A Sport And A Pastime - pg. 30

"Let's go somewhere for a drink," Cristina says.

He is silent.

"Billy?"

"Do you really want to?"

"Where can we go?"

"The Calvados," he says.

"Yes," she says, "let's go there."

Wolf Solent - pg. 425

He left the Lovelace after drinking a pint of Dorchester ale. The night was cool and fragrant. The sky was covered now by a grey film of feathery clouds, through which neither moon nor stars were visible except as a faint diffused luminosity, which lifted the weight of darkness from the earth, but turned the world into a place of phantoms and shadows.

2666 - pg. 800

That night, as he was working the door at the bar, he amused himself by thinking about a time with two speeds, one very slow, in which the movemment of people and objects was almost imperceptible, and the other very fast, in which everything, even inert objects, glittered with speed. The first was called Paradise, the second Hell, and Archimboldi's only wish was never to inhabite either.

Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes gave me company and saved me today.

Jameson+PBR

Little, Big - pg. 365

The cold compassion of bartenders, he came to see, was like that of priests: universal rather than personal, with charity for all and malice toward almost none. Firmly situated (smiling and making ritual and comforting gestures with glass and cloth) between sacrament and communicant, they commanded rather than earned love, trust, dependence. Best always to placate them. A big hello, and the tips subtle but sufficient.

Little, Big - pg. 299

Like all lovers, they had soon assembled (as on a revolving stage) the places where the scenes of their drama alternately took place: a little Ukrainian diner whose windows were always occluded with steam, where the tea was black and so was the bread; the Folding Bedroom of course; a vast gloomy theater encrusted with Egyptian decoration, where the movies were cheap and changed often and played into the morning; the Nite Owl market; the Seventh Saint Bar & Grill.

The great virtue of the Seventh Saint, besides the price of its drinks and its nearness to Old Law Farm, a train stop away, was its wide front windows, nearly floor to ceiling, in which as in a shadow-box or on a movie screen the life of the street outside passed. The Seventh Saint must once have been somewhat splendid, for this glass wall was tinted a rich, expensive brown, which added a further unreality to the scene, and which darkened the interior like dark glasses. It was like being in Plato's cave, Auberon told Sylvie, who listened to him lecture on the subject; or rather watched him talk, fascinated by his strangeness and not paying inordinately close attention to the words.

Deer Park

Parisian Orgy

Drink! And then when mad blinding light stabs
Through the dripping heap of orgy at your sides,
Will you not slaver slowly, silent, still,
Into your glasses, staring at empty distances?

3.5 shots of Jameson

at the bar messed me up big time. It was supposed to be quiet, drizzly anonymous Monday night. But there were more people than usual. Don came over about the same time as me. He brought a plastic case of hot sauce with him. His own creation for Jeremy. Some talk of Tabasco followed then a curious looking gentleman came out of nowhere with eyes looking a thousand different shades of darkness. He was before my time in this town so we cascaded our histories of Deer Park and East End in a conversational late-hours, bar room camaraderie. He ordered a green drink that tasted like toothpaste (mouthwash that other girl at the corner said), bought me a drink. Time is not the friend that should ever be trusted. He lived in Wilmington now he said and worked for DuPont. Taxi Driver's mention popped out of somewhere which it turned out he'd seen only recently. I was talking about this character in my novel who was trying to research a news story, had become so obsessed that he couldn't sleep at nights and he kept looking at the notes he had taped on his bedroom wall. Jeremy was trying to say something about Eva the Fugitive. I seriously don't know how can one drop the book once it's opened. I think he started reading it that's what he said. (kill me! kill me! I don't know how long it takes to read that 100 pager). Jeremy said something about an eastern european thing that was a reference to me. The girl who worked at Starbucks across the street during the day asked if I was from there. I mentioned that I was from the east, way east of the eastern europe. I remember this distinctly although I was sure It didn't come off as particularly funny. I don't think I remember anything more about last night except that Jeremy poured that whiskey in a shiny glass and split it neatly into two half-shots. I should have said no there and then. It made up for all that came out during the conversation I had later at the Kitchen Sink.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 104

DECEMBER 21

Nothing to report. Life seems to have ground to a halt. Every day I make love to Rosario. While she's at work, I write and read. At night I make the rounds of the bars on Bucareli. Sometimes I stop in at the Encrucijada and the waitresses serve me first. At four in the morning Rosario comes home (when she's working the night shift) and we eat something light in our room, usually food that she brings from the bar. Then we make love until she falls asleep, and I begin to write.

Ode To Jameson

Dear Jameson, come back to me
this is not without reason
the words pouring themselves on
memories in a shot-glass
look, Jeremy's got a fancy one!
and Elizabeth's moving in on you
little drops of piss always love you

spirits lit up the whole scene
you came out electric-yellow
because Green didn't become you
the suit I wore had flaming cuts
but Jeremy's got a fancy one!
and Elizabeth's moving in on you
little drops of piss always love you

you go away, oh why?
was that old-Irish in you, killing you?
red-birches went up, out of her spine,
leaves that were burning; burning my head
but, Jeremy's got a fancy one!
and Elizabeth's moving in on you
little drops of piss always love you!

