Drunks and Alcoholics

I don’t believe in God, as a general rule. It seems strange to me, the idea of a being outside of existence who controls and manipulates events in our universe. Nevertheless, there are times when I think I see evidence of a higher being. These are the days when everything is going so horribly wrong that it can’t possibly be coincidence, and the only way to explain it is the intervention of a malicious deity with a serious grudge.
Last Saturday, the 9th, was one such day. I don’t want to bore you with the details: suffice it to say that it was my next-to-last day as the cook at Mac’s; it was stupid busy; the manager was on the warpath all day; the public health showed up (which did not improve the manager’s mood much); and the customers were all extremely drunk and demanding (including one guy who insisted that he was Puff Daddy’s brother, and therefore deserved food after I had finished cooking for the night). By the time the kitchen closed, I was pretty frazzled. So, halfway through cleaning up, I decided to take a break. I got a glass of scotch and went out onto Mac’s very nice deck to read, enjoy the warm night, and get a little calm-down buzz going.
As I mentioned in my introductory post, I am a librarian as well as a cook. I work at the Marshall University library (the Drinko library, as it happens). One of my more frequent patrons is a graduate assistant, who I see almost every day, and assist with her research. We’ve known each other casually for some time.
This young woman happened to be at Mac’s on the Saturday I mention, and saw me sitting on the deck, so she came over and talked to me. We had a fairly long conversation, ranging from school to what we’ve been reading to how much we hate our jobs. Anyway, at some point in the conversation, it occurred to me that she was making a pass at me. Now, I’m only 34, but I’m an extremely worn-out and beat-up 34, and I am not used to beautiful graduates in their mid-twenties finding me attractive. So, I’m thinking, “Fucking hell, splashy-splashy back.” (By the way, if you don’t know Eddie Izzard, all that was fucking funny, alright?).
She said, “Well, now that I know you work here, I’ll come down and see you more often.”
“That would be great. Oh, wait…I forgot, tomorrow’s my last day. I won’t be here.”
“Oh no, well, when will I see you, then?”
“Just come to Hank's.” I spend time in a lot of bars, but Hank's is home. I hang out there, the bartenders are all among my closest personal friends, I even work there sort of semi-officially.
“Do you go to Hank's? That’s a nice place. When are you usually there?”
“Oh, I’m there every night.” And she looked at me kinda strange, and then I realized that to an outsider that might sound kinda bad. She heard that I was at Hank's every night, and assumed I was a drunk, which turned her off a bit.

* * * * * * *

So, that’s what I’m talking about today. The very first thing you must know about bar culture is that we’re not all drunks. In fact, among the actual residents of bar culture (the people who live in bars), drunks are rather more the exception than the rule. This seems to be a difficult idea for outsiders to understand. Outsiders, after all, go to bars specifically to get drunk, and it doesn’t make sense to them that not everyone is like that. But while drinking is certainly an important part of what we do, the bar isn't just about drinking. It's our home, and we go there to spend time with each other.

Don’t get me wrong. We have no illusions about ourselves (or at least, not about our drinking). We are all alcoholics. No one could drink as much as we do without developing a chemical dependency. But alcoholics and drunks are not the same thing. To us, the idea of alcoholism carries no stigma. In fact, it's sort of a source of pride for us, that we engage in this “aberrant” and self-destructive behavior, and yet are able to hold down jobs, pay our bills, fulfill our responsibilities, even raise reasonably well-adjusted children. We drink considerable amounts, but we’re professional drinkers, and rarely drink to excess (I myself am rarely drunk in a bar). I would no more be offended by being called an alcoholic than by being called a librarian.

Not all alcoholics are drunks. In fact, most drunks aren’t alcoholics; their problem stems from not knowing enough about alcohol, not respecting its power enough. These people are amateurs. They come out, have a couple of shots, start feeling good, and think, “Well, if two shots make me feel this good, how good will I feel after ten?” These are the people who generally don't drink, but once or twice a month go to a bar and get hammered. Since real barflies are, by nature, unobtrusive, and since drunks tend to be very loud and occasionally violent (and therefore imprint themselves more firmly on the memory of those around them), the latter have become what people in our society think of when they think of bars. These are the people who ruin St. Patrick’s Day, Octoberfest, and New Year’s for barflies. I haven’t been out drinking on New Year’s since 1992…I usually refer to it as “amateur night.”

Barflies, on the whole, are quiet, decent people who see the world a little differently from everyone else. We aren’t cynics, despite the way we’re usually portrayed on film. In fact, we’re the least cynical people you’ll ever meet. It would be truer to say that we’re romantics; we want the world to be perfect and beautiful, and can’t bear the fact that it isn’t. In a sense, we’ve slipped out of modern society and created a sort of terra nova, a “place” without precise location that exists wherever a few of us are gathered together around a bottle of wine; a separate culture with its own morality, ethos, and rules, its own measure of success and value. We’re shadows in the real world, and the real world is a shadow to us, intruding on our consciousness vaguely, like clouds passing over the sun when you’re enjoying a spring picnic.

[The last two paragraphs have been deleted by the author, because I'm feeling bitchy. And no, Gerlach, that isn't your fault.]