Drinking With Men : A Memoir (9781101603123) (9 page)

Reading it now, all these years later, of course it makes me cringe a little. So maybe I wasn't as good at sublimating desire, or at making poems, as I thought I was. And of course it's only in retrospect that I see that I spent a year writing about how Yeats was sublimating desire, pouring my young and earnest heart into it, without once stopping and thinking,
Oh fuck, me too, maybe that's also exactly what
I'm
doing.
Night after night, I went out and drank, sometimes in the company of men who liked me a whole lot, but they didn't love me, not in that way, anyway, and with others whose quick wit and encyclopedic intelligence intimidated me, hard as I tried, and sometimes managed, to keep up with them.

The same winter, I came down with what I assumed was just an especially vicious cold. Chills, fever, fluorescent greenish snot, hacking cough, the works. Still, I persisted in my usual routine of eating poorly, drinking heavily, and chain-smoking. My friends at the bar expressed concern. I told them I'd be fine. But it got so bad that I wasn't even able to drag my ass down the street to the Pig. I was home, alone, self-medicating with aspirin and Robitussin and whatever other promising antihistamines or decongestants or expectorants happened to be at hand, and hot whiskey with lemon and honey and cloves. I tried to keep doing my work, but I could hardly focus on reading. My head was so heavy, I could barely stay awake.

One night, about a week into this affliction, I started to drift into sleep. But before my eyes fully closed, I heard a voice speaking softly. “Don't. Lie. Down,” it said calmly but gravely. At first I panicked. Had my time in this small village turned me into one of those isolated, unwell young women right out of a Shirley Jackson story? What kind of freaky North Bennington witchcraft was this?

Bleary and worried, I turned to see who was speaking to me, and there, by my bedside, was a small fuzzy lamb with the face of William Blake. Naturally, I relaxed.

It is likely that the combination of over-the-counter drugs and Jameson made this visitation possible, but it was nonetheless perfectly real. And if it wasn't just an episode for which alcohol and pharmacology were responsible, then I was willing to chalk it up to the weird, strong magic of North Bennington working upon me, and I could not ignore it. I did exactly as the William Blake lamb implored me, and instead of lying down, I propped myself up on a pile of pillows such that, when I did finally allow myself to sleep, I was nearly sitting upright.

The next day, one of the sisters who owned the bar called. “Honey, you need to get yourself to the emergency room,” she said. “We know you're sick, and we're worried.” I was nearly delirious by then. A friend came and picked me up and took me to the ER, where I was told I had a pretty advanced case of pneumonia. In telling me not to lie down, that William Blake lamb-apparition-hallucination may have saved my life. It's not uncommon, I was told, for people with pneumonia to choke in their sleep on phlegm. Antibiotics replaced all the other crap I'd been taking, I managed to lay off the cigs for a spell, and the sisters from the bar and other friends from the Pig brought soup and checked in on me until I was well.

Even more than Grogan's in Dublin, my life at the Pig gave me a sense of how powerful the fellowship among bar regulars could be, how the people one drank with could, in a way, fill in for family. This does not square with depictions of bars in popular culture. The power of Richard Brooks's film
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
as a cultural touchstone is fading now, more than thirty years after it was released, though it still attracts a cult following. But it was strong enough in my college days that when my mother (who had nothing against a good bar herself) became aware that I spent quite a lot of time at a bar, she urged me to see it, as though it might foretell what terrible fate awaited me if I didn't watch myself.

The film,
laden with hazy, hallucinatory flashbacks and heavy-handed symbolism, is based on Judith Rossner's novel, which was in turn inspired by the terrible true story of New York City schoolteacher Roseann Quinn. Diane Keaton plays Theresa Dunn—dedicated, talented teacher of deaf children by day, sex-and-drug-and-booze-addled bar cruiser by night. We learn that she is the daughter of an oppressive Catholic father; that she was confined to a body cast as a child; that she doesn't quite measure up to her glamorous (but equally troubled) sister. All this is meant to explain the self-hatred that leads to her risky behavior. At her local haunt, she picks up men—the more violent, the better—and takes them home with her. In the end, she is brutally murdered—as her real-life counterpart Quinn was in 1973—by one such man, a psychopathic drifter.