Dave at the Bar

Hey! you didn't go to hospital to operate my memory out of your body.

Three shots of Jameson

didn't mess up my system last night. Lindsey and Dana wanted to be at HG. It was quiet on the street and inside at the bar. There was a talk of going to the beach and Israel's unique theological problem of not letting the Sinai become geographically obsolete for say, maritime purposes. Murtaza called from the other side, on his way to work. He thought I was lonely. Dard now works in Islamabad. He didn't know which Waqar was I talking about. I don't think anyone of us who were present on that brightly fucked-up spring day have gone back to say 'Hi' to Waqar. Or perhaps that's not surprising given what stuff (Dain wanted to know the word for stuff in Urdu @ the bar: tough question) happened right in front of us which brought on that morning like a bright, fucked-up, tragic in a big way kind of day. It is a shame.

The Recognitions, Sibelius, Mendelssohn

I was sitting at the bar where Jeremy poured me the second beer and Elizabeth mentioned the changes in her life: changes in routine, only two nights at bar for work etc. And I was at a party in The Recognitions reading where characters, 40s version of NYC hipsters at a cocktail party spewing opinions like mad crazy vipers in heat. And one of them mentioned Mendelssohn and Sibelius' works which threw me off because just the other day I bought Mendelssohn'1 and 4 and Sibelius' no. 2 at the Rainbow. I was like wow! While at the bar there was too much noise. Barely managed to read 10 pages. It is all good!

Jameson on Bookclub 2007

A shot of Jameson can make you stronger. It heals the internal abrasions, cellular distortions, quiet desperations. I had a shot with Freddy at the bar and said something really obnoxious and narcissistic to him. Elizabeth and Ed were working at the bar. I gave Blood Meridian to Elizabeth to give it to Jeremy. Jeremy had left The Road on the rack above the taps, with a piece of paper inside it. No one had read the book, well except me and Freddy and Dain. Every one else was just there to show up to have a good time and that we did. I tried Emily's wine and did find some sort of chocolate notes going on which was kind of surprising. It was not bad. hey ordered it without knowing much about the it from the wine list. Danielle insisted about the importance of family, folks and other such themes. I tried not to get into an argument. it was definitely a weird night. Brett could not show up which sucked. He was the fourth person of the book club who actually did finish up the book. We did have a brief discussion on the book because Freddy wanted to. We ended up at Shaggy's later that night where I ran into Dana/Lindsey duo. It turned out it was Dana's birthday so I bought her a shot. She was pretty far gone by that time and thus ended our another anonymous midsummer evening at the main street of this town. On a second thought, we made a trek to the diner where we played Bob Dylan at a jukebox for old time's sake. Like a rolling stone...

"I like to read a good book..."

So, last night I was sitting at the bar having the taste of my second Guinness in a month and then Ed bought me a shot of Jameson, so yea the second-first taste of that too; and this girl was closing her tab and asked me about a good book to read. Jeremy and I were having our usual comparing-the-book-notes moment across the bar, he wanted to bring The Road's copy that he had been meaning to and I was gonna exchange it with The Blood Meridien. Then, came the comment nudging the conversation, about a 90 degree off-kilter to the side-rails, on "reading a good book": What good book? How would one get one? and more importantly, What good a good book would do to anyone? - I didn't know about any of that. It just threw me off.

Three shots of Jameson

in one hour makes me want to throw up. Ed poured me last night, I had 'em all and then It all came out, the dark, mean, resentful, ego-laden effluvium that coursed through my veins. The kitchen sink saved me(again).

"Nouvaeu West-Coast Hipster"

Ed Valle at the bar calling me a, well, look at the title of this post.

Last night

So, last night I made an exception to my self-imposed ban on going to the bar that kicked me out because a friend of mine came to visit from South Carolina and I didn't want to bore him with all the crap of what, when, why. On the side, I ran into two Russian and an Irish grad student at the bar. New things that I found out:

1 - Pushkin Square in Moscow is a great spot to rendezvous with your dates.
2 - Dubh in Irish is pronounced as Dove which means Black.
3 - Russians have three names: first, middle and last. The middle name is father's name that ends with 'vich'. For example, Mikhail's son will bear the second name as Mikhailivich.
4 - Pushkin was half black because his folks came from South Africa. He had curly hair, supposedly a dead giveaway of having mixed blood in Russia.
5 - Bodolov is a good contemporary russian novelist.
6 - Russia routinely has ups and downs every hundred years or so.
7 - Irish have a particular name for their language which I forgot.
8 - 'Langer' is penis in Russian (or was it Celtic?) where in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu it's the food that's cooked in the Temple or Gurdwara's kitchen.
9 - Absurdistan could be an alternate name for Russia although I thought it suited Pakistan better. I am definitely going to read the book within next six months.
10 - A Russian is well-entitled at the bar to order a son of James when he actually wants a shot of Jameson. That shot made me throw up in the kitchen sink later that night.