THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN FUCK

            The bartender turns off the light, checks around to see if there are any hanger-on’s outside of the establishment. It’s 4:30AM in New York City and there are bound to be still drunken vagabonds listlessly wandering the streets outside the bar. Some nights this can be a harmless thing. You just flick them off as you would circling flies. Other nights they might take a swing at you from the darkness. Or worse.

            But tonight, there’s no one. The bartender can take a deep long breath and lock the door behind him. Most of the dirt is clean from the surfaces. The beers are stocked for the coming bartender in the daytime realm. It’s a kind thing to do, prep for the next person coming in. Sure, nine times out of ten, the person wouldn’t do back for you. But you don’t care.

            What is the great lesson in Salinger’s classic Franny and Zooey? Do beautiful things even if there is no one there to see them. Right?

            “It ain’t over until the Fat Lady sings,” Zooey says. Then Zooey tells Franny who the ‘Fat Lady’ really is. (If you don’t understand these references, please do yourself a favor and read Franny and Zooey. It is short, sweet, and will change your life. For real.)

            But wiping up all the rinds of the lemons and limes and making sure the little pieces of glass are out from the mats won’t change anything in this world. It’s the right thing to do, but a noble one?

            It doesn’t matter. The money is in the register. The till is even. The bartender walks slowly behind the bar, picks up a clean pint glass, and pours himself a draft. For himself. He’s poured at least 500 in a night, but this one here, now, is his.

            The bartender sits down on a stool in the darkness and reflects. The air pipes creak and rattle in the corner of the dark bar. Some steam hisses and twists to the ceiling. It could have been a strange ghost, or a demon for that matter. Anyone one unfamiliar with these weird sounds that emit from a bar room floor would first assume the place was haunted. After the reckless and relentless stomping and yelling of hundreds of intoxicated people just in one night, imagine for a moment they leave a residue perhaps; of their laughter, of their anger, of their sadness and their lust.

            Maybe there is some kind of musk left behind from human moments, especially the inebriated kinds. Maybe it’s all in the bartenders mind. He takes his first sip from the cold beer. Nearly half the glass is gone when he puts it back down to the wooden bar.

            Slowly, wearily, he brings out a little tattered and beer stained notebook. It’s been in his pocket all night, now folded and pressed in ragged ways, and some of the pen ink is smeared, now doubt from the sweat and the alcohol. In fact, he realizes his whole shirt is soaked with the same, his pants covered in water. The night was insane. People holding bills out in gusto, eyes of want, some smiling, others with some bored irritation. People open their mouths and yell: “Bartender!” More start yelling the same word, like a mantra chant. Like a nightmare.  

            Soon all the ‘bartenders!” become one hollow echo tone through his ears. The bartender has dealt with crowds before. He moves like some preternatural creature, turning, spinning around, church key popping bottles, beer caps fly everywhere like stray bullets. Two well bottles raised up in two hands, pouring drinks four at once. People get what they want. The bartender is on auto-pilot, not even there. Just one continuous flow of alcoholic movement, a gymnast delivery of intoxication. That was earlier. Now there is only silence.

            The bartender puts the pen down to the wet paper. The words don’t come immediately. So many things, so many memories of the day, before the trove of wolves rolled in on their Friday night war path. The bartender raises the pen to his mouth, a nervous habit. It even reeks like it was soaking in Gin.

            The words. They are there, floating amidst with the steam from the bar room floor, circling above the bartender. If only he could just pull them out from the ether and put them down, like intricate diamonds laced into a necklace, with the right kind of precision and honesty.

            What does he want to say? How does he describe all the people he had met standing behind the wooden bar. Some have been old men, muttering about their dreams as they stared down into the melted ice of their glass. How can the bartender immortalize these men? One with sad, drooping eyes, cheekbones with wrinkles cut from both laughter and grimace. He, giving the bartender advice:

            “Live it now, because life is only smoke,” he tells the bartender. Less than a year later he was dead. They found him living alone, in practical squalor. No living relatives. No money to his name. A wisp of smoke, gone by the morning light.  

