Myself, I'll be right over here. Enjoying a nice serving of bean curd.
Things have been quiet of late at The Wulfshead, and I like it that way.
Unlike some of the more prissy clientèle of the club---Who are some of those people anyway and how did they ever find their way in here?---I don't mind pouring my own beer.
They say real men don't eat Tofu. But they say so many things [link]. On the other hand, there is hope: if Jorge Chavarro and his team have it right, soy may become one viable solution to the Human overpopulation crisis. (Except that it doesn't look like it has been working that way, so far, in countries such as China or India or Brazil and in other countries where the consumption of soy is high.)
But who cares what they say, the bean curd goes well with the beer.
Besides, it's a specialty of the house.
And...er... And "why is that?" do you ask.
Ahh...it all started with that Guan Di fellow. That guy with the white beard over there, who just stormed in. He has just found out that the bartender is away and he looks rather pissed off about the whole thing. Don't let the haughtiness and all the drama fool you. I know him; there is a kind heart under that fierce appearance. He'll soon calm down and pour himself a drink just like the rest of us.
They say he is some kind of a god, you know.
Don't ask . . . [cont'd']
Too late!
Maybe he is "the solution to the human overpopulation crisis."
Ol' Guan don't look so prissy in that picture. But, like me, he doesn't want to mix his own drinks. Maybe he also shares a drinking problem: if a bottle is sitting there, why waste time with mixers---or even glasses? Of course I always wanted to play with those big handles they tug to move beer from the keg to your glass. But then, there's all that foam that bartenders calmly pour down the drain. Good grief, beer being wasted into the sewer! Nope, I'll stay on this side of the bar, and sip my Lightning Grass until Bartender returns. From where? The ski resort in The Shining?
ReplyDeleteMaybe he'll send us a postcard. Do you think?
ReplyDeleteI remember an experience I had some years ago in some bar in Verbena, Alabama - don't ask. I asked the bartender what local beers they had on tap. “Budweiser,” he said. It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t kidding.
ReplyDeleteThe nice thing about nearly any pub these days is that a beer enthusiast can ask the waitstaff, “What’s on tap?” and get a knowledgeable recitation of an extensive beer menu. But The Wulfshead is not just "any pub" (that's what they keep telling me). When I asked the bartender that same question about what was on tap, he simply pointed to the bar...
The Club fell away before us, lines and lines of beer tap levers and handles, stretching away into the distance for further than merely mortal eye could follow. I never knew there were so many types of beers. And then I blinked, and almost fell back a step, as the bartender said, "But, whatever you want, sir. It's the way it has always been."
A lot of people are uncomfortable with that.
Jazzolog suggested that perhaps Bartender is "an eternal spirit of some kind." And maybe he is. Or not. Either way, jazzolog is right about one thing: it's hard to dissociate the Bartender from The Wulfshead, and in some sense, it feels like "he's still here."
Hmm...some kind of a god, then? Like Ol' Guan, perhaps? I wonder where gods go when they want to get away from it all.
ReplyDeleteNothing so limited. Gods may come and beings may go, but the Wulfshead goes on forever. I suspect the bartender is the human face of this establishment. An extension of The Wulfshead, if you will. Because people find it easier to talk with something that looks like people. The bartender is The Wulfshead.
ReplyDeleteSo...he's not really real, then?
ReplyDeleteBartender is as real as the Wulfshead.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Wulfshead is very real and very old. Many names, but one nature---or so the bartender keeps telling us.
I once had a couple of friends who were married by a bartender.
ReplyDeleteWhy?
Because a bartender is like the Captain of a Ship.
Because it takes some people to get really drunk in order to ever get married.
ReplyDeleteBecause love is an intoxication.
ReplyDeleteQuinty's cautionary tale is actually quite a sobering one. Take heed! This could happen to anyone:
ReplyDeleteWomen are becoming increasingly desperate to find a mate. ‘Successful’ women particularly, who earn a good living inside bastions of patriarchal power, somehow, say that men don’t like them because they are successful, savvy, intelligent and can buy a round of drinks. Embedded, if you’ll excuse the sexist term, in this complaint, is a new and worrying phenomenon.
