Fuck Ups: Tending the Bartender (Part 1)

My local bar is a nice Brooklyn neighborhood dive with a pool table, a back garden, and a cocaine pusher named Ken. I know every single one of the bartenders who works after nine by name. None of them seem to mind that I am underage, and they consistently buy back everyone's third round as long as the customers tip. For me, they buy back every other round until closing time, after which they buy every round until sunrise. The owner drops by and stays for a few drinks with his girlfriend every few nights, and he always buys my drink for me if I order next to him at the bar.

Needless to say, my gal pals and I have spent many a wondrous night (and morning) of binge drinking at this poet-girl haven. And over the course of those nights, some of us have gotten friendlier with the staff than others. I tend to go for the bartenders no matter where I am (notice the Part 1 attached to this article's title) because I find that chatting them up helps distract them from carding me, and once I'm chatting, I turn into Vilma Kaplan, Bundle of Lust. This Fuck Up is one of my own tales:

It all started out good. The girls and one or two of our male friends met up and gathered at our usual table in the back for a rousing night of liquored-up hijinks. We chit-chatted the night away, the group dwindling as we blurred into the wee hours, until finally, it was just me and my friend Z left. We moved up to the bar to hang out with the two bartenders and the last few hooligans trying to catch a pussycat to pet before close.

Bartender 1 was a hot Irishman with a manly platinum wedding band that somehow managed to increase his sex appeal. Around forty, he was the kind of older man I always fantasized about and was slowly working my way up to.(I'd made good clean strides from 18 year olds to 30 year olds, but not yet beyond that.) For the sake of this Fuck Up, let's call him The Fantasy.

Bartender 2 was a new guy, we all called him The Kid, even though he was 28, much older than me. I struck up a nice conversation with The Kid about college degrees and homelessness while my friend Z made her move on The Fantasy. He'd been oggling her for weeks, and the tension was driving her nuts. She knew if she could keep him interested, she could keep herself in a veritable fountain of free beer.

At four a.m., the bar officially closed and the middle-aged, male regulars got kicked to the curb to wait for their cabs. We, the cute young thangs, were invited to smoke indoors, and have our pick of drinks as long as we could keep the bartenders entertained. Quickly, however, The Fantasy got that gleam in his eye that meant he'd figured he could swing me and Z for a threesome, and he started grumbling at The Kid to clean up and get out. I made a few joked with The Kid about how I wished he could stay, but..., and he made a few jokes about what a slut The Fantasy was. We both said, "Duh!" to each other's jokes, and The Fantasy hustled The Kid out the front door and pulled down the window gate behind him.

After that, it was a lot of slinky smiles. The Fantasy went in back to put up the chairs and turn off the lights, and Z and I popped open the antique cash register to pilfer quarters for the juke box. I put on Bruce Springsteen or some other such suitable fodder for young Fucking Up. Z came up to me and said, "Watch me?"

"Huh?" I asked, very confused by her request.

Z said, "I don't want to sleep with him.

"So let's go home," I said, seeing no dilemma.

"I don't want to go yet," she said and peeked into the dark back room where The Fantasy was prowling around.

"Okay, so let's stay. If you don't want to sleep with him, don't sleep with him." It went on like this for about half a song before I got frustrated and said, "I have no idea what you want me to do."

To this, Z replied, "I'm going to go into the back. I want you to stay up here. If I don't come back up here after two songs, come back. Whatever's going on, just go with it."

"Go with it?" I asked, trying to get her to tell me whether or not we were going to fuck The Fantasy in the back of the bar.

She scrunched up her face, through her hands in the air and huffed, "Go with it," as she walked into the The Fantasy's lair.

I sat at the bar, toyed with the idea of pocketing a few bucks from the till, poured myself another Jack rocks, squirted some club soda in the sink out of the nifty beverage hose, changed the lineup on the juke box, blah,blah, blah. Then, it was time. Two songs were up, and I made my way into the back, ready to play dumb.

"Oh, oops," I said, rather sarcastically, as I approached The Fantasy, who was pretty involved in grabbing Z's ass while she jerked him off with a nonplussed expression on her face.

He leered over at me and said, "Come here."

"Would your wife like this?" I asked because I'm a bitch and wanted him to be sure I knew exactly how base the whole situation was (but I was damn well going to enjoy myself anyway). The Fantasy ignored me and grabbed me by the front of my shirt to kiss me when I obeyed. As far as kisses go, I'd rate it a ten out of ten for pornographic fantasy and a three out of ten for real life fun. But I was not deterred. I am a girl who likes sex, especially sloppy, fairly anonymous sex, and I take on the task of hooking up with a lot of enthusiasm. I kissed The Fantasy with willful abandon, and even started to warm up a little as his hands wandered over to my body from Z's.

