The Bartender Knows: How To Be The Best Drunk In The World Pt. 2

I try to imagine a world without alcohol.

There’s a few plusses. No more drunk drivers. No more bar fights. No more retarded arguments with your girlfriend at Subway Bar.

But then again, no one is fucking. Because seriously, who the hell has sex sober?

And if anyone remembers the good ole prohibition days, all that came out of not drinking were shitty musicals and the rise of gangsterism. Plus no one ever really stopped drinking, the speak-easies springing up under every drug store and local barber shop were packed full of foul mouthed, sassy broads and dapper suited raconteurs, martini’s heavy in hand.

If alcohol didn’t exist, Hemingway wouldn’t have been able to write and Fitzgerald might have written more. Bukowski would have been your friendly, super-positive neighborhood postman.

But booze exists. And thank the living deities it does. Life is hard, and usually relentless. I always say: I don’t have a drinking problem, I have a drinking solution.

The key to handling the great tiger of intoxication is how well you can remain operational. Are your jokes still funny after 14 shots of Jameson, or did you just puke on the bathroom floor and are currently inching your way to the door to avoid being discovered as the perpetrator?

Can you mix tequila, absinthe, and champagne in one evening and still have a functional penis, or did you just pass out, pants half-way down around your legs on the floor, leaving the woman irritated and completely unsatisfied? (do I say this is from experience…ah, maybe, sort of, sorry doll…summer 2009 was a tough one).

It’s a rough and tumble life when you consume copious amounts of Grand Pa’s Hittin’ Juice like it’s a fucking career, and it’s not a job for everybody.

Let me start by saying some basic facts about drinking:

a) 75% of people do not get better the more they drink. Nope. Most people resemble a handicap falling down a spiral staircase.

b) You are more likely to fight people. Anybody; your boyfriend, your wife, your friends, the bartender even (yes, there’s a whole union of people who actually want to fight the bartender. I have been on the receiving end of some serious bartender animosity).

c) Most women are perfectly reasonable until they get hammered and suddenly become raging, sex crazed lunatics, ready to shed the mythical shroud of public decency and show the bar her breasts upon command.

Conversely, booze allows men who have no balls to grow a pair of spare, phantom balls to actually go up and chat these women up, and this is how half the population of the world was conceived. In truth, most people would never hook up, especially for the first time, unless after serious consumption of Kamikaze Shots.

So how do you become the Greatest Drunk In The World? Take a little note from Rad Customer Number One Ian who rolled into my bar and peacefully, calmly, and with much class crushed a half a case of Miller High Life on a Wednesday afternoon. That’s right. Dude just sat there, totally respectfully to himself, and handled the half-case like the Professor for Getting Hammered Like A Goddamn Professional 101.
His personality didn’t change that much, he was polite, he tipped well, who could ask for anything more?

As a bartender, we want you to drink as much as possible and give us the least amount of trouble.

What are some of the greater transgressions preventing you from being The Greatest Drunk In The World?

Sit tight, crack a cold one, and leave me a fiver for this free advice:

Blatant Cocaine Abuse

Everybody knows my beef with the Devil’s Dandruff.

Not only does it make people think they’re more charming and intellectual, but it makes my dick shrivel up smaller than a McDonald’s French Fry.

Sucks.

Bad. I never have Whiskey Dick. I get Coke Dick.

Some of these fellas get so gakked out of their mind their eyes are crossed, their face glistens with a sheen of sweat, and they spit when they order drinks.

You are fooling no one with your rampant drug addiction. Now, I’m not hating. It’s okay to do drugs, let me say it here and now, The Bartender Knows fully supports anyone who wants to get fucked up in any way they see fit. As stated before, life is a bitch and then you die, so you gotta do what you need to do to get by. My major problems come when you are super blatant about it.

You’re little coke hand off is totally obvious.

Doing blow openly in a booth is really obnoxious.

Plus, if anyone out there has ever done REAL COCAINE, this baby powder/amphetamine/drain cleaner mix these haughty gangster drug dealers pass off as ‘good shit’ here in New York is garbage. But the white kids will buy it.

Good job, cream puffs.

And the worst thing is that most people blown out of their minds on the stuff can keep drinking forever. So that’s good for the register at the end of the night, but horrid for those that must wait on the stuttering, drooling, barely functioning talk that spews out of their blood-red faces. If you can’t say your drink order, you will not get an order. Feel me?

And don’t forget to wipe that shit off your nose when you come out of the bathroom.

Barter For Drinks

Not charming. At all. If you don’t have enough money to drink at a bar, do what your favorite bartender here does when he’s broke, cocky, and wanting to drink more:

Challenge a random person to a 40 dollar bet on the pool table.

There’s always takers. Nothing spells having to win when you bet money you don’t have. If you do lose, however, make sure you quietly say “I have to go to the bathroom” and run the fuck out the door. I’m not kidding. I’m five for five for betting without a dime and winning every time. I’m sure there will come a time when I most arrogantly challenge someone to a pool game and lose. But that’s why I’m taking boxing classes now too.

I can’t believe I even have to bring this topic up. But I’ve talked to countless other bartenders and I’m not the only clawing at the bar mats when a customer attempts (always drunkenly, under some guise of charm) to barter for free drinks, more drinks, and stronger drinks.

This never works. You don’t ask for more free food at a restaurant, do you? You don’t barter for cheaper Ipods at the Apple store, do you? Why do y’all insist this is somehow justified at a bar?

There are some options for the bartering of drinks, and generally this involves some kind of showmanship performance right then at the bar, some interesting feat. Or something else, and I’ll let you mull on that one for a minute.

Yes, it involves favors.

I’ll save those stories for another blog.

Don’t Try To Get to Know Me

You know you really don’t care. Be honest. The most common question of any bar person is: “So, Matthew, where are you from?”

I have been recently, much to my amusement (I would advice other to try this), listening to that question calmly, then suddenly, my eyes widening I belt out in a tough, super-defensive way:

“Don’t WORRY about where I’m from!!!”

The sheer look of terror across the eyes of the patron is priceless. Now you’re the guy who has loads of dark secrets, avoiding where he’s from, as if there were some trail of bodies and perhaps a warrant pending in that state.

This “trying to get to know you” is particular annoying to lady bartenders. If you’re a guy and you start a line of questioning to a lady bartender, her throat is already full of so much bile she can barely stand it. She knows exactly where your punk ass is coming from.
No. You Will Not Sleep With Your Lady Bartender. I covered this topic thoroughly in previous blogs (‘Sleeping With Bartenders’, google that shit).

We all should aspire to be Rad Customer Number One Ian, crushing cases and keeping to himself. The way it should be. More to follow.

Until then, let me wish you all a fine welcome to Fall. Cruel Summer 2012 is over. Thank God.

This one was a doosey.