In it, there is no semblance of the bar culture I had come to love—but its cautionary tenor and prurient moralizing certainly did not escape me. Do terrible things ever happen to women at bars? Of course they do. But at one little public house in small-town Vermont, I told my worried mother, I encountered no danger, no sexual peril. Instead, there were people who cared about my well-being, and, on one crucial occasion, delivered soup to my door.

The sisters' intervention surely had as much to do with my return to health as the English Romantic lamb by my bedside. I knew that I could count on my friends at the Pig, not least on the sisters, who'd even hired me to pitch in as a bartender from time to time, which I loved as much as I loved being on the other side of the bar. To tend bar at the only place within walking distance of one's school confers a great sense of power and privilege: I could demand to take professors' car keys away from them, and decline to serve anyone I knew to be underage. It also felt like a kind of ministry, for it is true that people like to pour their hearts out to sympathetic barkeeps, and I was nothing if not sympathetic. I only wished I could be more helpful. What to do for Stan of the auto repair goods store when he lamented his loneliness? What to do when teachers and other adults I respected spoke of dissatisfaction and worry? Not much except listen—and that, I knew, counted for something. When I was broke or hungry or lonely, or a little bit of each, I knew I would always be taken care of at the bar by its people, and I would be there for them, too.

•   •   •

A
s graduation approached, terror crept in. What on earth would I do with the rest of my life? Where would I go? As diligently as I'd worked on my Yeats project, I was afraid I wouldn't finish it. I had a few other final papers to write, and I didn't think I'd be able to get my work done. And that meant I wouldn't graduate. And I wonder, especially in retrospect, if maybe I didn't
want
to graduate. I'd done plenty of complaining in my four years of college. I'd threatened to drop out many times. (Second semester sophomore year had been a particularly low point. I told one of my professors—a super cool jazz trumpeter—that I intended to take a bus from Montreal to Managua, where I'd maybe meet a nice Sandinista and live in a hammock for the rest of my days. “It doesn't matter where you go,” he said to me. “If you're carrying around a big sack of shit, you'll still have a big sack of shit when you get there.”) But my two years off-campus, where it had been so easy to pretend that I was just a regular almost-adult who happened to commute up the hill to a job that happened to be going to school, had been pretty great. I liked that life. I liked my pink womb of an apartment, the hilly streets and the little lake nearby, the fresh air, and the starry night sky. And I loved my bar, where in the sisters I found surrogate moms who accepted and cared about me.

But I had to graduate. I'd dropped out before. I'd never much worried about being a minor disgrace and disappointment to my real family, but now, a little older, I did worry a little about disappointing myself—and the teachers whose respect and faith I had somehow managed to earn. Someday, I had to finish
something
. I could easily imagine being like certain friends from the bar: I could ease into a simple life in southwestern Vermont, find some kind of job, stay forever . . .

But I did finish, even though as the end of the term approached, it didn't seem possible. I sat at my desk until the early hours of the morning, finishing my thesis and the other papers that were due, drinking pot after pot of strong tea, occasionally answering the door when friends from the bar dropped by to make sure I'd eaten something, to make sure I was okay. I handed in my work at the last possible minute, and I graduated.

When graduation day arrived and I was handed a college diploma, I actually felt kind of proud of myself. Maybe I had shaken off my proclivity for being a fuckup. I doubted it, but maybe I was finally heading in the right direction.

At the same time, God, was I sad. It was likely that I'd never—or, at best, rarely—see the sisters and my other friends from the Pig once I moved on. I might stay in touch with David and the other professors with whom I'd been close, but the four-year life cycle of college meant that they'd have other students to teach—and to meet at the bar for drinks and arguments.

As a compromise, I gave myself the gift of one final summer in North Bennington, its gentle hills and small-town comforts, its trees and streams and fresh air and distinct magic. I had to move on. I knew that. But I couldn't tear myself away so suddenly. Not from that bar. Not from those woods. And at summer's end, on my last morning in Vermont, I stopped again at the path's threshold and asked for safe passage, as I had on so many mornings during the previous years. But that day, I didn't walk through the woods; I no longer had any reason, any need, to go to campus. Instead, I walked back to my apartment, taped up the last few boxes of books, swept the floor, moved my stuff out to the front porch where I waited for the U-Haul to arrive, and locked the door behind me.

