serving drinks was once my job
but i am no bartender
a bartender serves drinks, but also
listens, understands, councils, maybe cares
the good ones do
not me
i chased dollars, watched clocks
and slipped out the backdoor unseen
each night i tried to forget their
faces and stories
willing them to drain away
watercolors in the rain
even now present tense
when haunted names
or ghostly bloated faces
bubble up to the surface
it is very much an
unwelcome intrusion
rejected with great prejudice
except Tap
Tap i remember fairly regularly
Tap i refuse to banish
i’m tied to him still
one of the few i liked
Indian by way of England
and could pronounce
the hell out of the word “water”
woo-tah
i can’t do it justice
he said it every time
as part of his regular order
double vodka and water
he had been a DJ and a drummer
and would tap tap tap the bartop
in time with whatever was playing
barehanded loud slaps
tap tap tap
sometimes so loud
it pestered other patrons
but i hated them anyway
so fuck them all
and their sambuca
play on Tap play on
but the beats didn’t pay
so Tap was a banker
tap tap tapping a calculator instead
then beating the bartop at night
over double vodka and water
before each order he would say
just one more. i have to work tomorrow.
be he might have one more
with the same warning
then one more
then one more
tap tap tap
his accent would turn more
liquid and we would bullshit
about UFOs, the mechanics of film noir,
or the collapsing of probability waves
just one more.
i have to work tomorrow.
except he stopped going to work eventually
we hit the skids one night
when he arrived
already deep in his cups
and i took an ego stand
about something which meant
almost nothing to me but
everything to him
no warning that night
he had finally been fired
i didn’t ask why
didn’t seem my place
maybe a real bartender would’ve
instead i served his drink
just double vodka
no water
and shot the shit
every topic became heated
and he told me many times
that i needed to drink less
which got my hackles up
it was so patently absurd
i reminded Tap he didn’t even
know how much i drank
he said again: no, you need to drink less
a real bartender might not have argued
but i did
somehow our chatter flowed
into the topic of a particularly
vile British racial slur
and the origin of the word
he maintained it was an acronym
for Worker On Government service
i said that was a backronym and
it was named after a racist doll
he said i was racist
for arguing the point with him
he had suffered the beatings
i didn’t argue that
only the etymology
as we were wont to do
on most nights
he finished his vodka
and went home angrily,
maintaining my racism
it wasn’t far
just across the street
i pictured him in his tiny condo
he had invited me over once
to smoke a joint after
3 in the morning
pre legalization
told me about his divorce
and his daughter
and blasted dubstep and
slapped his coffee table
tap tap tap until
security bang bang banged even
then he continued to tap but i went home
i never saw him again
after the night we argued
a real bartender might have
reached out to him
but i didn’t
a few weeks later i heard he
had solved all his problems with a rope
maybe a real bartender wouldn’t have
been affected water off a duck’s back
but i was