            The bartender presses the pen down hard on the paper. And what about the woman he convinced not to kill herself? Crying after one beer, using bar napkins to dry her cheeks. They took her away too, when she tried to use the fruit cutter to slice her own throat right their at the bar at 3 in the afternoon.

            How does one write about these people? Or all of the things the bartender has seen. From the back of the bar, more steam demons hiss. They may know what happened too, but they are not speaking a language the bartender can understand. No, their language is far more murky.

            This isn’t the first time the bartender tried to put down the words that could illustrate all the things he has seen through the bars. The moments of triumph and celebration when someone gets a job and buys the bar a round of shots. The anguish of the heart when another finds their girlfriends cheating on them and it was the bartender who had to tell them. The casual days of listless nothing, watching B movies while no one speaks to each other, only the clank of the ice cubes stirring around in circles.

            There would be days when the bartender would sit at the end of other bars, not his, and put, yet again, some words to paper. People would jeer and laugh at him, some would approach:

            “What the hell are you writing in a bar for?” His face wanting no answer. Not that he could understand the language back. “What, just writing about us?” he asks. 

            The bartender would set his pen down, look up slowly.

            “You don’t want to know what I'm writin' buddy,” I say.

            The man’s face twists with some whiskey anger. He might do something, like throw a punch. The bartender might throw one back. But no one does anything. The man goes back to his group of hounds, the bartender goes back to his pen.

            Some women approach too, also confused by the stack of papers at the end of the bar. “Let me guess, you’re a writer?” she says. It’s not a question either, and when she says the word, writer, she spits it out like it was a new disease. It’s known in America the writer is the lowest of the low. Unless it’s for espisodic TV or a hot new screenplay, writers are regarded as nusicances and drunkards.

            The girl has her hands on her hips. She’s chewing gum, which is a weird thing to do while drinking Vodka Sodas. The bartender answers:

            “Yes, yes I am.”

            “Are you published?” Again, the word is spit like snake venom.

            “Maybe,” the bartender says. She goes away too. The group looks down the bar, both judging and shaking their heads. Their question is a good one.

            Why are you writing in a bar?

            The night moves on. Now the creaking of the floorboards grow stronger, like hooved footsteps coming closer, out from the darkness of the room. The bartender finishes the cold pint, stares down at the paper. There are no words there. They are still floating.

            The bartender is tired. People have worn him down. If its not the questions of why to write or the shoving of money beyond yells, he places the notebook back into his back pocket. He gets up, pulls out the bar keys and steps outside. There are no wanderers on the street waiting for him, but the cold five o’clock in the morning blowing February winds are.  

            He buttons up his coat all the way up. It’s going to be a long walk. He looks up at the empty sky, not a star in it, only a half sliver of the white moon. He nods to himself.

            He will write all of these stories. And he will be honest. Because that is the only weapon he has left. Because the bartender knows about humanity, from the beer flooded floor to the steamed, dirt-caked ceiling. The residue of humans he wears like a suit. The musk is in his lungs.

            He moves down the sidewalk, and a little smile, a hopeful one, crosses his face. He realizes:

            The only thing to put down on the page is the honest truth. The pen is mightier than a thousand armies. It cuts all the grass to expose all the snakes.

            The wind blows hard against his face as he reaches the corner.

But it does not take the smile away.

THE EMPTY BAR...ALONE WITH THE STEAM...

ONLY THIS BETWEEN LIES AND THE TRUTH...

ALONE...INTO THE NIGHT...

HOW TO SAVE LITERACY

            We are all put on this Earth to do something. Right?

            I remember being a very young man (long before bartending), happy, playing make believe with swords and train sets (never forget the train sets). All things were okay (except when I got in trouble with my Mother). Until that Fateful day.

            The day in question?

            It was the day I realized how big the world was. Not just how big the world was, but how huge existence actually is. It hit me like later acid trips, hard, confusing, and totally overwhelming.