5.

HOW TO BEHAVE IN A BAR

The Man of Kent, Hoosick Falls, New York

O
ne of America's greatest bars is located in the unheralded town of Hoosick Falls, New York, a small working class community about an hour east of Albany. It was established by and, until the summer of 2007, presided over by John—an incomparable, tough-tender former merchant seaman, uranium miner, dockworker, and all-around first-class bloke from Kent, England, who had rescued a three-legged cat, kept ducks and geese and even a pig named Millie in the yard, stocked more than a hundred varieties of beer between the taps and bottles, and ensured that everyone felt safe and happy, well watered and well fed on his watch. To call his bar, the Man of Kent, a roadhouse isn't exactly right, but its location, on a country road, smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, lends it some unmistakably roadhousey properties, and makes it a favored oasis not just for skiers on their way from New York City to the slopes of Vermont, but especially for bikers tearing through New England. If you don't know it's there, it's pretty easy to miss, even with the folksy hand-painted sign of a country gentleman in hunting clothes posted outside. Driving by, it looks like a modest low-slung house with an exuberantly planted front garden and large terrace.

It took some doing to get there, but I went to the Man of Kent whenever I could. I don't think
anyone
lived within walking distance of the Man of Kent, except for John and his American wife, just next door. It's about twenty minutes by car from Bennington along twisty and often treacherous Route 7, past the Tomhannock Reservoir, and I didn't drive then and still don't. Besides, even if I did drive, I'd never be able to make it back from that bar in one piece after a few Belgian beers and maybe a whiskey or two. Getting there was easiest if one had a designated driver at the ready, and I sometimes had one in my straight-edge punk-rock friend Theo, who was happy to transport his friends to the Man of Kent, then bring us safely home.

It was the perfect respite from campus; it was a treat, a proper night out. To go to this roadside inn on a chilly night, having made the journey on this dark, winding road, was to step not quite into the past, but into a place that felt as though it existed outside of time. Even coming from not so far away, I felt like a weary traveler at the end of a journey, grateful for warmth and shelter, for safety and good company.

The atmosphere was unlike anywhere else around, brightly lit—ludicrously bright, really, but you got used to it—and kitted out in British memorabilia: rugby and soccer jerseys, cricket gear, legions of terrycloth bar towels advertising Fuller's and Young's and Old Speckled Hen, and other bits of Anglocentric flotsam and jetsam I was not yet prepared to identify when I first visited as a college sophomore. There was a television, but it never dominated; despite the trappings, this was no sports bar. There was no jukebox, but there was always a sound track: John was especially fond of World War II–era English music-hall standards and French chanteurs and chanteuses. For all its blazing brightness, for all its kitsch, it still had everything that great bars have: a strong sense of itself, a superb and commanding presence behind the bar, in John, and a mix of people, young and old, rich and not rich and in between. And clearly, what made John happiest was playing host, in a protective and almost paternal way, to that diverse blend of patrons: local people in flannels and fleeces and heavy hiking boots whose families had lived in the area for generations, professors and students from the few colleges nearby or close enough (Bennington and Rensselaer Polytechnic and the State University at Albany), and the tourists who traversed Route 7 year after year, skiers on their way to the slopes of Vermont from New York City, and those gangs of bikers—some weekend warriors in shiny new leathers on shiny new bikes, some scary-ass old-school dudes with forbidding tattoos and wild hair held back by bandannas, with faces that never cracked smiles and their beloved Harleys parked outside, for many of whom the Man of Kent was a final pit stop before zooming across the narrow southern end of Vermont to hasten to the promised land of New Hampshire, where they could
LIVE FREE OR DIE
on roads that might not have been totally lawless, but at least did not demand the indignity of helmets.

