I’m working at a new bar. Five days a week - 11AM to 6PM. For those of you who have never visited a bar that functions solely as a bar between the hours of 11AM the traditional 5PM cocktail hour, allow me to give you a glimpse of the world I am living in.

One distinctive quality about my new life is the odor. Bars that function solely as bars tend to smell. A lot. It’s a particular “bar smell” that can only be replicated by years of congealing layers of semi-evaporated beer slime and the foul funk of alcoholism and clinical depression. Eventually I will become immune to the odor, but since I’ve only been working here two weeks, I’m still quite sensitive to it. Yummy.

A fun fact about the new bar is that it doesn’t function soley as a bar all day. At night they serve food! As an employee who has seen the kitchen, my suggestion would be not to eat it.

Now, as you know, bartenders rely on tips for their living. I get a nominal shift pay and then I depend on the generosity of my customers to make money. Being a daytime bartender during the work week, the customers I depend on are problem drinkers. Sure, from time to time there’s the tourist who’s on vacation or the local who’s got the day off, but in general, my clientele are — and I say this without judgment — drunks.

There are the guys who work for the plant around the corner. One drops by on his lunch break two or three times a week. He has three beers (Bud draft) (I charge him for two), tips me $5 and goes back to work. The other shows up around 12:30. Everyday. Every. Day. He comes in by 1PM and leaves sometime after my shift is over. Every. Day. He brings in his laptop sometimes. Mostly he does his work over the phone. Apparently he’s been “working” from the bar for about five years. He’s currently under investigation by his company for drinking on the job.

His drink of choice is Bud draft with a shot of Jameson. Times six. At least. And no matter where he is in the process, he takes his business calls. He runs to the sound system, turns the TV volume down and heads to the back bar. “Mr. M! How can I help you?” He fancies himself a big shot. Especially on the rare occasion we get some girls in. “Lemme get these girls a drink, Susan!” He lies and says that he’s the owner. He hands out pitchers of beer and shots of tequila and then at the end of the night I get the talk.

Him: Susan. Commere. What’s wit dis bill? You gotta start chargin’ me less.

Me: Then you gotta start ordering less. Your bill’s only $45. You should be paying $75

Him: No. You can’t pay no attention to the retail pricin’. I need you to cut it in half.

Then he tips me $10. Five hours, 12+ drinks, a 40% discount and he tips me $10. How DARE he ask for more of a discount. It makes me want to call his boss.”Oh yeah, he’s here. He’s alllllways here. Come get his cheap, drunk ass.”

Then last Wednesday there was C. C came in talking of how he had been with some Iraq War Vets earlier that day.

A Vietnam vet himself, C (pint-sized Bloody Mary) spends a lot of time at the VA Hospital. He walks with a cane, he has scars from bullet wounds and he has no teeth. None. Not one. Well, he had some … in his pocket. After vodka number two he told me how he had to wait four months to get his new dentures which is why he was sitting there with no teeth. After vodka four he showed me his upper plate. He didn’t like wearing it because it hurt. I told him he looked fine without it. Then around vodka six …

You know. I had a psychotic break.

Sweet.

In addition to the whole denture thing, C spent quite a bit of time telling me stories about being in Vietnam. Early on his stories were sad, vague accounts of how hard war is and how so much of the struggle happens once you come back home. Circa vodka number three, details became more graphic and horrific and I heard things I never wanted to know about what war is like up close. Horrendous, macabre details I wish I could un-hear and accounts I will never repeat. These stories were what led C to tell me about his psychotic break.

I don’t know. I was a fucking kid. You understand? But I couldn’t stop seeing the faces. I could see every one of them. And I had to make them go away. You understand? It was just so fucking horrible. The children. The women. All of them … but you had to … you didn’t know … you couldn’t fucking trust anyone. You understand? And so I had to burn it off. You see? Here. Look.

He stretches the neck of his dirty sweatshirt down to reveal a scarred shoulder.

See that? I had a tattoo marking all of them. I had the count. You understand? Of all of them. My kills. And I kept hearing them. And seeing them. You understand?  I thought if I got rid of it, I could make it stop. So I burned it off with an iron.

He pushes his empty glass towards me.

I’ll take another.