This place will drive you to drink
That’s what’s printed on my coffee cup that I keep at work. It’s a reminder of what I know I’m gonna have to do when I get home from the day job, it’s a reminder of what I, and I’m sure thousands (oh fuck it right, millions) of others, have to deal with on a daily basis; the ignorance and unoriginality of people coming into your life in a place that you have to be at in order to maintain something of a life, coming into your office area to steal the coffee you made and try to make with the useless and banal small talk: “Staying out of trouble? Having fun yet? Working hard??” Its annoying shit, dig? Most people I know at my day job who ask these questions don’t drink, in fact, they don’t do anything. Maybe shop at Wal-mart or Bed, Bath, and Beyond; also boring and unoriginal, they’re made for each other now that I think about it.
Sometimes people ask me if I’m going to the pub after work, I say ‘Well, of course I am.” And they giggle at that, one woman I work with called me an alcoholic, and I told her that I wasn’t.
“What makes you so different?” She asked.
“I don’t go to goddamn meetings and the only guilt I feel is not having more money.” I answered. “The only twelve steps I take are to the mens room.”
There are a lot of people at my job that drink though, maybe not as much as I do, but there are few that definitely drink more than me. I know of a couple of cats who keep bottles in their office, in desk drawers. There’s a guy who has a mini fridge stocked with bottles of wine, he and I get along well in times of stress.
Sometimes I see big fucking booze trucks outside my building, delivering boxes upon boxes of beer, wine and what have you, I always wonder where those boxes are going. I see people stumbling around, giggling at nothing, asleep in chairs in the forum. Those bastards are hiding things from me…
‘This Place Will Drive You to Drink’
Am I drinking right now? Damn straight I am. I’ve been in a bad mood all day, no surprise right? I spent the whole damn day waiting on a delivery that never came; I was hitting the bottle by three, not giving a damn. Then I heard the noise, the horror… I got a woman who lives below me who has a little child that I believe is possessed by a demon. I hear the child at night, sometimes two or three in the morning, wailing, screaming, screeching, and damning all living souls to hell. I can’t sleep with this going on; the only thing that helps is a beer or a shot, or both. Once the child begins with its damnation of parental superiority I begin with the Cutty Sark and a cigarette, it’s going to be a long night for both of us.
I got a guy lives in the apartment next to me, he sings opera at all hours. One Saturday morning after a night at the pub I was awakened by the sounds of an accordion and singing, some Italian opera tune, I thought I had thick walls that could block out a sonic boom, I was wrong. The hangover kicked in quickly and it took a pint to clear it all away, opera and all. I fell out on my couch, safe for the time being. But he’s back again when I wake up, doing his Carmen, his Don Giovanni, his Magic Flute bit. Schlitz sounds better than that any day of the bloody week. And I fucking hate Schlitz.
‘This Place Will Drive You to Drink’
They say that people drink to forget, and yeah, that’s damn true. Do you want to remember the girl (or for you single ladies, the guy) who turned you down for a date that day, or the fact that we have nothing but morons in political office? Shit, we have a beer baron for a mayor, but do we have a free beer day in town? HELL NO! He’d rather jump out of airplanes and roll around on scooters, and still make the rest of us pay for pints in his bar. Do you want to keep in mind the really shitty day you had at work, where everyone was on your ass about some business that you had nothing to do with? Of course not, go to the pub after work, you’ll feel better, and you may meet some bird (or dude, for the girlies) that’ll float your boat and raise the sail for ya, and you’ll forget all about the bullshit of the day.
Young kids in pubs now days think it’s just fun to get drunk, be stupid, get into fights and talk a lot of shit, and sure maybe it is, I guess that’s what my thought process was when I was young. Now, it’s more out of survival, to try and keep my sanity while everything else around goes to hell. As I get older I’ve come to realize more and more that people in general are simply insane, in their own way for each individual of course, but insane none the less. To be able to deal with them, you need some sort of medicine. Some people go with drugs, some with religion, but we all know where that gets them. Others go with the bottle, the bar “scene” whatever that means.
I think that the young ones don’t really know the ‘This place will drive you to drink’ motto yet, they still think that everything’s cool, and drinking is only for fun and bullshitting. Yeah, sure it is, for the time being, unless they do something really foolish and have to pay the price for it, but that’s growing up. Not that those that are professional drinkers don’t fuck up, we just fess up to the fuck up a lot quicker just to get it out of the way and back to the pub before last call.