            It was strange. I just remember laying there in my bed and feeling the exact moment I understood that there was a much larger universe outside of myself (some adults haven’t even learned this important fact). It was scary and dark, feeling so small, knowing how miniscule I was in this grand universe.

            I wasn’t big. All of my issues and problems (as a precocious 10 year old) meant nothing. I started to cry. The immenseness was simply too big for my small mind to comprehend (nothing has really changed).

            I cried out for my Mother: “Mamma!”

            The dutiful mother she was, rushed in, me waking her from slumber with my cries.

            “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” she asked.

            I tried my best, kid-wise, to explain my horrifying revelation. I said, through tears, how big life was, and how scary it made me, and how I had no idea how to live through it all.

            My mother, in her infinite wisdom, explained:

            “It’s true, sweets, the world is much bigger than you and I. And there is trouble everywhere. But it’s up to you to pick something you love to do. Life is like a battle—like raising up those plastic swords you play with in the yard. You must know what your weapon will be. Pick one weapon and fight with all of your heart. If everyone did that, this world would be a better one. You just have to find your battle and fight it with all of your might."

            Fast forward. Now I’m a bartender. Suddenly, I realize my life is totally meaningless. I could have been a lawyer. I could have been a doctor. I could have been a cop, a congressman, a private detective, a priest, anything, but there I was, listening to some kid talk about how New York isn’t shit and how life is ‘easy, and so boring sometimes...'

            Then they ask me for a Gin and Soda and Tonic. Like at the same time.

            “Is it hard to bartend?” The girl asks me facetiously. "What other kind of drinks can you make?"

            I try to hold back the vomit.

            I put my elbows on the bar and lean forward, almost in a whisper, almost in a grimace.

            “I can make anything your Grandfather would drink, sweetheart.”  

            The whole bar goes dark around me. I can’t see straight. I think back to what my Mother told me about swords and what not. Then I’m at another bar, years later, sitting with a bunch of miscreant writers. More my kind of people. We want to write each other short stories.

            “This will be fun. It’ll be like a boxing ring. But for writers,” one of them says.

            “Exactly…” I say.

            Another downs a shot, slamming the glass down on the bar. “So we write a short story a month,” his eyes water with whiskey drunk.

            “Yes. But we do more. We write one a week…” I say.

            “What?”

            “What?” They both simultaneously say.

            I lean back, myself a little tipsy. “One a week. And we do it anonymously.”

            “Anonymously,” the scraggily haired one says.

            “That’s right.”

            “Like we don’t put our names on it?” the short-haired one with whiskey eyes says.

            “That’s right,” I say, “We write one a week, and we’ll put them right on the bar every…” I think to myself to try remember what fucking day it is (note: when you bartend 6 days a week, you forget what day it even is. Add whiskey, beer, serving thousands of people, listening to everyone’s problems, and trying to remain standing is a concoction not for the weak and weary).

            I continue: “Every Sunday. That’s it. We write short story each week, anonymously, print them up, and place it right fucking here,” I slam my hand down on the end of the bar, “for all the world to read.”

            All of us, giddy with writer excitement, run off totally hammered, to write short stories. Now I know. This was a good idea.

            So the little anonymous experiment began. And before I knew it, more writers wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

            “Can I write stories for this anonymous thing?” a random writer asked, walking into the bar on a Sunday.   

            I looked over at my cronies.

            “Why not? It’s open to everyone,” I said.

            Then something began. Each Sunday, we would print out more and more short stories, always placing them at the end of the bar. The end of the bar I first slammed my shot down and ran with this odd idea.

            Something weird began. More and more people started to write short stories. Now our little group realized we had started something strange. We needed rules.

             Sort of.

            “Okay, rule number one. Never Stop Writing. Rule number two: Never Stop Reading,” I said.

            “What else? Can we write whatever we want?” One of our cronies asked.

            “Yes,” I said. “But it has to be a story. I don’t care what it is. It just has to be a story.”

            “Is there rules on topics? Genres? Lengths?” Someone else asked.    

            “No,” I said. “The only thing is: We Don’t Stop Writing. No matter what.”

