Sunday, May 11, 2008

Secret Truth #1: No Such Thing As 'Adults'

There are things I learned as a bartender, and chances are you will too, that changed the entire way I view the world around me. I’m not just talking about the fact that, in America at least, the great and mythic cocktail known as the Martini is usually nothing more than vodka or gin in a fancy glass with a vegetable on a stick attached for good measure. No, what I am talking about is unlocking some of the most important, eye-opening secrets of mankind you can imagine.

Hog shite, you cry? Well then, let’s dance shall we? Here’s a good first example of secret bartender knowledge for you.

SECRET BARTENDER TRUTH #1: There is no such thing as an ‘Adult’.

There, I’ve said it and its fucking true. ‘Oh, well then what the hell are all these things in suits and SUV’s moving to and fro around me, blocking up the freeways and grocery cue’s? WELL THEY’RE NOT BLOODY ADULTS, I WILL TELL YOU THAT!!!

Now, before anyone goes all Orson Welles-listener on me, let me explain.

Growing up in this society you are told, shown, and constantly reinforced with the idea that after a certain age you will become this magical creature we call ‘An Adult’. You’re a kid for only so long with endless days of play and imagination, but then suddenly you are in school and year after year you are being ingrained with this idea that you have to start looking forward to the future, when you become this magic ‘Adult’ - the supposed pinnacle of what ‘we’ as ‘beings’ are meant to become. Childhood, even the play, is really only a way-stop in the striving for this ultimate state of being, and so effectively useless. We are supposed to cram all of our hopes and dreams into eleven years or so and then start sweeping up the toys and doing ‘important’ things, because ‘Adults’ are responsible; they bring home the bacon, make the tough decisions and never act like children. ‘Adults’ know that dreams are for the young at heart and in fact the ultimate evolution is to realize just how you can fit into the paradigm of the world around you and contribute.

Right? Have I got this at least close to the mark?

Well, it’s all bullshit. A myth. A fairytale.

Remember that as a bartender I had an older crowd. This was my advice to you, to seek this same kind of a situation for factors listed in one of the diatribes below. If you do this you will see in no time that there is no such thing as this fictitious animal. People act like teenagers (read: ID, or kicking screaming pleasure-principle) regardless of the fact that they have reached a certain age and acquired responsibilities such as careers, homes, cars, families, debt, etc. If this ‘Adult’ does exist at any point it is for those who graduate from the ‘education’ or ‘training’ phase of their lives into the ‘real world’ (another biting myth we are crammed with for most of our young lives) and try to act according to those stringent mores and modes in order to cast off their past and remake themselves. But for most, this does not last and a few years after settling into the 'desired' routines of 'Adult' life they revert..

I always likened the bar, especially on nights with music, to a high school cafeteria that served booze. People would run around and goose each other, cheat on their dates, pound a drink when no one was looking, dance like a moron, start fights, do drugs, yell and scream at one another, sneak away to smoke a cigarette so their wife didn’t find out, make out, fondle and sometimes more depending on how dark their particular corner was (I DO NOT envy housekeeping, I will tell you that). Now tell me that any of those people, no matter how they act during the day, could be classified as an ‘Adult’ according to even just part of this list? I mean, the occasional slip-up is going to come, but when it’s night after night, week after week? Uh-ah.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not to say there is anything wrong with this. I myself am not an adult and I have never wanted to be, nor will ever want to be one. It’s always been more important to me to grow and change, as opposed to this idea that after a certain point I just automatically cross some invisible finish line and find myself all grown up and on the other side of Childhood’s End. However there is a danger to believing this will simply automatically happen and so consider this merely a warning for those who may be reading this believing in what they’ve been told. Put another way, if you think you don't have to steer the boat, that it will reach land on its own, you are doomed to ride the open seas for the rest of your gull-pecked days.

In order to do this job you have to be inducted, and in order to be inducted you have to learn the secret truths. Not only learn them to say them, but learn them to apply to the rest of your life and especially your gig, so as not to waste it. Now what are you waiting for, go out and serve those kiddies Scotch and Bahama Mama's!!!

Thursday, May 8, 2008

'And you may ask yourself, how did I get here???'

How does one become a bartender? Many ways, but this is how it happened to me, in full, long-winded, parenthetical-ridden widescreen confessional.
......

What percent of Americans go to bars? I’m talking on a regular basis here? Who's got a favorite pub? Look at the U.K. That’s a pub culture. It’s practically the glue that holds their communities together.

Drinking is a way of life.

How could you live this life and not have something to cling to; an ‘out’, some avenue behind conscious thought. Something to make the very air that you breathe tingle against your arms and make even the littlest junk feel oh so important.