To me, the place seemed curiously genteel for the Born to Be Wild crowd, but they loved being there. And that's because John made everyone feel right at home: As long as you minded your manners, didn't make trouble, were at least a
little
friendly, you were cool with him. The bikers could be daunting, but no one dared start any trouble in John's bar. It wasn't so much that he actively brokered peace among the different groups; it was more implicit. For a very nice man, he also had just enough of the tough guy about him, solid and barrel-chested, to make it perfectly clear that you'd best behave yourself. He didn't mind a little boisterous inebriated good cheer—even a table full of sloppy singing students could get an indulgent nod—but it was understood that if you crossed the line, you might just be in for it. No one wanted to be on this man's bad side.

When I went there with fellow students who weren't as bar-savvy as others, who were new to the place, I made sure to tell them in advance that John was wonderful but formidable, and he wouldn't put up with any crap in his bar. “Be nice,” I'd tell them, “be respectful.” And since in the area Bennington students had a not-wholly-undeserved reputation for being entitled, I had made it something of a personal mission to demonstrate that not all of us were like that. Campus parties were the best and safest places to behave like a moron, if that's what you wanted, and many did. But at the Man of Kent, you had to be on your best behavior. And if you'd established yourself as a known entity and turned up with a group of newcomers, you understood tacitly that the group was your responsibility, that its behavior was a reflection of your own character.

There are ways to behave, and not to behave, in bars, and each bar makes its own demands. There are loud bars where conversation is not a priority, where cheap shots and cheaper draft beer prevail, where the idea is to get drunk and not to engage in any remotely complex way with your fellow patrons. There are quiet bars, lit low and engineered for tête-à-têtes. And at the Man of Kent, which was neither of those things, but a place both brightly festive and undeniably civilized, where students were invariably outnumbered by proper adults, I started to understand, with greater clarity than ever, how to behave in a bar.

After a youth marked by minor delinquency and chronic insubordination, I had nonetheless emerged with good manners (though I can't say that I recall ever being taught them). My mother sent mixed messages about the treatment of waiters and waitresses and bartenders and others who worked in the service industry. She was often charming and generous, but at other times she was imperious, outrageously demanding, and sometimes downright mean. She once sent a cheeseburger back to the kitchen at a poolside café in Florida at least three times—growing more and more impatient, and contemptuous of the unfortunate waitress, whose fault it couldn't possibly have been, with each inadequate specimen—until it was precisely medium-rare, while my brother and I shrank deeper and deeper into our chairs, mortified. No matter how unhappy I was with my food or drink, I never wanted to treat anyone like that.

Still, it was going to the Man of Kent that showed me how to engage with bartenders. Certainly, I got along great with everyone at the bar in North Bennington—but they were my friends, part of my community, my substitute family, and I was there so often that they must have gotten used to all of my moods—good, bad, outgoing, withdrawn, celebratory, grouchy—and accepted all of them, as family must. It was more like an extension of my home than a separate place.

The impoliteness shown to bartenders is often appalling. Some patrons barely even acknowledge them, just bark out drink orders. Next time you're at a bar, just observe how many people even bother to say please and thank you. It will be less than half. And another thing: No matter how polite one is, one should never feel entitled to free drinks. A bartender does not have to give anyone anything. A third drink does not automatically mean the fourth is a buyback. But your chances of getting a drink—or two or more—on the house are vastly improved by being the kind of person who adds something to the life of the bar. It could be as simple as friendliness to the people on either side of you. It could be a good story. If you contribute to the culture of the bar in some way, the bar will want to keep you around. Never
ask
for a freebie. That's up to the bartender—not you. (As one Brooklyn barman I know memorably put it, “Buybacks are like blow jobs. If you have to ask for one, you don't deserve one.”)

As for tipping, tip well. There are people who have tipped a dollar a drink for the past twenty years, as though bartenders are somehow immune to inflation. They aren't. Still, tipping well isn't the most important issue as a bar patron; it's attitude. If you're kind and calm and make a point of establishing eye contact, a bartender will take note, even in a crowded room. If you're impatient—shouting and brandishing cash—a bartender will also take note, but not in a good way. (I wouldn't have wanted to see someone wave money at John.) Patience, within reasonable limits, always pays off in a pub.

