Thursday 11/16/06.
6:25 AM:
Dear Abby:
I had no
dinner last night, just the remains of a piece of birthday cake. I drank five
pints of Guinness, two pints of water, one shot of Patron, and three shots of
Jameson’s. I got home at 2 AM and, after three Advil and a glass of water, I
got three-and-a-half hours sleep, before waking up and coming into work. It is
now 6:30, and I feel totally well-rested and energized. Is this normal?
Sincerely
yours,
Stone Cold
Sober
Dear Stone Cold Sober:
It is for you, Barfly.
Abby
After one of those awful day-job days that, if Dante were
alive and working in corporate America, would consign investment bankers to
their own separate circle in Hell, I go to BAM with DJ, Rob O’Neill and Rob’s
friend Patrick to see the David Dorfman Dance Group perform a piece called
Underground. It’s clever, funny, and thought-provoking enough to make us all
decide to forego the after-show talk-back, where all the ambiguities will
(probably) be explained and all the mystery will be (undoubtedly) rationalized.
Because the show is only an hour long, we are all taking our corner bar stools
at the upstairs bar at about 9:30, just as Dave is chatting up one of the many
Jennifers who can claim to be Pine ex-waitresses. “Patron Boy!” Dave cries, which
is his name for Rob, and before you can say “Which Jennifer are you again?”
Dave has poured us all two shots of tequila, which is actually three shots for
Rob and me because DJ does not do shots.
Farewell Angelina/The bar is
folding
The bar is awash with the cast of Spurn, a revue that played
the 13th Street Theatre for three weeks in October. The cast hit the
upstairs bar after every performance and held their cast party up there on the
final night, and tonight we are graced with Kristen the pretty blonde, Lara
Jane the pretty brunette, Ross, Eric, the rest of the cast, and eventually Neil
the director, but not whatsername the incredibly pretty stage manager, along
with a lot of other irregulars. My friend Krish, who works at the Knickerbocker, shows up with his girlfriend Alexis around 10; Jon, who works at the Broome
Street Bar, walks in with his girlfriend Emily at 10:15. And Marita, at the far
end of the bar, is grilling me about
Trish, who is sitting next to her.
MARITA: She’s great! Where have you
been hiding her?
ME: She’s not mine to hide.
What I want to say is that she’s Dave’s to hide. Since the
end of October, she’s been at the bar for every one of Dave’s shifts. Which
makes tonight a little awkward, because Dave hooked up with Lara Jane the
actress a couple of weeks ago, and he is so totally flirting with her now, even
as he’s flirting with Trish. And Kristen. DJ goes over and keeps Trish company
while I catch up with Alexis and Krish, who is not drinking at the moment; and
eventually we wave Trish over to our corner, so she can join the theatre folks
as we get pontifical, political, and pie-eyed.
TRISH: I met The Mayor tonight.
DJ: The Mayor?
ME: Hampton? Hampton’s here?
I can’t believe that DJ doesn’t know who Hampton is (but
then she never hung out at Bernie’s Sunday Golf Bar), so I explain. Hampton is
a good old boy who calls his (incredibly pretty) wife Lovey and generally roams
the floors like, well, the mayor. I don’t know who gave him the nickname, but I
do remember that Maddie was the one who called him that when she first pointed
him out to me years ago, and I also remember a night when he staggered
upstairs, swayed into the server station, and backed Angelina against the wall
with his attentions.
HAMPTON: (talking to Angelina) She’s
like Helen of Troy. (Turning to me:) Isn’t she like Helen of Troy, Matt?
(Turning back to Angelina:) Helen of Troy.
ANGELINA: (holding up a veggie burger
plate) Is this the lunch that faced a thousand lips?
Not to mention E.S. Wilentz’s 8th
Street Bookstore
Randi comes up and informs Dave and the rest of us that
there is going to be a memorial service in Washington Mews on Saturday at noon
for the Professor, and everyone from the Pine who knew him is invited. She also
says that the Medical Examiner’s office has ruled that, while alcohol was
definitely a contributory factor to the Professor’s death, there is evidence
that he consumed half a bottle of Glenfiddich when he got home that night.
“Which lets us off,” Randi says, and again I get this crummy feeling in my gut,
like the only thing Randi cares about is the liability, not the loss. For some
reason, this not only hurts, but it makes me angry.
After Randi goes back downstairs, RobO and Patrick stick around
for a while, talking theatre and whatnot, but as always seems to happen when
I’m here with them and DJ, I drift away to other conversations. There’s a table
of scene-tards at the back of the lounge who are evidently Friends Of Mercer;
Dave’s not too happy with them because they’re evenly divided between those who
believe that Tipping is a city in China and those who believe that the rest of
us should be taking up a collection just to pay them to be seen with us. Like
all scene-tards, they are easy on the eyes and hard to listen to (think Looks
10, Talk 3) but fascinating to watch from the rarified heights of massive
amounts of alcohol and jaundiced memories of adolescence. If there are Gods in
Heaven, they undoubtedly look down on me with much the same tipsy amusement and
disbelief as I look down on these nattering butterflies.
I end up reminiscing with Jon about New York institutions
which have closed (like CBGB’s) or are closing (like this place).
JON: And Tower Records. That one’s
killing me. I can’t remember a time before Tower Records.
ME: That was the era of Crazy Eddie’s.
And Strawberries.
JON: And this place. Why is there no
room in this city for places like this?
ME: Boxers is closing. And the Collins
Bar. And the P&G.
JON: Just like McHale’s.
ME: Just like Dan Lynch’s.
JON: Oh my God I loved that place!
And for the next 30 minutes were run every red light on
Memory Lane in an orgy of Dan Lynch reminiscences. All while Dave is refilling
Jon’s pint and Jon’s girlfriend Emily is gamely trying to get him out the door.
This only happens, oddly enough, when Jon breaks off and asks me if I know
anything about comic books. Which is like asking Richard Nixon if he knows
anything about lying.. “There’s this new Vertigo comic, it’s based in the Bible,
and it’s—” “Testament,” I say. “It’s good; there’s a collected edition of the
first six issues out already. I’ll lend you my copy,” I add, but actually I’m
going to buy him one for his very own.
And Kylie Minogue as the Absinthe
Fairy
The night winds down. Sarah’s DC boyfriend hangs out with
Sarah, Matt Lambert and Kate while the scene-tards adjourn to a better scene,
and the Spurn folks split off for bars unknown, leaving Ross and Trisha and a
Spurn woman who gave me her name three times and I still can’t remember it at
the bar with me, all of us talking about Shakespeare adaptations, Baz Luhrmann,
Julia Stiles, her atrocious Twelfth Night in the Park, and Ethan
Hawke’s Hamlet. (The Spurn woman is Hayley; I wrote it down in my notebook. Smart
drunkard. As Georgia was fond of saying, “If he doesn’t write it down, he’ll
forget it in five seconds.” The only
reason I remember THAT is because I finally wrote it down like the tenth time
she said it.)
I end up leaving at 2:30 and getting home at 3:15. 2 hours
later my alarm goes off. I hit the snooze twice, as is my wont, and twenty
minutes later I am in the shower, wondering why my brain is neither fuzzy nor
in pain. The fact that I am awake, aware, and a bundle of energy is really
starting to scare the bejesus out of me.
Alcohol: Guinness (6) Patron (3) Jameson (5)
Song of the night (Angie is named for this, by the way)
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