Image by Frank Rich of Modern Drunkard Magazine

Once upon a time, before Sordid Tales, before CityBeat even, there was a column called Sordid Tales of a Bartender in Heat that appeared in a magazine called SLAMM. It was, as I mentioned in the FAQs, a column about the comedy and the tragedy of the nightclub scene as told by a veteran bartender.

When CityBeat bought SLAMM, the editors and I agreed that it was time to change (slightly) the name and the focus of the column. Hence the shortening of the title to Sordid Tales. There are about 100 of those old bartender Sordids so I will post them here gradually, over time. Stay tuned.

Note: The first article in the string (Turn, Turn, Turn) was the last one I wrote for SLAMM before it was bought out by CityBeat.

EJD
3/31/07

This column is a tribute to day bartenders everywhere.

Your typical day bar shift is a sentence. It is the working-on-the-side-of-the-road-picking-up-garbage-in-orange-vests of bar shifts. My brother calls it “Crossing the Desert,” because working the day shift is like an arduous trek across a wasteland. For the most part, the day bartender’s main task is to set up the bar for the night. The night is where there is life.

There is no joy in day bar. There’s no spicy Latin funk band to kindle the room, no giggling, perky women with racy shorts clinging to their buttocks, no mammalian mosaics with erect mammilla (Oh, momma!), no flashing lights or disco balls. . . There’s only a flickering television and a jukebox that hasn’t changed in 12 years.

There is no glory in day bar. Being a day bartender is like being that lonesome roadie, setting up the stage in an empty arena for the sold-out rock-and-roll show that night. You scrub the wells, polish the glasses, set up napkins, straws, and ashtrays. You cut fruit, wipe lipstick from wine glasses, count and stock the liquor inventory, clean the brass spigots, de-bleach the rags, scour the sinks, and fill the wells with endless buckets of ice.

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What happens when a person loses consciousness from consuming large doses of alcohol? What are the dos and don’ts of a black out? How do you protect yourself and others too?

We at the Yearning Annex feel that, while there is an abundance of information explaining how to avoid a black out, there is little said about how to comport yourself while in the midst of one. Which is why we are offering a new course called, Black Out Strategies for the Beginning Alcoholic.

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“Yea, though I walk through
The Valley of The Shadow of Death…”
–Psalm 23:4

It is morning. You are viciously hungover.

Hangovers are bonfires in Hell to be sure, but they wouldn’t be so bad if you were home. Then you could deal. Then you would merely crawl out of bed (slowly, slowly–so as not to disturb those tender brain cells), inch toward the refrigerator, grab anything that resembles a fluid, inch back toward the couch (slowly, slowly) and remain there forever.

Alas, you are not home. You are laying on an unfamiliar bed in some unfamiliar female’s peach-colored bedroom with the goddam morning sun barreling through the window and splashing all over your pallid face like a crucifix searing a vampire’s flesh.

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“Well that drunk tank in Atlanta
Was just a hotel room to me.”
– Tom Petty
Tequila gold, a.k.a. “Satan’s urine,” is a very evil and dangerous liquid. This story begins and ends with tequila.

There is no question that I was too drunk to drive home that fateful April ’93 evening. But I was very hungry and Tequila — my nemesis — insisted I drive to Roberto’s for a carne asada burrito.

It was 3 a.m.

When the colored lights flashed behind me, I panicked. I liken that terror to what a diver must feel when he sees the silhouette of a shark coming into view from the murky darkness of the ocean floor. I was polite to the officers, as usual, but Tequila was uncouth. He called the male cop a fascist, told the female officer that her gun was a poor substitute for a penis. As they cuffed me (tightly), and walked me toward the police car, I gazed at the alluring red and yellow tiles of Roberto’s shimmering like the walls of the Emerald City only one block away.

“So close. I had been so close.”

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