Customers sometimes ask me how I got into bartending and they don’t believe me when I tell them that I’ve been doing it since I was seventeen.

The setting is Reno Nevada, one of the last frontiers of the Wild West during the time which was 2007

Back when the one or two folks in town who did receive a DUI for being sauced so goddamn always - behind a wheel or otherwise, would not only fail at reciting the alphabet during a sobriety test, but were more confused by the letters DUI than they were in receiving one.

I got a job as a bagger at a grocery store

At sixteen.

I showed rare promise when the store director observed that I did not put a gallon of milk on top of a carton of eggs in an extra-ass double paper bag.

I was immediately reassigned to work on the overnight freight crew, unloading trucks and stocking shelves from midnight to eight-thirty.

I ascended to freight manager just because the ones old enough to have been charged with the task noped the fuck out when they realized how brutal the work was and how crap it was having to commit the hours and by default, resigning having a social life - not as if the neck beard I replaced socialized beyond faping it to Barbie Doll tea parties in his mommas basement.

Now I’m seventeen.

I had no life, in part because of my sleep schedule, but mostly because I was a misanthropic little cunt.

My Roommates who were identical twins and in their thirties, kept trying to get me to go out and be a human for two seconds.

I finally gave in and I bought the worlds most legit fake id for $300 - hologram and all.

The twinks…

The twins took me to some trash frat bar and it was my turn to nope the fuck out.

A friend recently clarified to me that the words “trash” and “frat” are synonyms.

Thanks Sean!

So tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumbAF, sez:

“Let’s go to that new bar on Arlington. The house that got turned into a bar.”

I walk in with the twins.

It’s just them, the bartender and myself.

Bar is actually gorgeous.

Bear-skin rug near the fireplace.

Art that was no-joshing, some of the best I’ve seen to this day.

And the bar top.

A solid piece of African limestone quarried from a riverbed, presumably by children.

Barkeep asks for my ID.

Place it on the bar.

“You’re gonna make me pick that shit up? Try again kiddo.”

I hand it to Jeremy, who was actually the owner of the bar.

He grins.

“That’s a pretty good fake.”

He was taken aback when I didn’t panic that he realized I was just a kid with a fake.

I didn’t care about drinking or haunting a bar. 

#nihilist 

I was ready to leave.

I stood up and started for the door, without caring to grab the fake.

“Wait! Hey kid…”

I stopped and half turned.

“You’ve got crusty mustard all down the front of your sweater.”

I notice the stain for the first time and rub it twice like it would get rid of it and like I cared that it was even there.

A salute and:

“Duly noted!” Me sez.

I made it to the door.

Jeremy shouts.

“Hey. Help me out here. I don’t drink alone but I’m also a drunk.”

“Sucks”

Turn the door knob.

“You’re either special or special Ed dude.”

He lays out two Dark and Stormies on the bar.

“The latter.”

Out on the patio now.

Waiting for the twins to finish playing pool.

Realize I left my lighter on the bar as I felaciate a marb red.

Before I could do the walk of shame back to where I had sat, Jeremy walks out to the patio with a Marb Green.

Tosses my blue zippo to me and brings the cocktails.

Sits down.

I never drank much before, I was a prolific stoner them daze.

“Cheers, weirdo” 

We clinked our bucket glasses and I set my cocktail on the table and drank from the straw without lifting the glass.

Jeremy cracked up.

He took the straws out of the glass, threw them elsewhere into the night and rebuked me for fucking up a cheers as well as drinking from a straw without holding my drink, like a bitch.

The one drink got my glow going and I opened up about being a songwriter/singer blah blah.

Jeremy takes me to the basement.

Was a bit leery of him making a skin lamp out of my ass but he seemed like a salt of the earth kind of guy, plus I was in anger management through elementary and middle school and they didn’t even try to talk my through the anger, they just gave me a bat and a pillow. 

“Don’t ever be Irish….”

Ghandi - during an interview about how to be peaceful and forgiving.

What happened next became both the bat and the pillow for the next ten years.

Jeremy had his drum kit, a PA, mic and stand, bass amp and bass guitar.

We wrote a whole album that night.

Little did I know I would soon be not only the main bartender at Strega, but also part owner along with Jeremy.

To be Continued….

I get off and not Inna good way.

Get it.jpg

Offs from work at grocery store at 8:30am

Can’t wait to drive my candy-apple red Jetta back to my place and write another song about how life sucks.

Jeremy calls my razor flip-phone.

“Dude… Joy called in because she did too much acid…three days ago. We have to open today because it’s some holiday that people get turnt up on.”

“St. Paddies…?”

“Dude, you know I hate religion. Anyway I’m at my folks estate in Tahoe and the hottest bitch you’d ever seent gave me some special k. I need you to open the bar today.”

I was confused.

“Dude, If the cereal you’re eating conflicts with you physically, maybe try being gluten-free like I…”

“The stars… I see them… I ate them all!”

Laughter.

Moaning.

So, 3pm I dig the key to the bar out from under the mat.

Guess I’m a bartender.