            We all nodded. More people came into the bar, asking what the hell the stack of anonymous short stories were sitting in a pile at the edge of the bar.

            “It’s Literate Sunday,” I said. “It’s an anonymous book club.”

            “Can we read them?” A customer asked.

            “That’s what they are there for,” I said. Then I had a vision. I blurted it out.

            “Oh, and you can write what you think of the story on the back,” I had no idea where this idea came from.

            The customers smiled, grabbing a short story. “Oh, that’s cool. It’s like a writer workshop. But at a bar.”

            “That’s right,” I said.

            “And no one does anything…there’s no readings or anything, right?”

            “There’s nothing more embarrassing than a writer reading their own work out loud,” I said.

            Nervous giggle. They grabbed a story. Each week, the submissions grew and grew. Literate Sunday was becoming legitimate.

            People wanted to know. Why anonymous?

            “We realize that most people judge stories by who’s famous, who’s their friends, what some rich person says. Then there’s all the judgments. Who’s a man? Who’s a women? Who’s gay? Who’s from Africa? Here at Literate Sunday, we realized: Who gives a shit? The STORY has to be good or perish!!!”

            Cue random hand clapping from across the room.    

            More and more submissions were sent via email to our new shiny website. More and more people became members. Our numbers topped 100. Then 500.

            And once The New York Times wrote a piece about us, it exploded. Readers and writers from all over the world joined this weird thing that started in a dark bar by a bunch of drunk people.

            LITERATE SUNDAY.

            The New York Times, you ask? Bartender Matthew, are you lying to us?

            Nope. Read all about it HERE, YES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, PEOPLE.

            So in honor of The Bartender Knows coming to an end, let me ask you guys a couple questions?

            Do you like reading?

            Do you like writing?

            Do you want to read submissions from all around the world?
            Have you ever wanted to write a short story?

            Then send an email to literatesunday@gmail.com .

            That’s all you have to do. You’ll get an anonymous short story once a week, every Sunday. We don’t know who these writers are. We don’t care. The stories could be written by me. The stories could be written by you. It doesn't matter. 

            There’s only 2 rules.

            Never Stop Writing.

            Never Stop Reading.

            Do it, people. Just email:

            literatesunday@gmail.com

            Time to pick up a sword.

            Be a part of us. Whoever we are.

            Until next time.

            P.S.

            Only 4 more blogs left. It’s been a great ride. Thanks for reading.

SHORT...

STORIES...

BITCHES...    

             

                       

SPEED DATING (THE LIGHTENING ROUND)

            It’s true. I know. I know.

            Everybody’s asking me, “Why Are You Leaving?” I know a lot of people rely on these blogs to answer all of the most perplexing questions in this world. There’s a lot of answers out there. And I know them.

            But let us not shed a tear for a bartender, slowly walking off into the sunset. I’ve put the bar rag down, washed my hands, heavily Purell-ing my hands to get the gunk of the New York City bars off my skin.  

            Imagine the average bacteria on a servers/bartenders hands here in New York City. Hell, imagine just the bacteria on the hands of the average New Yorker. First they leave their apartments, all jacketed up, turning the doorknob closed. Their roommates also have touched their doorknobs, as any of the one night stands they've had traipsing through the house. Then to the Dunkin Donuts or some other ambiguous ‘organic’ coffee shop for those with an anti-capitalist streak. They get a coffee to go handed to them by a pasty, acned faced Puerto Rican. God knows where she’s been all morning. Then onto the subway, touching the seats and slipping ones fingers around the hand rails. How many people ride the New York Public Subway each day?

6.1 million people. Google that shit. That’s 6.1 million doorknobs. 6.1 million coffee cups served. 6.1 million hand-rail fingerprints. Why we are all not bleeding out of our ass from some horrid Bird Flu from Mars?

Thank you, penicillin.

Other than knowing way too much about bacteria and health stats, I also know everything you need to know about life. This is the ‘speed dating’ round, since FEBURARY 4^th, 2015, we are closing this bitch down. No more The Bartender Knows. After the 4th, I don't know anything anymore. 