I’m a bartender and I say everyone has they’re vice. It’s my job (and pleasure) to serve it to you, and its my very great pleasure to read you these stories from my vantage point and amuse you, sicken you, and straight up bewilder you. So please, proceed, laugh, cry, yell, scream, but definitely, pour yourself a drink and raise a toast to those who sow it all together.

…………………note: this was penned sometime within the first year or so I started.................................

I walk out of KARL’S on 95th St. at 2:22 in the morning and it’s unseasonably warm for Chicago. A nice thunderstorm wind is blowing everything around in that electric kind of way that comes with the first signs of spring. I’ve got a buzz and two Hacker Pschorr’s to go and have to pause just before I get to my car. This is the kind of weather that connects me to this physical plane. In this kind of weather I fell in love, found The Cure, lost a friend, left the country, fucked, made love, jerked off, snorted coke, recorded an album, beat some ass and drank a beer. My keys in my hand, I remember what it was like when I worked a regular job…

Six years through college working at a certain Unfulfilling Packaging Service and when I received the chance to jump gigs and start bartending I took it. One of my best friends, Sonny, had been holding down the gig as assistant weekday bartender at a local Southside hotel’s posh restaurant for almost three years. When impulses of change brought him looking for a new job the woman he worked with, Eye* as we will call her, started looking for his replacement she set her sights on me. I had gotten to know Eye quite well in the three years I visited my friend (hrmph, free drinks, ahem) and she saw me as a nice and easily moldable understudy. Looking back on it now all I can say is thank God! I sucked it in, embraced the fear of change and walked in to my supe at the Package Service and gave my two weeks. Then I took the next two nights off to train behind the bar. I had worked in a factory setting for six years at that point and hardly considered myself a people person, so I had to find out what I was in for.

I trained the next night, Tuesday, and went home happy. It’s not too bad. It always sucks to be the new guy on the block, not knowing where everything is and what not, but this was actually fun. Pour drinks, chat with regulars, etc. I shyly found myself thinking maybe I was more of a people person than I had previously given myself credit for.

Next night was Wednesday, a busy night on the south side of Chicago. Hump day as it is commonly referred to. All your raging alcoholics and socialites cringe half in anticipation, half resignation to having two days left until the weekend. The hotel has a live band, a two-piece called Lake Street who play Wednesday nights (Fridays and Saturdays as well) and cater to entertaining the best and brightest of the local middle-aged adventurers. As I walked in the door for the first time in uniform Sonny flags me down.

“Sink or swim buddy, tonight’s gonna be a rough one. Eye just called in sick for the first time in, like twenty years so it’s just you and me man. I’ll split my tips even with you but you're gonna have to try to keep up, okay?”

“Fuck.”

How I made it through the next couple of hours I don’t know. I did okay but there was still an acceptance issue between some of the regulars and me. Eye’s been here a long time. Sonny’s just gained acceptance at three years. Everyone is nice and interested in me, but that's where it stops; they don’t want me pouring their drinks or taking their money because I don’t know the routine. And it was busy as shit on top of it. I mean we were two or three deep at some points. Drinks literally flew from our hands, and there was no time for delicate social introductions, compensations or explanations.

Sink or swim.

By the end of that night, when Sonny counted out the tips there’s something I didn’t expect. He hands me my half and when I count it back I find that there’s almost as much in my hands now, after one ten hour shift, as there would be after one week at the Service.

Sonny quickly interrupted my astonishment.

“Eye’s going to be out tomorrow night as well. Look, I know you’re supposed to go back to your other job tomorrow, but I could use you and …”

“Dude you don’t even have to say another word. Let’s go get a drink at one of the four O’clock bars, eh? We need to celebrate my promotion in life.”

So this is the funny thing right? It’s like quitting smoking. It’s tough at first and then time lapses and all of a sudden you’ve got the hang of it. Not just that, you’re situated. You crash and stomp like a drunkard through a museum and you fuck up orders and accidentally say the wrong thing and feel like shit and then all of a sudden there’s someone else whose new and they’re looking to latch onto anyone they can for help with the little things and BOOM! You realize you can help them because now you have all the answers to all those same questions you had when you were the new guy, because you’re not the new guy anymore.

.......

Yep, that's how it happened.

........
*obviously all names have been changed to protect yada yada yada.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Money in the pocket...

Okay all You prospective bartenders, here's a serious part of the conversation, so listen up. When You get a gig in the service industry You ALWAYS HAVE MONEY IN THE POCKET. This is one of the most amazing and useful aspects of the job, and even if you have a day that seems solely populated by busloads of customers from hell, with the help of your regulars by the end of the night, or at the very least the next day, you will be counting the money and remembering why exactly it is you deal with douche bags who say things like, 'this Virgin Pina colada isn't strong enough' or 'you didn't make this Cosmo right, it tastes like booze'. Really. Seriously. Truly.

However, as with most aspects of life on this tempestuous planet of ours, what is the GOOD thing is also, in some why, the BAD thing. Oh yes my children, I can hear you now:

"How can having money in the pocket be a BAD thing?"