Thank gosh my only customer was good-ole Spit Snograss.

Jet-black died hair. Spiked like Dexter Holland from The Offspring. Heavy metal rings on every finger that died his fingers green. A swaztika on more than two of them.

Hated this chode more than I hated the rest of humanity because, fuck Nazis.

At least the bar was empty and he only drank Bud light Platinum.

Easy. I got dis.

Spit did a rail of what looked like shards of sugar-glass, right atop the bar.

He was telling me his sad ass life story but my focus was entirely on the purple blood cascading from his right nostril.

I pointed out to Spit that he was bleeding.

He snorted it up like it was another rail and stuffed the nostril with some Vaseline that appeared from the only pocket within his trench coat that was not stuffed with a gun or drugs.

Mahogany front door bursts open.

Three of the hottest chicks is ever seen come in.

I would have been half-mast if I wasn’t shitting lead, thinking about what would happen if one of them orders a lemon drop.

Thank fuck they go straight down the hall that is out of my sight towards the bathrooms.

Half an hour later, Spit reminded me about the girls and he went to go lurk and try to get laid or sell them all the things illicit.

They gone.

Not only they gone.

Paintings are all gone as well.

I think myself “Well at least the exhibition of paintings this time were total dog mierda” 

I shrug it off.

Spit goes to the Chev next door to buy some more Parliaments.

He comes back and he’s all like:

“Bro. This chicks robbed the Chev at gun point. The fuzz was there and I told them about the stolen paintings.”

I told this cunt hair that I was 17.

“Dude! Why would you tell them to come here? You know I’m underage!”

“Yeah. Fuck the police! I’m out.”

Spit Snoggrass… you.. why I oughta…

Sorry. 

Don’t mean to talk shit on the dead.

About six months later he suicided by way of cops.

Had the road rage.

Fishtailed a suburban with a mother and her infant child aboard.

Held mother at gun point.

He was just holes after the standoff.

Back to my first shift as a bartender.

Cops come in bar from The Chev.

I give them the fake.

One disappears to his unit, meanwhile my own unit is baby-dick.

Other cop:

“What do you think the paintings are worth”

“Dog shit, zero moneys. Not worth zero moneys or dog shit.”

Which brings us to Bruce Lindsay.

The coin-purse who painted these things.

I hung around the bar long enough to f-wording-ly despise this pedantic fat-old lawyer.

Whenever he sat down, he wanted a “true” Manhattan and tried to not let us see him gag at the mixture of sweet and dry vermouth with rye, while we could not help but gag about his folk album that he always made us play over the mains.

“For every Bob Dylan and Shakespeare, there’s a thousand who never were recognized. I am both Dylan and Shakespeare.”

Ok Morressy….

Now this cuck paints?

FML.

So we hung his trash cuz…

light bulbs need energies.

Even before I pretended to be a barkeep, I would happily show new guests the really amazing artwork at the bar.

I gave a few guided tours to patrons about Bruce’s exhibit.

“So here we have “Dog shit it blue.”

This one is brilliantly dubbed “Crimson Dog Poo. 

And now we’re at the Magnum Opus: “Dog Shit in Dog shit - medium, Dog shit. The frame is made from imported Korean free-range canine turds.”

I closed the bar at ten and wished I had been living it up in Tahoe eating krunk-ass cereal.

Pounding on the door.

It was around after the fifth set of poundings (not as hot as it sounds) that I got all Irish and ran up to the door. Flung it open and repeated “Closed you cunt!”

“Not to me you’re not!”

Bruce elbowed me as his fat both fluidly and rigidly avalanches into bar.

“Who said my paintings are worth… dog shit!?”

So Bruce sat down at the bar…

“Make me a perfect…”

I shooshed him.

“Here you go. I think this is whiskey.”

I poured him a double of something brown.

“My paintings have been heralded as the quintessential….”

He put his stupid expensive archeologist hat on the bar. 

I picked it up and frisbeed it to the door.

“Why you little so-and-so!”

“Look Leonardo… I’m 17. We got robbed and I told the cops your paintings were shit so that they wouldn’t keep investigating the issue.”

That’s when I stepped off the steep and treacherous path of always telling the truth, into becoming a gift of gab lier. 

Bartenders best resource.

“Oh. Beg pardon. I’ll represent you in court! I’m a very well known…”

Weeks passed.

Three months now.

A detective who boasted a pair that most cops become cops because they ain’t gots…

He’s calling. 

All the time.

Two new phones, hair dye, a fake mustache. Nothing threw this guy from the scent.

Finally he and four other badges show up at the grocery store and bring me to the precinct.

They bring me into the lineup room and I’m behind a two way mirror looking at…

Dudes?

Five of them.

“Tell us who did it son…”

I didn’t recognize any of them.

“Your honor. They were hawt chicks”

“No. They were bunch of trannies boy! Which one?”

I point at whoever.

Detective grabs my elbow and moves my pointed finger to the one they wanted.

“I can go now?”

No reply.

Enrolling now for bartending school. 

Dm me.