The Bartender | modern people
we taught them how to forget.
God taught them how to love, but not how to forget. We teach them to forget. Or at least, that’s what I try to tell myself. At night in this age at this city, the bar becomes a strange place. I remember the descriptions of taverns and small inn with jolly bards and elusive elves and hulking warriors in those few fantasies by my dusty table. Yes, that describes this place wondrously.
A note was passed: Old Fashioned.
2 oz bourbon or rye whiskey. I took the latter — the man looked like a whiskey type. 2 dashes of Angostura bitters. A sugar cube thrown in, with a dash of orange garnish. Eager hands, stretched. A brief touch as our fingers collide.
I like to think how every drink I mix is ever so slightly different from the next. Maybe they do contain a little bit of emotion the drinker wishes to forget. That Old Fashioned and the hands that received it…He reminded me of a Norse Raider, with the wild-swept hair and the bulk of his shoulders. It was easy to picture a double-edged axe in his rough hands, and the call of the ships far, far away. But of course I knew I was just messing about. The winter season hit the coast hard. He was probably just a boatswain, or a fisherman. Small bandaged cuts on the hands, a long streak of grease from the left eye to the lower jaw.
It was rude to stare, and so I went on with my duties, casting the occasional glace. But he was such an enigma — a curiosity burnt brighter as I observed his long swigs, with deep sighs uttered in-between. Did he lose his boat? Why has he come, with hair barely dried, with the smell of brine and muddy sand?Such were questions which will probably go unanswered for the rest of my time here, but I was content in quizzing myself, for there was nobody to keep my company, anyways.
Slowly a glorious fable draped across my mind, as sweet as wine and so so deep. I imaged him a sailor - no - a high ranking captain. He who took to the seas after an irreparable heartache. And there he roamed, until tonight, when the tides tossed him from his beloved vessel and across the bay, into this small fjord. He had travelled the world in his youth, and had a good many stories to tell, and there he sat, and maybe if I —
Another note: a Dark ‘n Stormy.
A simple recipe: a few oz of rum, and ginger beer to the top. Strong and thick. It resembled a dark crimson, as if something had bled out inside the misted glass. As I handed over the drink another was ordered, and another, and another. The noise was amplifying, cheers and laughs and hoots. A guitar was heard playing outside. Outside! In such a strong wind. There was no time for thoughts, nor time for fantasy. Every face passed, every hand caressed. Even individual had a tale of love and despair and hate and lies to tell, but I have not the time to listen. I am a bartender. I serve drinks. That is all.
And as the night grows weary and the customers disperse like the thin mist sometimes seen across the bay, my mind grows a bit calmer. I wished for a time to think a little more about those people, I uttered a silent prayer. I knew I would arrive back home late, and he would be waiting with a scrutinising eye and another thousand orders and questions and demands and such. I knew this was just how things was, and there was nothing else I could do.
“Would you like something to drink?”
I shake my head, and watch as she mixes herself a strong vodka Vesper. She wanted to forget much, I can see it in the way she takes the heavy mug in booth hands, and guzzle down the contents like a desperate bear. But I wanted to remember everything tonight: even the part with the shouting, and the other part where a glass was thrown at my feet, smashed. I thought back to the old man and his ship. I wanted to keep him in my heart, another bottle on never-ending rack.
We taught them how to forget, yes. But the catch is, we’re the ones to wash the glasses in the end.
