Barography: The Reservoir

You've got to be kidding me! Sorry, that has no context for you, reader. I just finished writing out a few paragraphs of introduction explaining the lack of posts on this blog for the past month. And right when I was about to wrap it up, I somehow unplugged my computer and lost the entire thing. I could not make up how, when I finally got to explain the frustrations that kept me from writing so long, A VERY FRUSTRATING THING HAPPENED TO KEEP ME FROM WRITING.

So, you know what, this blog isn't about my ailments or breakdowns (well, not directly), so maybe that was a sign to just get on with a new Barography.

When last we left, I had found my first New York bar, Shades of Green. While I still will go there from time to time even today, the second half of my college years found me having a new semi-permanent haunt, The Reservoir. The Reservoir was quite a bit more convenient for me, only about four blocks away on the same street as the dorm I lived in all four years of college. (Those of you who did not go to school in NYC, getting an apartment as a college student is an insanely expensive/difficult procedure. Those of you who went to NYU, yes, I stayed in Weinstein all four years, but guess who never got his ass booted out to Broome St or some other semi-official wayward home. I got my own room, yeah.)

The Reservoir was and is a local, sporty bar. Wood walls all around, plenty of TVs with various games/commentary on, a pool table, a juke. They serve food late, and their burger still is one of my top ten favorites. The staff has always been friendly; in fact, this was the first place where I truly made a friend with someone on staff. My dear Anna-Lisa was/is an NYU classmate, the introducer of Old Whiskey River, partner in crime, Jets and Mets co-fan, wedding date, and all-around great person.

Anyway, at Reservoir was when I really came into myself as a drinker. No more ciders, no more whiskey sours, no more starter-set bullshit. This was a place for bourbon and beer. It's always had a decent selection of both, and plenty of good specials throughout the week. I was there fairly recently where every pint was three dollars. You can bet I enjoyed that special, yes I did.

So Reservoir is where I went from "a guy who drinks" to "a drinker," if you can parse that distinction. I found my habits, my tastes, and my path. It was a home to parties for years. It remained my regular after college . . .it's not like I was going to pick a joint in Jersey City. Not until I moved to Brooklyn did I begin to switch over. So, while the Calamity Cafe is where myths were born in my drinking life, Reservoir is where stories started.

One of the great pleasures of drinking, whether with old friends or someone just-met, is the sharing of stories. We all have our canon, don't we, along with our apocrypha? We have our epics and our picaresques, all our life-bits with ample amusement or portent. Reservoir might be the home of my short stories. I've got several all set there, some only a line long. For instance, it's still the first and only bar where, while sitting at a table talking to friends, a waitress approached, asked if I was in fact, me, and then told me there was a phone call waiting for me at the bar. That was a nice feeling.

Reservoir was my bar when I first fell in actual adult love. It, of course, was a terrible, terrible idea; this helps explain some of my more erratic behaviors there over the years. One night, while seeing a friend walk in and sit at another table. Well, I thought of the funniest joke ever and knew that was the time for it. I stood up at the couch where I was, next to a wooden column. I then screamed, "DAVE MORREALE! THIS IS YOUR FUCKING HEAD!" upon which I stuck my Spyder Knife* into the column as hard as I could, stared him down, then laughed and sat down. Dave got it, but my companions at the time and many patrons were much less comfortable.

I also recall, one odd night, burning holes in my t-shirt and then ripping it Hulk Hogan style. (This girl really did a number on me.) My dear Captain, Kirk Diaz gave me a shirt to cover up with. I was lightly hit by a Taxi upon walking out of the bar that night. We were caught nearly breaking into the NYU library. "You're a very good guard," I recall saying.

That's not the only time I lost my shirt there. I remember a girl coming up and asking to buy my shirt emblazoned with the symbol of Cobra (GI Joe's terrorist nemesis) for her brother. I haggled her to 20 bucks and stripped right there. I think Kirk came to my rescue again that night. (Perhaps he was just saving himself from looking at my hirsuitery.) We all thought that was pretty cool. Of course, it wasn't until a day or two later that I thought, "Hey, maybe I should have talked with her for a while. She might have been flirting." Again, this girl had really done a number on me.

The last great Reservoir story, at least so far, was when I first started the Teaching Fellows program. Here I was, surrounded by girls near my age, smart, young, dedicated. We'd spent our first week in courses, started to get to know each other. I invited my table to a bar for lunch after class on Friday. Out of the six, two agreed. As we ride the train there, one says, "So this is a bar? I don't really go to bars. I don't drink much. I mean, occasionally I'll have a glass of wine while reading Shakespeare."

