the bah

I found my local bar a bit ago. Well, one of them - there is still a lot of exploring to do in the hood. But I found a good one. The back door is a quiet stumble home and the beers are cheap, the tender(s) of bar friendly and the food ain't bad neither. Nothing bad to say about that.

Being that it was such a good experience and all, I have gone back several times and realized that:

a) I have a knack for warming up the atmosphere, which eventually translates to free drinks

b) Being single is hard on my liver

c) There are a lot of other people in the world who engage in weekday liver and lung damage, of which I was previously unawares. This leads me to believe that being single is hard on other people's livers too.

Or maybe they are not single and being in a relationship is harder on their livers than being single was. I would probably counsel these particular people to consider leaving the relationship that is driving them to drink alone and find a partner who would like to drink in tandem. Seems more fun at least, anyway.

Having avoided serious relationships for the bulk of my life, I don't know if I have had a long enough track record with any one relationship to gauge my own in-relationship drinking habits. Plus, I have had the added bonus of being broke for most of my adult life, and I don't think that Natty Ice really has hurt my filters too much, since it's pretty much water with a dash of hops.

I now understand though, how one stumbles into, claims and slowly starts to stink up one's "spot", because the rush of familiarity and safety to be felt in a not-quite-a-dive-yet-far-from-swanky establishment is like a happy, gin-soaked blanket of comfort. A blanket you can pull up over your eyes over and over and over again. A blanket big enough to share with other people and no one feels like you're hogging the warm part, or leaving their left thigh exposed to the elements.

And so I will now claim my special stool, donate a deck of cards (since they are not playing with a full deck at present, although neither am I, technically) and sully up to play gin rummy and talk politics with Mark and Thomas and whomever is my lucky drinking buddy du jour.

I sent a memo to my liver and promised my kidneys at least 3 litres of water everyday, so hopefully the all-out revolt won't begin for at least another 20 years. Who knows, by then I may have warmed up to a relationship again and it will only be my patience and sanity that take a beating.