Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Bar Talk

Talking about bars, I am not much of a bar-hopping person. Fact is, not at all. My only experience at a bar came in restaurants while we waited for a table.

Yet, a while after our wedding, in dinosaur time, when I told my new husband that I had never been to a bar, he took it upon himself to educate me. In those days, they had cocktail lounges, where you sat and sipped your drinks and if the establishment was a little classy, they provided a show. Classy cocktail lounges were designed with the idea of comfortable, sophisticated, and emblematic vintage living room with the color red thrown into the decor.

But for my first lesson, we skipped the classy, and as I perched on a stool and smiled at the bartender, I fidgeted, waiting for hubby to park the car. Right away, the seats on both sides of me ran the risk of being taken. I placed my both hands on the stool to the left of me and said, "I'm waiting for someone." The bartender pointed to a table on the floor. "Why don't you wait for him, there?"

Just then, hubby walked in and took the seat I was still holding for him while the guy who had taken the seat to the other side of me was trying to make small talk with me. Hubby whispered bending toward me and smirking, "For a novice, you are doing great!"

"How do you know each other?" The guy to my right asked.

I said, "We're married." It was probably the wrong answer. Someone from the other side of the bar said, "Then what are you doing here?" Before either one of us could answer, two ladies, I didn't see from where they landed on earth, surrounded hubby, asking if he would buy them a drink. He did, but by then, I felt I had learned enough by osmosis to pass the kindergarten class of bar-hoppers and repeated the bartender's suggestion to him. "Why don't we take a table?"

I don't know what bars are like today, but if a blogger, a short story writer, and a poet walked into a bar, they would probably do much better than me. Naturally, they would all be complaining as most anyone in love with the word-bending arts usually do.

Picture this:

The poet recites from Milton: "There you are, waking up and you're not in paradise anymore./Good Morning my marvelous fall! / Sit there and mull over how you slid into this life... Why is it some dummies expect every poem to have end rhymes, and meter, and form? 'It is the meaning you look for first, idiots,' I want to scream. The meaning is king. But no, people are so gauche." Then he would turn to the bartender and ask for Absinthe, but when the bartender would shake his head in negation, would he settle for Rum and Cola and wink at a lady in red with hoop earrings.

The short story writer is all eyes now, as people-watching is her forte. Still, as a multitasker, she can give her opinions on the subject dearest to her heart. "Character is king," she says. "You have to keep the bitch and the sob in check, so they stay in character. A lifelong habit I must say, despite the wish to droll on an on and push yourself into the story. A reasonable price to pay for the sake of the creative art. Other things matter, too, like setting, style, scenes."

"Watch it," says the poet. "You are falling into the error of esses. Ssss! Like a snake. Don't use alliterations with S all that much!"

The short story writer looks at him menacingly and raises a brow. "I might just put you in a story and kill you together with your esses," she says, and sips the Cosmopolitan the bartender knowingly has placed in front of her.

"Hey, guys," says the blogger, "keep it down will ya!" And he orders a Highball, for he likes the extra liquid and ice and enjoys sipping his drink slowly. "Talk about delivery service!" he says, "I have all the freedoms in the world. I can write anything I want. Life is complicated enough. Why bother with rules?"

Both the poet and the short story writer exclaim together in one voice. "Where is you art, then?"

"It is in my blog," says the blogger. "It has everything that concerns you two and then some, and it is for real if I want it to be real. I can add photos, video, poetry, tell a story or two, and talk about real things, things as simple as the content of our drinks or the big bang theory, and I am not talking about the show; however, I can bring that in, too, if I so wish..." And he takes a huge slurp from his Highball. "I think, tomorrow," he adds, "I'll write about a blogger, a short story writer and a poet walking into a bar...and..."

"You guys," the bartender says to them, "Go sit at a table and carry on your private, boring discussions. People around the bar are into other things." Then he announces to the other customers, "Next round's on the house!"

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Prompt: A blogger, a short story writer and a poet walk into a bar. . .