'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.
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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.

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Yep, that's how it happened.

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