I stopped drinking for awhile. I guess I needed to. It’s a good way to recalibrate. It’s a worthwhile confirmation that you aren’t a hopeless alcoholic, if you can abstain for awhile.
But now I’m drinking again, hopefully more responsibly this time around. I missed bars. There’s something profoundly satisfying about sitting on a bar stool, drinking, listening to ambient conversations and sometimes engaging in them.
You never know what misadventures might transpire, hanging out in bars. I have fond attachments to the memories of past bars. Frankie Joe’s was my haunt during my late 20’s.
Frankie’s wasn’t a sports bar. It was a BAR bar – a soggy dive where every beam and splinter was saturated with history and character. You might not know the history, verbatim, but you could sense it.
My first experience at Frankie’s was when my brother came to visit. In those days, he was in his suicidal alcoholic phase. He was insanely fun, but only up to a point. I think most drunks have that falling-off point, where they cease to be fun and begin to be a tedious liability.
That night, in the neon-smeared streets of Atlanta’s suburbs, we eventually ended up at Frank’s. After narrowly avoiding the watchful gaze of bouncers at various strip climbs and competing dive bars, Frankie’s is where we settled down.
My brother had a confounding super power. He was able to power through a level of hammered that would leave most of us either unconscious or non-verbal. Inevitably, it resulted in me baby sitting him about as much as I enjoyed his company. That ratio would sway wildly as the evening evolved.
At our respective bar stools at Frankie’s, I did my best to tolerate his tomfoolery without the irritation showing on my face. Blake (that’s my brother) was an exceedingly observant and emotionally tender guy, drunk or otherwise. He could tell immediately when I got annoyed with him, and his drunkenness made him reactionary and emotional.
So, I kept my expression placid and neutral as he played air-slap-bass to the house band. Within his blurry perspective, his antics were both hilarious and charming. In reality, he was annoying enough to make me grind my molars.
Kimmy, our bartender, was a buxom blond who refused to acknowledge the ravages of time. She insisted she was my age when it was obvious she was at least a decade older. Don’t get me wrong. I would have happily fucked her. Shit, I’d probably fuck her tonight, assuming she’s still alive. That isn’t a worthwhile bet, but I digress…
Near last call, we met Charisse and her friends. Charisse was a short, plump, bubbly girl who was a bit younger than me. People that age are as intoxicating as the booze my brother and I both swilled. They were so energized with the optimism that we all enjoy for a brief period of life. That window is called “our 20’s.”
The staff of Frankie’s told us politely to get the fuck out, so we took the party to the parking lot. Charisse was adorable and charming, or at least that’s the data my beer goggles were feeding me. She was comically shorter than me. Normally, I’d claim I didn’t like “fat” girls, but I found her enchanting.
“Some people are aroused by having their earlobes sucked and licked, and having a tongue pushed into their ear canal.”
“I’m one of those people!” I exclaimed. My arms were wrapped around her, wedged into the door frame of the bar’s front door.
In hindsight, I’m surprised they didn’t tell us to vacate the parking lot. Now that I’ve pondered it, the staff probably went out the back door and drove home, very drunk.
I bent down to be polite (she was very short) and Charisse proceeded to lick my earlobes and run her tongue around the tender, sensitive entrance of my ear canal. I almost came in my pants. I wasn’t being disingenuous when I told her that was my hot spot.
Charisse and I French kissed passionately, our comically disparate bodies smashed into the alcove of Frankie’s front door. In the parking lot, Charisse’s friend demonstrated his agility with a lasso.
“Blake, you run that way, and I’ll lasso you!” he said to my brother.
I disengaged from Charisse’s lips with a wet pop, suddenly cognizant of the fact that I had to be aware of my brother’s welfare.
“Careful!” I said loudly to anyone who needed the instruction. I think I was making a request of the universe.
Charisse’s friend had a lasso in his hand (an actual cowboy accessory) and he wielded it with the agility of a turn of the century cowboy. My brother ran, stumbling and drunk as fuck, away from his captor.
Charisse’s friend expertly lassoed my brother’s ankles and sent him sprawling to the asphalt of Frankies bar.
“Hey!” I shouted, disengaging from from Charisse’s lips, gums and upper esophagus. “Careful! That’s my brother, and he’s a drunk, helpless child. Please don’t hurt him!”
Somehow, via taxis and an abundance of luck, we arrived back at Blake’s hotel room. It was one of those depressing spots where junkies, rock-bottom sex workers and the indigent hang out. The room shed a general funk of mold, cigarettes and an invisible strata of bodily fluids.
The following morning, Blake drove home. I imagine he was still drunk, considering the heroic amounts of booze we both ingested. The dawn always felt melancholy in those moments. The hot Georgia sun was indifferent to where it’s light fell. Squalor, success, happiness or crushing hopelessness – it didn’t matter. It was all illuminated with the same searing sunlight.
It was always somewhat sad to see Blake go home. His internal struggle was palpable. He was a man at war with his own mixed-up brain. In the sizzling heat of the morning, my own life seemed just as uncertain. Maybe I was worried his demons would become my own. How much of his internal anguish, that hopelessly misfiring brain, was inherited?
Blake returned to the solitude of Tennessee. I resumed the big city inner solitude of Atlanta. Maybe we were both lost, but I could hold on to the warm memory of kissing a short, plump girl outside a seedy bar, on a humid, Atlanta night.
Clay Hatrison's Den of Iniquity 