Take heed. Let’s get all this info fast to you like a viral infection (okay, I’ll stop with the metaphor).

YOUR GUIDE TO EVERYTHING IN LIFE (PART 2)

TERRORISM

Assholes. Every last one of them.

My sister, one of them (I’ve got three), is a lawyer. She always went on when we were kids about something called ‘the social contract’. Not sure what legal book she picked this one out of, but a degree from Georgetown ain’t no joke, so whatever pre-teen research must have paid off somewhere.

Her version of the social contract is this. You’re born into the world. You did not choose this. Now that you are here and want to join in the festivities of a democratic society, but we have to agree to a certain code of ethics. No matter what some Cleric in Syria says or even Sigmund fucking Freud, if you are here in this society you must leave other people alone. Unless they break the law. Like rob your mother. Or rape your co-ed friend.

The idea of the social contract is that you let people be as free as they want to be, open as they want to be, and worship who they want. What is not acceptable is killing people. No matter what.

Okay, if you have a gun and find yourself in a foreign country firing live ammunition at other people who live in that country, and you get hurt or killed, well…what the fuck were you doing there in the first place? If someone with a gun and live ammunition came to your country and started firing on the common populace, you wouldn’t like that very much, now would you? 

We have got to leave people alone. Until they fuck up. Then we nail them. To the wall.

So Terrorism, go fuck yourself. You may think you’re getting a private room in Allah’s Mansion of a Thousand Virgins. We know all you’re getting is a six foot cold slab down at the morgue.

Good riddance, fuck faces.

HIPSTERS

Never thought the day would come. I’m here actually to defend hipsters.

Now I have written in extreme detail about my hatred for these fucks. But now, everywhere I go, from Williamsburg, Brooklyn (where it all began), to Berlin, Germany, all I hear is hate for whoever these ‘hipsters’ are. And the hate is coming from people other people would call hipsters.

So I’m at the flea market in Mauer Park, Berlin when I overhear a girl with bangs, thick black rimmed glasses in tight jeans and some puffy military coat complain: “Oh, and there’s SO many hipsters around now.”

I pause, confused.  I refrain from yelling in this broads face: “You are a fucking hipster, lady!” I don’t. I'm nice.

Or the other person, in Uniqlo and some ratty yoga pants, mat roll over his back, and a man bun. He says: “Williamsburg is ruined. Hipsters killed it all.” This dude rocks a man bun. Seriously, what category would you put him in?

A ‘hipster’ is some one who’s cool, stylish, knows a lot of obscure records, tries to eat non-GMO’d foods, tries to stay skinny, plays in bands, and does all of this well into adulthood.

I ask you, friends, what the hell is wrong with that?

Isn’t that better than ignorant, unread, overweight, boring, gas-guzzling, sweat pant-doning, WalMart shopping, 9 to 5 stooges busy staying uniformed yet opinionated?

Case closed. Hipsters are cool. Leave them alone. They know no better.

SADNESS

Oh, I’m with you on this one, guys. If my soul was a color, it would be a Rothko blue. My color used to be a crimson red, but these days I’ve moved to the other color spectrum and that sort of post-death, mystery blue just gets me every time now. I love, love, love listening to Chet Baker on rainy mornings, sipping coffee and  reading Dostoyevsky. People used to make fun of me about being too ‘morose’, or overtly dramatic, or 'too philisophical'. As the years roll by, those that once called me dramatic for no reason admire the fact I spend most of my adult life making art, studying languages, reading obscure novels, creating songs and films, and traveling the world.

So all those people out there who take a lot of shit for being ‘too sensitive’, ‘too emotional, or ‘too philosophical’, know I am here for you.

And it gets better. It does.

Try to walk on the sunny side of the street.

Just be happy your not provocative cartoonists in Paris this week.

It gets better.

It does.

FUCK WITH ONE OF US?
YOU FUCK WITH ALL OF US!

ROTHKO. I LOVE YOU.

THEY ARE JUST KIDS! LEAVE THEM ALONE AND GO DO SOME COOLS SHIT.