Z was still fairly expressionless as she cupped The Fantasy's balls. She said, "Yeah, grab her tits. She has epic tits," to which we all responded with murmurs of agreement.

The Fantasy was clearly overwhelmed by the two women in front of him, though and as he fumbled, I was starting to understand the unexcited look on Z's face. He kept pushing on the top of my head and whispering, "Get on your knees, baby."

I said, "No, stop pushing on my head," so he started begging, which really annoyed me. But I was all about making the best of the situation, so I kissed him to shut him up, and he got over the fact that I wasn't going to suck him off. (Sorry I'm not a better feminist. I aspire to be one.)

Z frowned at me and pointed at The Fantasy's cock with her free hand while he was busy eyes-closed groaning. First, I sighed with disappointment, then I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. "Let me," I said, taking over the manual activity while Z went to work making out. I thought he was just having a hard time getting it up. He was an older guy, and he'd had his fair share to drink. But when I got his dick in my hand, I had to admit that there just wasn't anything there. The Fantasy was no fantasy at all. He wasn't even a reality. He was barely a thumb. And a flaccid, bumbling thumb at that.

(A side note for fairness: Size is not everything. I have had satisfying encounters with many men with any number of penis sizes. But there is small, and then there is, "Oh, my God, I cannot believe I have been fantasizing about fucking this man against a wall only to realize that his dick is not a dick at all." And if he'd been a better guy, not a cheating scuzzball, I would have had inventive, pleasurable, non-penetrative sex with him for hours. There is so much more to fucking than pentration, I know, and it can be so much more fun. All of that is beside the point. It is situational irony. The Fantasy had the Least Fantastic Cock Ever.)

By this time, Z's dress was on the floor and my shirt was around my waist. Z made a frustrated, disgusted face, and I that was it. I made an executive decision. I dropped The Fantasy's dick to pick up Z's dress and pull it over her head. "We have to go," I said. The Fantasy looked dumbfounded. I took Z's hand, and dragged her up front.

We grabbed our purses just as The Fantasy emerged from the back. "You don't even want another drink?" he asked.

I said, "No," very sternly while Z fixed her hair. I looked at the clock on the wall, which read 7:42 AM, and cringed, "We have class in less than two hours." The Fantasy sighed and let us out the front. As we crawled out of the dark bar into the morning sun, I caught my shirt on the security gate and ripped a hole in it. Once on the sidewalk, we ducked our heads as we walked past shiny moms and dads drinking their morning coffee at the shop next door.

As soon as we were a block away, Z and I both started cracking up. "What the fuck did we just do?" I asked.

"Nothing," Z said, "There was nothing there to do."

Two hours later, I sat in class, still pleasantly drunk, and argued about and obscene Arthur Miller story that somehow paled in comparison to the morning I'd had so far. The Fantasy was ruined for Z and I forever, but he still pitches our free drinks over the bar like a trooper. Even though it was a completely dissatisfying encounter for all three of us, there is something to be said for the simplicity of post-hook up interactions with an older, sluttier, married man.

Fuck Ups: Emergency

The year my friend, Y, swore off men was long. Very long. So long that it accidentally became fifteen months.

Her first fishing trip back in the big sea of dating, she found herself set up with a friend of a friend. He was Dominican, sang in a band, felt no qualms about taking her into his bedroom for two hours of making out and abandoning their friends in the living room. All attractive qualities.

But his moves pretty much ended there, and Y was left feeling... not much.

Y, however, being an intrepid young dater, feeling rejuvenated after her love-sabbatical, did not give up. One lucky Saturday, she found yet another friend of a friend to hook on her line.

He was an Air Force Reservist with shoulders she couldn't wait to dig her fingernails into. So she did, and that was that.

Left with fine memories and a little skin under her fingernails, Y went home expecting nothing more from her one night stand. By the next night, however, Y had received numerous texts of "High five!" and "Get-it, get-it girl!" from her friends. Apparently the Air Force only teaches homosexuals not to tell.

Y kept her head up high, however, and made little grins of satisfaction whenever she thought no one was looking. One night, while on duty for work, she received an emergency page. When she dialed the number and asked, "How can I help?" the Air Force Reservist confusedly said, "Who is this?"

Y's boss had (ever-so-kindly) paged her one night stand's number to her emergency work pager. By doing her job and responding to the page, she came out looking like a cling-on. I said, "Remind your boss that you only like abuses of power in the bedroom," but I'm pretty sure she didn't tell him in those exact words.