The International Men’s Under-Resourced Centre Inc (iMURCI) has been warning all men who frequent clubs, parties, local pubs and singles organizations particularly after meeting someone from internet date sites who appears to be successful, savvy, intelligent and can buy a round of drinks, to be very alert and stay cautious when offered a drink from any woman.
Many females use a date rape drug which has flooded the market. The drug is found in liquid form and is available in almost every major city. It comes in bottles, cans, from taps and in large “kegs” and is called “Beer”.
“Beer” is used by successful, savvy, intelligent etc female sexual predators at parties and bars to persuade their male victims to go home and have sex with them. A woman needs only to get a guy to consume a few units of “Beer” and then simply ask him home to look at her lingerie collection. Men are rendered completely helpless against this approach, often remembering nothing after the initial approach.
Many times these unfortunate men are swindled out of their life’s savings in a scam known as a “relationship”. In extreme cases, the female may even be dastardly enough to entrap the unsuspecting male into a longer term form of sexual sadism called servitude and punishment (S&P) sometimes referred to as “fatherhood”.
This always results in a life-threatening situation where a part of your soul is removed and placed in a baby. More S&P can then be administered well after “relationship” is finished and enforced by special Ex-Family Courts.
Men are advised that these predatory women can be identified by the three words that they usually utter in a soft, suggestive voice – “ What’ll you have”? They have also been known to exhibit samples from their collections right there, in the bar! This entrapment strategy is called ‘giving a flash’.
If you are given ‘a flash’ or offered a drink by a strange woman, especially a successful, savvy, intelligent one who buys drinks or suspect that you are about to be trapped in a situation, the best advice is to inform the bargirl that you are going to sue her for providing an unsafe work environment and grab the samples for later evidence – then run for your life.
Be alert. Be safe.
ReplyDeleteBeware! An old curmudgeon speaks: it seems the hugely successful woman also considers herself liberated. My experience however (and of course it has been far and wide) is the guy hears about her success and possibly being the breadwinner in a harangue at least once a week. If she's angry on top of it, you also get told you're a lazy asshole. Nevertheless, the liberation does not extend to taking out the garbage, emptying leaves from the eavestroughs, or cleaning the henhouse. And you get to do the indoor chores too. I sometimes wonder, especially in bars, what hitching up with an unsuccessful woman would be like.
ReplyDeleteUnsuccessful women are just as happy to go home and to go to bed with you.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, a few highly successful women are happy enough with that program, too. Since in the morning they can quickly brush off their one night fling and return to the office where they are empress of the world once again. And don't let anybody forget it.
In fact, I have been so outclassed, out moneyed, out schooled, out witted, out lavished, out luxuried by rich and successful women at times that I have positively felt like the poor workingclass help as I trudged out of my lady's mansion with my hangover in the morning. Wondering if I had enough money left for carfare home.
What passes through one's mind as one sits on the bus returning to one's low rent apartment at such times? One thinks of the disparity between what one did the night before and what the lady he did it with is doing now. And how in her own world of high luxury, extreme money, the perks of power and lofty authority she would probably become instantly embarrassed at seeing one’s own unannounced arrival there. And that one might receive the bum’s rush.
Last night she was just a svelte body. Now she is the iron lady of a powerful corporation.
So this is what one thinks about as one travels home with his hangover thinking about the night before, and his partner. How smooth of body and petite she was and how she offered herself in that rich nighttime dark with a pleading insistent passion. How her entire life appeared to hinge on what you offered in return for her helpless moans, shrieks, and most vulnerable pleading.
But not in the cold hard sunlight of day.
So I’m not too worried about the S&P. And if this lady leading her two lives suddenly demanded I take the garbage out as we lay in bed I would probably actually do it. After all, I have my needs and expectations too. And there’s all that greater world backing up her manner too. She would know how to do it.