the mood for, aye? Then you're listening to The Wall and you want to lock yourself in your bedroom, drink snakebite and howl "You don't understand me," at anyone over the age of twenty five who tries to talk to you. If it's Meddle on the go, who wants to do anything more than knock the cap off one of those new, bigger bottles of Budweiser they've started selling, settle on the porch and chew on a strong cigarette? Oh, and move away from the sodden rural clutter of this fucking ridiculous country. This week's Leonard Cohen album is Various Positions.
Every other day he's with us. He reckons their relationship's not working out. Who can tell? He bought Debs a gift, May was pissed off with him. It was too expensive. Pete came to the rescue on that one, pointed out to her that America spent less on defeating the Nazis than it did on getting a guy in a diving suit to stand on the moon and say 'Guess we were right, guys, it's just a fucking big rock.'
Anyhow, Mr. Once-a-month was in the other day, got a nice early start in. Spent the day saying how he wasn't needed back at his place. May is wee bit of an independent, dig? He was talking about infidelity, reckons he knows what it's like. Betraying those kids him and May used to be. He's in here, mulling this over and May's off doing whatever it is that he used to like before it took over. Next to him, right, is Debs. She's talking about the sky. Always been a wee bit flaky, she really digs sunsets and a big fat moon. She's saying to me, "I wish sometimes I could just step onto the pavement with my glass and point the moon out to someone, know what I mean? Not you and Pete, no offence, but you don't volunteer anything, you wouldn't put yer arm around me and know what I mean and stick around, would you? Now, your barman is a patient man, but this was too much. Debs is something of an emotional hypochondriac, love. I decided to take a cigarette break. I put a bottle of vodka on the bar and said to the both of them "Help yourselves."
Mr. Once-a-month looked at her astonished and poured himself a drink.
"Who the fuck are you?" said Debs in her low gurgle.
When I came back he was waiting in a booth, one of my favourites. It's kind of behind the door, where the doorway juts in. He was looking at the moon, which I have to admit was making the night look rather good. I took up my stool as Debs came back from the exit trough. She sniffed like a malingering adolescent and said something I didn't catch. There was a spill of silver under her eye as she faced the door. She grabbed her bag and cigarettes and wandered unsteadily into the street. As I was picking up the mats and picking up where they left the bottle I spotted a cigarette pull under her glass. It said I'm by the window and I want to sit with you. Make my risk worthwhile.
Don't know what the fuck he was on about, but it did make me laugh to see his face when he came back to the bar to see why she hadn't joined him.
This week at the bar
Okey, it's been a frantic week here at the bar. Not that you care, and neither should you. This is your time off, toots, if I catch you leaving anything but crumbs and a tip there'll be all sorts of awkwardness. The soaks have been picking through the obsessive catalogues of their lives like apprentice ghosts. Mr. Once-a-month and May have been in as well. Mr. Once-a-month used to come in here on his payday, and May was cool about this. Very cool, she'd go off and spend her booster and let him off the leash. He'd settle in for the long spell with the jobbing pot-valiants, and me and Pete. Shady would drop by on occassion, looking like a hammered steak with a smile, bites out of his knuckles. Anyhow, most recently we haven't been seeing Mr. Once-a-month on paydays. He's been taking May out, buying little treats and trinkets behind her back and drinking in restaurants with her.
Okey, I'm closing up. Help yourselves to the cellar.
That's all from the bar that doesn't look after itself. Don't stay away too long- if the weather doesn't improve there'll be more from us before too long. Cheers to the deserters for giving me and Pete a lean calendar and a fat cellar. Cheers to the villains for giving the world a little colour. Now, who fancies another drink?