I fuck up often; I think I’m rather skilled at the “Fuckin up at the pub routine”. For instance, I’m in the pub with some friends one night and this woman I know comes over and sits with us, I’ve known her for several years and see her around from time to time. And we’re sitting and talking, ordering drink after drink, and she’s matching me, that’s something I don’t see too often but whatever…After some time my friends split and it’s just her and I, and I’m trying to throw the sweet talk out there and she’s a little receptive of it. I even show off a little short story I’d just done because I know she’s a big reader, not that I think the story is gonna get be somewhere but ya never know what could happen. So, we’re talking and next thing I know we’re making with the kissy face. Cool right? No not really. After the third or forth time kissing this girl I could hear Dave Chappell’s voice in my head: “Flynn’s FUCKIN UP!!”
Now the unwritten rule is that you don’t make out with a girl in your regular bar that you’re not exclusively dating, or fucking, or whatever the hell couples do. It screws your chances with another girl in the bar that may have had designs on you, or if there’s another girl there that you’ve had designs on but you’re just not bold enough to go and make with the sweet talk. And sure, there was booze involved and the inhibitions were washed away like a bent cigarette down a sewer drain, yadda yadda, but you can fuck yourself in this endeavor. Some gals could get the impression that you’re just some wannabe playboy, always out on the make with a slick line and no substance. (Only shallow, idiotic, hair twirling, giggly, moronic sluts go for that type of shit fellas, and most of them are carriers of something you definitely don’t want.)
So, take your make out session outside to the back alley, make it dirty and exciting, and pretend you’re in a movie. Or better yet, go to her flat or back to yours if it’s not too scummy. And that way you can show up at the pub the next night and not have to worry about that waitress who you’ve always wanted to shag giving you the stink eye if you make with the blah blah about her eyes or how she must work out because she’s on her feet all night carrying a tray of booze. Yeah, they’ve never heard that before boys, really.
Now, I didn’t make this realization about the whole making out in the pub theory until well after I got home. I’d walked the little woman to an apartment where she was crashing for the night and before she went in she reminded me that she had a boyfriend but he was out of the country. I say reminded because she’d told me this little bit of information earlier in the bar, but because of the kissy face incidents I quickly pushed that part of the story out of my head, for obvious reasons, and proceeded to make outlandish plans concerning trips to Paris and Rome, with a stop over in NY to see some friends.
So I went home, lit one of many cigarettes, poured one of several scotch and waters, and thought about how awkward things were going to be next time I strolled into the pub.
So not only will this place drive you to drink, you can drive yourself to do so as well. And as of right now, I’m empty.
So I’m gonna plant ya now, and dig ya later. There’s a bottle of gin in the fridge waiting to be poured.
Sometimes people ask me if I’m going to the pub after work, I say ‘Well, of course I am.” And they giggle at that, one woman I work with called me an alcoholic, and I told her that I wasn’t.
“What makes you so different?” She asked.
“I don’t go to goddamn meetings and the only guilt I feel is not having more money.” I answered. “The only twelve steps I take are to the mens room.”
There are a lot of people at my job that drink though, maybe not as much as I do, but there are few that definitely drink more than me. I know of a couple of cats who keep bottles in their office, in desk drawers. There’s a guy who has a mini fridge stocked with bottles of wine, he and I get along well in times of stress.
Sometimes I see big fucking booze trucks outside my building, delivering boxes upon boxes of beer, wine and what have you, I always wonder where those boxes are going. I see people stumbling around, giggling at nothing, asleep in chairs in the forum. Those bastards are hiding things from me…
‘This Place Will Drive You to Drink’
Am I drinking right now? Damn straight I am. I’ve been in a bad mood all day, no surprise right? I spent the whole damn day waiting on a delivery that never came; I was hitting the bottle by three, not giving a damn. Then I heard the noise, the horror… I got a woman who lives below me who has a little child that I believe is possessed by a demon. I hear the child at night, sometimes two or three in the morning, wailing, screaming, screeching, and damning all living souls to hell. I can’t sleep with this going on; the only thing that helps is a beer or a shot, or both. Once the child begins with its damnation of parental superiority I begin with the Cutty Sark and a cigarette, it’s going to be a long night for both of us.
I got a guy lives in the apartment next to me, he sings opera at all hours. One Saturday morning after a night at the pub I was awakened by the sounds of an accordion and singing, some Italian opera tune, I thought I had thick walls that could block out a sonic boom, I was wrong. The hangover kicked in quickly and it took a pint to clear it all away, opera and all. I fell out on my couch, safe for the time being. But he’s back again when I wake up, doing his Carmen, his Don Giovanni, his Magic Flute bit. Schlitz sounds better than that any day of the bloody week. And I fucking hate Schlitz.