The other girl agrees**. Well, you can imagine the panic I was feeling. A) This sounded like an awful time and B) I was worried this might be the norm in this program (it most definitely wasn't). So in my desperation I start playing along. "Yeah, I don't really go much either. I don't drink much. Yeah, uh, this was just a restaurant near my college . . .I think they're a bar, too."

I should have known it would not be that easy. We walked in to find three people: a bartender, a patron, and a waitress. The bartender immediately says, "Hey, Joe!"

The patron turns. "Joe Rice! Good to see you!"

And the waitress was the aforementioned Anna-Lisa. She hugged me. "Joe! What are you doing this weekend??" I stammered and answer as she brought us to a table. She asked for their drink orders (water) and didn't ask me. She came back with a bourbon neat and a beer.

"Why do you have two drinks?" the Little Miss on the Prairie asked.

The jig was up, so I dove in. "Because that's how I like it." I downed the bourbon and chased it with beer. I knew then it had been wrong of me to hide. I am a drinker, unashamed and unrepentant.

There were lots of little times at the Reservoir. Snowy birthday cab rides with roommates; a free round in tribute to the just-died King of Pop; after-hours Yahtzee; the time Kirk tried to light Dubin on fire.

The Reservoir may not be home to epics, other than The Worst Idea for Love Ever, but I love all these small stories. Perhaps the Reservoir is the best Anthology of Short Stories my drinking life has had.

*-So, in preparing for this post, I looked up those Spyder Knives. I lost mine years ago (to the thanks of many), but thought I might get another now. It was an impromptu Christmas present from a buddy's dad. He gave us both one. I remember his solemn advice. "I know you two are assholes. If you find yourselves in a fight, I want you to take this knife and throw it as far away from you as possible. I don't want your asses beat AND cut." Anyway, DEAR GOD they are pricey, never mind.

**-I thankfully later found out this second girl, Juli, was just as horrified as I was. We've had many a beer since.

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Barography: Shades of Green

Last time I told you about the first bar I chose to go to, back in Appalachia. Today I'd like to talk about my first New York bar, Shades of Green. My pal Alex has already talked about it at World of Awesome, but I think I might have a thing or two to say about it myself. For me, Shades is particularly relevant to me as it is the first bar I ever drank at.

I've talked before about how I didn't drink as a teenager. I saw little reason to; I didn't particularly care for those yokels who talked about nothing else, and my buddies and I were having fun in our own weird, incredibly nerdy ways. When I first entered college and heard the term "straight edge" I thought, well, hey, that's me.

That's right, I once thought I was straight edge. After puberty's wildest throes had hit and I remained the same insecure, dateless nerd as before, I settled in a sort of "well if I'm going to be like this, I might as well be this way on purpose." So I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, and I didn't allow girls to touch my dick. (Dry humping was extremely OK.)

But this isn't here to be an examination of my weird sexual hang-ups as a young adult. You have to pay therapists lots of cash money in order for them to pretend to be interested in such; I can't imagine casual readers of this blog, looking for some laughs, some recommendations, and the occasional sexy picture of yours truly, could be paid enough money to read about it. No, this blog is about drinking, and this entry is about how I started drinking.

It started, like so many life-altering decisions throughout my life, with a crush on a girl. Margo was my first college crush. She was fun and funny and seemed to think I was, too. I started hanging out with her and her friends my freshman year, hoping to win her over, and, I'll be damned, it started to work. But, oh, how I remember that fateful day.

"Hey, this weekend we're going to Shades of Green. It's a bar nearby, you should come." I was almost ashamed to admit that my alcohol consumption to date had been a few sips of Natural Light given to me by my father as a sort of reverse psychology maneuver when I was six and a Budweiser a buddy smuggled in for me at Academic Appalachian Camp at Transylvania University (those are all real things) that I drank out of obligation.

I realized the reasons I hadn't drank in high school were pretty much not applicable anymore. It seemed quite unlikely that some dumbass redneck I could barely tolerate sober would swing by a bar in the Village just when I was finally drunk. So I nervously agreed to go along and the rest is history.

God, I remember those early days, those "trying to figure out how to do this" days. I hadn't acquired the taste for beer yet, nor, really, for anything else. I believe my first regular drink was a whiskey sour. A goddam rail whiskey sour! Lord, the thought of it gives me the sweaty mouth something awful. I recall experimenting with white Russians--another punch to the old digestive system, there. For a while I settled upon bourbon and the occasional cider.

But that's not altogether interesting, is it? The more I look back at the time and all that it led to, I find that the pertinent question is not "Where did I start drinking?" nor "How did I start drinking?" but "Why did I start drinking?" and even more "Why do I drink?"

"Why I Drink." Sounds like the worst essay ever. But this isn't so much a list of grievances (though Lord knows my students give me new and weirder reasons every day) or heartbreaks (I try to contain that in my songwriting, for your sake, dear reader) or occasions (End of the World Day!) or what have you, it's more a "why did I take to this activity I never thought I would like?" situation.