Books You Should Be Reading But Aren't: The Dead

Okay, okay, so "The Dead" isn't a book. It's a short story. In the "Dubliners." We've written about its last sentence, and it truly is a remarkable one. But the story in and of itself stands alone as an exemplary example (is that redundant?) of Joyce's more coherent work (that is, in a traditional narrative). In the last two years, I've read this story about four times, and it's been a pleasure each and every time. It's one of the few stories where a dinner scene is both necessary and executed well. The dinner table has often been a trap for writers, as conversation becomes action with seated guests. Joyce does not fail here. For starters, start simply with the foods on the table, each so fraught with symbolism, it seems overwhelming if you think about it, natural if you don't (also, a perfect example of how food can enhance a story without the story being about food). Familial and social dynamics are explored and exploited as if you were witnessing your own family's last Christmas party.

And the devasting ending, when the narrator is convinced that his wife is still in love with a (now deceased) boy from her adolescence, he looks out into the snow, seeing the great equalizer. Snow covers both the living and the dead, something that he had previously tried to protect his wife from (by buying her snow boots, etc.).

I could go on, but this is a story I refuse to summarize. Please read it. You'll be glad you did.

Cocktail of the Week: Metropolitan

Apparently, not one liquor store in my neighborhood sells angostura bitters. So my metropolitan was becoming a problem. I had brandy left over from sangria, and wanted to use it, so I went and bought sweet vermouth in order to make a metropolitan with, but they didn't have the bitters. So after hiking up and down the block, going to three separate liquor stores, a nice, short man with a round face suggested I try Campari instead. I was skeptical, but tried it anyway. The result is not terrible, but it's a little too bitter I think. I tried putting more sugar in, but it just tastes like a homemade liquor concoction. Which is what it is. It's drinkable, but not what I was going for. Also, recipes need to be more specific that a "dash" of bitters.

Anyway, here's a recipe for a metropolitan:
1 1/2 oz. of brandy
1 oz. of sweet vermouth
2 dashes of angostura bitters
1/2 a tsp. of simple syrup

Mix in cocktail shaker with ice. Shake and strain into glass. Drink.

Maybe you'll have better luck than me.

Recipe from here.

What I Did Last Night

Last night, I brought my local bar home with me.

This Week's Cocktail

Because I've been craving it, and haven't been getting it: Sangria.

Red or white? Use wine (usually red, sometimes white), fresh fruit, two tablespoons of sugar, and brandy, whiskey, or (more rarely) rum (one shot to the bottle of wine). Combine and chill over night. Before serving add some type of clear citric beverage (sprite, 7-up), gingerale, or club soda (2 cups).

If you want to serve it immediately, use lots of ice. This is a drink that needs to be cold. Now if only it would stop raining, I could make some.

Image from here where they have lots of different recipes for sangria.

Books You Should Be Reading But Aren't: Trilogy

Yes, HD. So hard to find in a bookstore, so enjoyable to read. For those of you who do not know, HD stands for Hilda Doolittle, who was brought to us by Ezra Pound (Imagiste!). As one of the few female Imagist poets, she stands out. Her brief lyricism is decidedly more feminine than the lines of her male contemporaries (i.e. Eliot, Pound). It was mostly her earlier work that garnered the Imagist label (it's said that the label was invented by Pound to market her work), and by the thirties and forties she had moved on to work that is rarely specifically defined, but is broadly modernist. At the penning of Trilogy (in England during the second World War) she worked with varying mythologies and history to write effective war poetry which has the ability to be violent but is softened by romantic phrasing.


The tenth poem of the first section of trilogy, "The Walls Do Not Fall"

But we fight for life,
we fight, they say, for breath,

so what good are your scribblings?
this--we take them with us

beyond death: Mercury, Hermes, Thoth
invented the script, letters, palette;

they indicated flute or lyre-notes
on papyrus or parchment

are magic indelibly stamped
on the atmosphere somewhere,

forever; remember, O Sword,
you are the younger brother, the latter born

your Triumph, however exultant,
must one day be over

in the beginning
was the Word.

HD's poetic signature in Trilogy was her couplet (though not a heroic or rhymed couplet, perhaps extending from the Imagistic idea that "the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms...a new cadence means a new idea." (Some Imagist Poets, 1916)). Her later work was influenced by DH Lawrence, so the motives became more grandiose and less pointed, often making the work more difficult (and less read). Trilogy is a journey that is not linear, but rather jumps back and forth through times and cultures to make large statements about war, the written word, and our place in all of these things.

For more information on Imagism and their tenets, go here (a really good read by Amy Lowell), and for more information about HD's sordid, Freud-filled life, go here.