The burden of the bartender

What weight does she hold on her shoulders when the clients are few and the music strains toward the schmaltz and the couples pause and she trains her eyes down the lacquer.

The black bras in the dryer in the laundromat across the street spinning like hair in her fingers.

just make me my damned old fashioned chiefo

the bartender should say "so you do you like alcohol?", to get the conversation going

how about some shirley temples for the kids

Who put bras in the dryer wtf

^

Some well-meaning twenty-nothings and ancient thirty-somethings box each other out for the seat by the sink under the bar - the place in front of where the bartender has to bend over. All because her fucking barback doesn’t show up until 7.

Consistent with the rules of the house adding two natural-straw swizzle sticks and a cube of raw sugar to each drink of equitorial inclination, appending a few pennies to each tab and collecting the extra few dollars at the end of the night to donate to a charity in Antigua for what purpose?

when the barback shows up at 7:10, he pushes open the front door with his foot so it hits the wall really hard, and just stands there in the entrance as everyone stares

the barden of the burtender

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2U1nd62RfY

Whipping concupiscent curds in the draught foam and reciting cummings and Eliot and Stevens while regretting, deeply, the Ph.D. in modernist poetry.

the burtender's last stanton

I know music is a problematic issue but this the second time I’ve heard “brown eyed girl” in the last two hours and I’m about to tear one eyeball out of my head to examine it with my other

There's a pizza place I go to that plays the same dozen mid-late 80s hits on a loop all day long

A group of six olds arrive, some kind of a reunion at the bar, but none of them drink anymore, so after some deliberation (ginger ale?) they all decide to order water, and the bartender replies “water?”