Let me explain.

I used to go to this liquor store on 65th and Cicero every Wednsday night after work. I always hung with friends after work on Wednsday, and when I hadn't planned ahead and needed to acquire beer at 2AM this was a pretty good ticket. It was a shitty little hole in the wall on the Southside of Chicago, the kind of place where there are always these bum-ass looking motherfuckers with filthy clothes and filthier beards hanging out looking at the porno magazines readily on display in a spinner rack on the floor.* Scum hole that it was this particular posion shop had two things working in its favor. 1) It sold until 4 AM and, 2) it had a pretty decent beer selection. GOOSE ISLAND, HOEGARDEN, BASS, etc. And actually, the third thing it had going was a friendly staff.

But wait, here's where the issue comes in.

So let's say you get your gig, your working late and you start frequenting a place like this. The more you come in the more the guy behind the counter starts to recognize you. You're not a vile retard like most of his customers so you maybe start a little bit of conversation here and there. If you're not careful you start thinking of him as an okay guy, dropping your guard and forgetting that he's working in a dead end job, in the middle of a shit neighborhood, and you're walking in every week with a couple hundred dollars in your pocket.** Maybe you're not a cynic who thinks the human race is, by a , a festering sewer, and pretty soon it seems perfectly natural that the guy is asking you about what you do, as, in my case at least, I was coming in in uniform (those cheesy tuxedo shirts and black slacks really do make you stick out like a sore thumb next to filth-Henry at the spinner rack). From here he might wait a couple weeks before he asks how you do over there, you know, money-wise, as if he's innocently exploring career options (yeah, sorry, that teardrop tattoo is pretty much gonna count you outta any of these gigs in this town at least). You see what's going on here?

YOU HAVE MONEY. YOU ARE A TARGET. When I realized this I quickly jotted the lesson down and put it under my pillow, then stopped going to the place.

Now, I know its paranoia, but I've always said a healthy dose of paranoia is a good thing. It will keep you alive and out of stupid situations. And these situations can really catch you unaware. Let's talk about another one.

If you are a single guy and you are a bartender, you will be looking to score. END OF STORY. To go a bit backwoods vernacular for a moment, 'There ain't no innocence in this gig, and if there is when you come in it will get wrung right the fuck out of you.' You're surrounded by decadence and it wears off. Your job, if you want to survive with an unscathed soul and face, is to play, but keep your fucking head on straight while you do so. That being said, here's another warning.

Bartending one night a beautiful blonde comes in and sits down by herself. Orders a drink and sits there. Now after a couple months of this you learn to temper the predator's eye with common sense - why is she alone? Girls don't often come into bars by themselves, especially ones that look like this, so THERE MUST BE A REASON WHY SHE IS ALONE. I go about my business serving people, watching all my regulars and some dopes I don't know go up and talk to her. They all buy her drinks, she accepts every one, and they all cycle off as it goes nowhere. Eventually she tells one of my reg's that she's interested in me. Now, the first thing I think is, 'why?'. I start talking to her and eventually find she's pretty cool, but suspicion lingers. Closing time comes around and she asks me if I want to go for drinks at a 4 AM place. I cautiously say I know of one, and after my closing duties we take off.

The whole time at the other bar she's getting drunker and drunker and so am I. However, I continually avoid ordering us shots even though she's mighty gung-ho about the idea. Need to keep one foot out of oblivion, see? After a while she starts talking about taking me back to her place and all I can think about is how she came into my bar, scoped out what kind of business was going on, how many regulars I was friendly with, how many drinks I bought her, how many more I bought her with money I earned that night with my tips. Be mighty convenient to scope out a bartender, make him think with his dick and bring him back to foreign turf where someone could be waiting to hit him over the head with a length of pipe and then the two of them could take the money in his pocket.

Again, paranoid? Maybe, but the situation warranted it, to avoid the possibility of trouble. Besides, if they're that into you, your bed is as good as theirs, eh?

.......

So the idea here is to recognize that like ol' Spidey said ' with great power comes great responsibility', only in this case its more like 'with great money comes great opportunity to get fucked'. When you start making that dough watch your ass because there are all kinds of freaks, weirdo's and junkies out there to who $200 is worth setting a trap for.

........

*I tell you, nothing like pouring drinks all night and wandering into a seedy liquor store at 2:15AM only to see bizarro santa claus reading Club International, the spittle hanging from his lower lip like one of those slimey hand truck stop toys and the clerk hurrying to put up a fraudulent 'OUT OF ORDER' sign on the door before old man claus can sneak off with Ms. Herpes November and rub a quick one out before returning to his full time job of walking up and down Cicero Avenue.

** Leave it in the car? In this neighborhood? Nope. Better off on your person where you can defend it.