Occasionally, no matter how well everybody behaved, things could get a little rowdy at the Man of Kent. The biker/boho combo could be uneasy, regardless of John's protective, pacifying presence. One night, I showed up there wearing a hat a friend had recently given me—an absurd, multicolored, knobby knitted thing, somewhere between a skullcap and a tea cozy. I was with a bunch of friends from school, and we found a big empty table at the back. Going in, you couldn't
not
notice the cluster of bikers up front at the bar. These were not Bostonian lawyers roughing it for the weekend. These were real bikers: grizzled, packed into crusty jeans and reptilian chaps, T-shirts with Harley-Davidson logos and skulls and flames, leather vests, and huge boots, an unholy congregation of dirty denim and scuffed cowhide. Their hair was unkempt. The facial hair even more so. It looked like a casting call for a biopic about Motörhead's Lemmy.

John came around and took our order. I ordered a Belgian lambic—something I never did anywhere else, but the semisweet, semisour, strong beer with a hint of black cherry always tasted perfect there. Most of my friends had some kind of English ale or other. John made no comment about my hat. But a couple of those bikers were staring me down. “Maybe one of them wants to ask you out,” my friend Owen cracked. It seemed unlikely.

We kept drinking and I tried to ignore the bikers. But there they were, at the opposite end of the room, staring. I felt perfectly safe, just a little weirded out. As long as John was there, nothing really bad could happen. I had another beer.

Soon enough, one of those bikers was ambling toward me, slowly and deliberately; not quite menacing, but walking like he was making a point of it, coming right at me. In my mind, the Vera Lynn or Charles Aznavour or whatever John had been playing had muted, and I was suddenly hearing a little Ennio Morricone, maybe something from
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
. Some of my friends looked like they were frozen in place. What did this guy want? He was big. Not the biggest of the bunch, but big. And though I had no idea what he was after, there was no mistaking that he meant business. He folded his arms into a defensive pretzel and looked me right in the eyes. “Ma'am,” he said, his voice predictably gruff, but surprisingly soft at the same time.

Did he just
ma'am
me?
I was in my early twenties, and he had to be an old man of, shit, at least thirty-five. I had never been
ma'am
ed before. He was just trying to be polite, I figured. Or maybe he was Southern.

“Yes?”

“You see my buddy back there?” He glanced over at the bar, at an older guy, the biggest of them all, maybe the leader of the gang—a great, imposing, black-leather-swaddled giant. How could I miss him?

“Yes.”

“He really likes your hat.” He backed up a little. “I mean, I like it, too,” he said, “but my friend over there; he
really
likes it.”

“Well, tell him I say thanks.”

“The thing is,” the biker continued, “he likes your hat so much, I think he
wants
it. And I'd like to get it for him. So how much you want for it?”

How much do I want for it?
How exactly does one put a dollar value on such a thing? And was I being threatened? Would there be consequences if I refused? Maybe he would not take no for an answer. My friends watched speechlessly. It seemed wise that they not chime in.

“Listen,” I told the biker, “I can't sell it. It was a gift from a friend. And you know it's cold up here. I
need
this hat.”

“All right, ma'am. I understand.” And he skulked away, shoulders slumped.

John came around and took our order for another round. “Everything's all right, love?” he asked. He'd observed the proceedings from a distance. Nothing that happened at the Man of Kent escaped John's observation.

“Yeah, everything's fine,” I said. “Thanks.”

And everything
was
fine—at least for another ten minutes or so, when the guy approached me again. “Listen,” he said, with not a little urgency in his tone. “My buddy really,
really
likes your hat.” I already knew that, but I did my best not to look exasperated. “How about a hundred dollars?”

“Sir”—if he was going to
ma'am
me, well then, I had to
sir
him—“I'm sorry. I can't sell it.” At this point, it felt more like a matter of principle. How could I sell something that had been given by a friend, that had been picked out especially for me (even if that suddenly seemed a little insulting)? How could I make a profit on such an article, an item that couldn't have cost more than a few dollars, an item that announced so loudly that such value as it had had nothing to do with money? It just wasn't right.