LAST CALL

 I was a bartender at a variety of LA dives through most of the 1980's and 1990's... though  it was fun at the time, I can't really say that I miss it!

 This piece was written in 1993, after I'd taken a bartending hiatus  to go on tour  with my band.

"To All My Friends!" Mickey Roark in the film "Barfly"

A few hours behind the bar and it all comes rushing back

the cigarette smoke hanging like a smog shroud, the whisky voices asking for another drink (on their tab, of course) coyly saying before they’ve even taken a sip,

“I’m gonna hate you in the morning!”

The aging, timeworn clichés and  regulars – with an attitude – giving you the once-over while men ask for your phone number

in a broken chalk-scrawl of a voice

Patrons stealing tips off the bar…and thinking you don’t notice

People asking for drinks you’ve never heard of

Lousy tips left by people ordering Crown Royal, paying with crisp new twenties

Filling three orders at once, running the length of the bar

while people grab at your elbows like rabid dogs

 All the dirty jokes

The cocktail waitress winking, inviting you into the ladies room for some blow

Small verbal fights breaking out at the bar; large physical fights breaking out in the parking lot

Fake ID’s and fresh young faces with glassy eyes and boozy breath and drunks banging on the bar with bottles of beer in time to the garbage on the jukebox

The  house phone ringing off the hook with a whining alkie hag on the other end…her fifth call for someone who says he’s not there

 As you break the lips of bottles in hasty removal of the caps

glass in your hands, blood running crimson  into the ice

The pathetic onstage assuming rock-arena poses and playing

the inevitable cover of “C’mon Everybody”

Old barflies knocking over their fourth double shot

wrinkled elderly men  willingly playing bar-back

for an occasional free beer, as you bend over into a cooler slimy  and smelly with spilt ale

The quick disintegration of the people in front of you

The hyper-drive  metamorphosis from being good-humored individuals of average intelligence turning into ornery drunks

There’s not much you can do but pour yourself a shot

and roll with the punches ‘til two a.m.

#

 The piece you’ve just read is from my book, “Senorita Sin”, 1994, Incommunicado Press.

 My latest book, “Showgirl Confidential: My Life Onstage, Backstage And On The Road” is available here:

http://www.princessfarhana.com/book_showgirl.htm