The answer requires a bit of backstory that I never quite understood until, well, until I saw a therapist. Near the end of my marriage I sought out therapy in order to learn how to argue with my ex--arguing and fighting seemed like an anathema to me, and it was driving her crazy. Well, one week in, we split, so for the next year I basically met once a week to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. And, as far as we could tell, it all pretty much boiled down to one thing.

I wasn't screwed over by my parents or some touchy relative or high school melodrama. I was simply aware of too much, too early. This may come as a shock to those of you who know me now, but I used to be a weirdly smart kid. Standardized tests were my bitches, gifted classes, academic team, the whole shebang. And that did very well for me in a lot of ways. God knows I wouldn't be where I am if I didn't used to be really smart.

The problem was how early I was so smart. When other kids my age would be at the pediatric dentist's office, they'd run straight for the play area where there were blocks and such. I can distinctly recall being four or five and sitting next to my mom in the waiting room. I knew about the play area; I wanted to go there desperately. But to ask seemed crass; I would not go unless the subject came up from an adult.

I was a hopeless social neurotic since before I could multiply. Every single thing that would happen my mind would race the way only a precocious only child's could. I was used to living in my head, and this brain of mine used to work quite quickly. Every second of social interaction would include my brain coming up with a dozen ways this could be embarrassing if I do it wrong. I've tried to explain exactly how this works in my own stream-of-conscious internal narration, but I can't possibly layer all of it.

Take a simple thing like an attractive girl saying "Hello." My brain would immediately come up with at least ten reasons she said hello, each with its own backstory and connotation and reason. I would ten proceed to think of a dozen or so responses TO EACH OF THOSE REASONS and play them out in my head for possible missteps. At the very same time, I'm also thinking at least five or six things about myself, what I look like, how I'm holding myself, how I think that looks vs. how it looks to her, what other people looking in on this interaction might see, etc. Also simultaneously I would think of a slew of other times attractive girls greeted me and how they went wrong or right. All of this happens in the space of a second.

And it never stops. This is what it's like to live in my head, twenty-four hours a day. It takes me at least an hour to get to sleep as I replay everything in my head like an obsessive quarterback, imagine alternate ways things could have happened, and hate myself for how they did happen.

I spent eighteen or so years feeling this constantly. The first time I ever got it to calm down was that first night at Shades when I got drunk for the first time. They say alcohol dulls your brain, but for me, at least, that can be a good thing. Intoxicants are a much-welcome vacation from my own thought processes. Of late I've somewhat quantified what happens: with good booze or smoke, my head feelings lay low while my physical sensations seem intensified. I react with surety, whether wrongly or rightly, and, in fact act on my own accord as to what feels right. There is no microscopic examination of every possible meaning of every word or thought; there is sheer blissful existence.

I know that cannot be a permanent condition. Hell, I wouldn't be half the man I am today without my weird brain circumstances. Rare is the situation where I can't make a friend or get along well with folks, and I don't doubt the computations and permutations have helped greatly with this. It's helped as a teacher, too. I can smell a neurotic kid a mile away. I've taken some aside, "You're thinking this, right?" and their eyes widen in recognition.

Why do I drink? Oh, there's more reasons than I have time to tell you, from the exuberant to the melancholic; a night out cracking jokes with friends, a series of whiskeys to put a bad day away, to loosen up those dancing shoes, to give thanks for what I've had, to mourn the things I've lost. But the overall "Why does this guy like drinking so much?", the big reason? Sometimes it's nice to just enjoy myself and shut down the crazy parts of my brainstuff.

Anyway, Shades is a fine place with great Smithwicks and hordes of fond memories. I remember chasing tail with college buddies (to absolutely no avail). I remember taking my visiting parents there for lunch when the waitress said in her thick Irish accent, "Joe Rice, what are you doing here this time of day?"I remember having my fedora stolen, saving me from being a guy that wore a fedora. When I think of early good college times, I usually think of Shades, and it's not lost its charm yet. And they let you play Settlers of Catan in the back!

Author's note: I went through all my college photos and couldn't find a single one taken at Shades. I think that might actually speak to how much fun was had there. I did, however, find lots of embarrassing stuff to put on the facebook. Read more...

Mono-Lagering: King's Head Tavern

So, for this past weekend's crossover drink-up, I wrote a Mono-Lagering now up at Comics Should Be Good. Promise to put some original content up here in the next day or two.

I love you very much. Read more...

Money-saving Link

Kudos to eagle-eyed reader Kizzy-Kay, for finding this list of drink specials for the week. Enjoy! Read more...