After many years sober, I concluded that bars are not a good place for me anymore. No, it is not because I may slip and go back to my drinking days, but because I cannot understand what the people in the bar are saying. When you are sober, your speech runs at a different speed than when you are drunk, and when somebody who had a few talks to you sounds like an old vinyl when you play it at a slower speed. That is one reason for drinking, for it is a contest to match the speed of the other people’s speech in the hopes of finding understanding and enlightenment (lost and forgotten in time).
Another other reason and maybe the most popular is to try to relieve or at least forget temporarily the anxiety and stress of everyday life for working people. No, I am not immune to everyday life stress and anxiety, far from it. However, I think during my drinking days, I drank a couple of lifetimes and the moment when your life flashes in front of your eyes, and you are too intoxicated to do something and the Universe gives you a pass, it is time to reconsider other options.
Another reason for not going to bars anymore is that some people when they drink delude themselves into thinking they are Superman, or Bruce Lee, or had watched Roadhouse too many times and think they can beat anybody. The truth is that no matter if you are a black belt, Navy SEAL, second coming of Rambo, if you are drunk and try to pick up a fight with somebody who is not drunk the chances of beating the sober guy are against you. The reason that it does not happen often is that 99% of the time the sober guy will just walk away from the fight. There are important reasons for bar fights (part of lost lore), and there are certain rules. One of them is the assumption that everybody is drunk hence leveling the playing field, and the most amusing, funny, and incredible fights used to happen in the sanctity of drinking establishments. Besides the obvious fact is that it is a bar, so if you are not drinking, what are you doing there in the first place, hence why I do not go to bars anymore.
So, what to do next for a “new” man for the millennium, as my uncle said a long time ago. Pardon, dear reader, but this search for truth and enlightenment was about 15 years ago and times were different. I started to go to coffee shops in search of the enlightenment I used to seek in bars. The coffee shop scene quickly became dull and unappealing. Too many people pretending and being totally not genuine. It only took a few times for me to confirm that humans are the most insecure and unnatural creatures in this planet. The sad part is that there is no enlightenment and definitely no temporary break on everyday life like a bar would provide.
Meeting with someone at a bar was better because if she dumps you, it is less painful since the spirits you have consumed already numbed your senses. At a coffee shop, your senses are in overdrive and rejection feels like a big slap on the face, enhanced by the properties of caffeine. After a few slaps and a couple of “no show…no call”, it became clear that I was done with these places, and hence why I do not go to coffee shops anymore.
In the post “man of the millennium” times of today, I stay out of these places. Coffee houses had become drive-through factories for caffeine fiends who are too busy in their mobile devices to even make eye contact. Bars had now become “drinking establishments ” with all sorts of activities and motifs to amuse the same crowd of people who would not make eye contact.
I am bias towards bars because the role models of my days were bar-folk, and as I grew up I followed in their foot steps and became a bar patron. However, I moved a lot and having a regular bar was not realistic, but bars follow a set of universal dogmas (not rules) and a local bar is usually the same no matter what part of the universe you are located. What I do miss from bars is the strange smells (not so strange really), specially as you get close to the bathroom area, or as the time to close nears, the spilling of proteins and other digestive fluids all over the parking area, and the most amusing the scenes of rational people behaving irrationally. I miss the characters that became regulars, and the usual drunk who was thrown out of the bar by the fierce bouncer.
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Tales from the Estate 