‘This Place Will Drive You to Drink’
They say that people drink to forget, and yeah, that’s damn true. Do you want to remember the girl (or for you single ladies, the guy) who turned you down for a date that day, or the fact that we have nothing but morons in political office? Shit, we have a beer baron for a mayor, but do we have a free beer day in town? HELL NO! He’d rather jump out of airplanes and roll around on scooters, and still make the rest of us pay for pints in his bar. Do you want to keep in mind the really shitty day you had at work, where everyone was on your ass about some business that you had nothing to do with? Of course not, go to the pub after work, you’ll feel better, and you may meet some bird (or dude, for the girlies) that’ll float your boat and raise the sail for ya, and you’ll forget all about the bullshit of the day.
Young kids in pubs now days think it’s just fun to get drunk, be stupid, get into fights and talk a lot of shit, and sure maybe it is, I guess that’s what my thought process was when I was young. Now, it’s more out of survival, to try and keep my sanity while everything else around goes to hell. As I get older I’ve come to realize more and more that people in general are simply insane, in their own way for each individual of course, but insane none the less. To be able to deal with them, you need some sort of medicine. Some people go with drugs, some with religion, but we all know where that gets them. Others go with the bottle, the bar “scene” whatever that means.
I think that the young ones don’t really know the ‘This place will drive you to drink’ motto yet, they still think that everything’s cool, and drinking is only for fun and bullshitting. Yeah, sure it is, for the time being, unless they do something really foolish and have to pay the price for it, but that’s growing up. Not that those that are professional drinkers don’t fuck up, we just fess up to the fuck up a lot quicker just to get it out of the way and back to the pub before last call.
I fuck up often; I think I’m rather skilled at the “Fuckin up at the pub routine”. For instance, I’m in the pub with some friends one night and this woman I know comes over and sits with us, I’ve known her for several years and see her around from time to time. And we’re sitting and talking, ordering drink after drink, and she’s matching me, that’s something I don’t see too often but whatever…After some time my friends split and it’s just her and I, and I’m trying to throw the sweet talk out there and she’s a little receptive of it. I even show off a little short story I’d just done because I know she’s a big reader, not that I think the story is gonna get be somewhere but ya never know what could happen. So, we’re talking and next thing I know we’re making with the kissy face. Cool right? No not really. After the third or forth time kissing this girl I could hear Dave Chappell’s voice in my head: “Flynn’s FUCKIN UP!!”
Now the unwritten rule is that you don’t make out with a girl in your regular bar that you’re not exclusively dating, or fucking, or whatever the hell couples do. It screws your chances with another girl in the bar that may have had designs on you, or if there’s another girl there that you’ve had designs on but you’re just not bold enough to go and make with the sweet talk. And sure, there was booze involved and the inhibitions were washed away like a bent cigarette down a sewer drain, yadda yadda, but you can fuck yourself in this endeavor. Some gals could get the impression that you’re just some wannabe playboy, always out on the make with a slick line and no substance. (Only shallow, idiotic, hair twirling, giggly, moronic sluts go for that type of shit fellas, and most of them are carriers of something you definitely don’t want.)
So, take your make out session outside to the back alley, make it dirty and exciting, and pretend you’re in a movie. Or better yet, go to her flat or back to yours if it’s not too scummy. And that way you can show up at the pub the next night and not have to worry about that waitress who you’ve always wanted to shag giving you the stink eye if you make with the blah blah about her eyes or how she must work out because she’s on her feet all night carrying a tray of booze. Yeah, they’ve never heard that before boys, really.
Now, I didn’t make this realization about the whole making out in the pub theory until well after I got home. I’d walked the little woman to an apartment where she was crashing for the night and before she went in she reminded me that she had a boyfriend but he was out of the country. I say reminded because she’d told me this little bit of information earlier in the bar, but because of the kissy face incidents I quickly pushed that part of the story out of my head, for obvious reasons, and proceeded to make outlandish plans concerning trips to Paris and Rome, with a stop over in NY to see some friends.
So I went home, lit one of many cigarettes, poured one of several scotch and waters, and thought about how awkward things were going to be next time I strolled into the pub.
So not only will this place drive you to drink, you can drive yourself to do so as well. And as of right now, I’m empty.
So I’m gonna plant ya now, and dig ya later. There’s a bottle of gin in the fridge waiting to be poured.
posted by Shoun at 10:42 PM
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