BARTENDERS CAN BE GODS

In all honesty, the people who pour drinks in this city deserve more money, respect, and admiration. They are what keeps the city from erupting in fits of random violence and childish tantrums, and they make the police's jobs easier by being fair witnesses and inspired baby sitters. As well as gently letting your intoxicated ass know that enough is enough.


"I don't think you heard me when I said 'no'. It means 'no'."


As said by a steely woman, size small, to four drunken bros.
They had SO been looking forward to Manhattans! The Manhattan is, of course, beloved by every Bart Simpson fan, after that episode when he accidentally rolled down the stairs to the 'Legitimate Business Man's Club', where Fat Tony puts him to work mixing cocktails for the mob. A full shot of Bourbon, a little Vermouth, and a cherry. Shaken with ice and strained into a pantie glass. Bart Simpson is far more adult than the average San Francisco mid-twenties male.

Or mid-twenties female.

They kissed. They hugged. He tenderly stroked her posterior, she leaned against him, gazed up into his eyes, and softly, sweetly, vomited a full bucket-load into his open shirt. They were across the street in a doorway while I was smoking a pipe on my front steps after two in the morning.

At that hour I was still sober. One quick drink at the local, while out walking my non-existent dog. And a pipe filled with a rubbed Virginia of Scottish type made in Denmark for a German company.

My favourite drink, at that late hour, is a shot of strong coffee with ginger extract and panax notoginseng. It helps me sleep. But I have to make it at home, because bars standardly don't stock two out of three of those things, and have fairly shitty coffee in any case.

I cannot say that was the best smoke I've ever had. But it was probably in the top twenty or thirty, and made more memorable by the performance of many people a generation younger than myself, of whose futures I do not despair, because I am an unsympathetic old cock and consider them fairly hopeless.


"And she like, met a random guy who was super-douche ... "


Yeah, that sounds about right. They were probably a perfect match.

Nowadays I often take a nap in the evening for three or four hours before stepping out for a last smoke. My apartment mate does not like the smell of tobacco, and in any case watches the big breasted blonde slags of The Real Housewives in astounded wonderment at Caucasian behaviour in the early evening -- yes, my dear, they are white, like me, but no none of my people act like that; we landed here from a different planet -- and as both of our computers are in the teevee room, I am distracted from my important work (cruising Facebook for witty memes or news to be outraged about) by the quarreling vulgarity that entertains her Cantonese American soul.


For all of her years she is still quite innocent. Doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and finds white behaviour both shocking and fascinating.

I am a jaded old pus, and merely repulsed.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================