Bartending

It occurred to me, as an outgoing introvert, that Bartending might be an enjoyable, profitable sideline of work.

I know how to make a good dry martini. I enjoy dispensing life advice to strangers, especially those too inebriated to realize it's bad advice. I don't mind washing glasses. A perfect fit, right? Of course, as with all jobs, there had to be a downside, but I couldn't imagine any.

Now, don't get me wrong -- this idea didn't pop into my head at 2 am, in a bar, as I watched my hand push more money towards a smug bartender, it dawning on me slowly that this was the wrong direction for money to be moving. No. This was a mature decision, sober even. And I wanted to do it right. So I signed up for a week-long class at a Bartending School to become a certificate-holding, well-trained bartender. A few clicks online, and I was enrolled.

 

I arrived Monday morning, bright and early, at the school. Wanting to make a good impression on the instructor, I wore my lime green Brooks Brothers sweater, tan slacks and dress shoes, and brought note cards, a highlighter and pen, as indicated on the website.

The school was a small, dark, and dingy former bar, stocked with hundreds of bottles of colored water. In the middle was a a rickety folding table with some metal chairs around it. A bunch of kids in their early 20's, tattoos peeking out from under grungy shirts with witty slogans such as FUCK MORNINGS, reeking of cigarettes, pot and I'm not sure what else, stood around uncertainly in silence.

From a back corner, a tremendous crash rang out, as if boulders fell off a cliff. I leaped to one side and pulled out my keys defensively.

"That's the ice machine," a boy who looked younger than my son noted. I put my keys away. Four minutes later the same crash resonated through the bar. And every four minutes after that. Never did quite get used to it.

An instructor with half a shaved head appeared out of a back room and handed each of us a 70-page course book.

"Read it."

We read.

The book proved daunting. Dozens of new bartending tools and terminology to learn, hundreds of recipes, different liquors and liqueurs and their taste profiles to remember, not to mention a section on the state laws on legal responsibilities to muddle through. The final written exam was 5 dense pages -- is Absolut vodka a call, a premium or a well drink? The practical exam was to make 20 mixed drinks from memory in under 8 minutes. That doesn't sound too bad until you time yourself making one drink.

And the drink names...."Red Headed Slut" and "Pearl Harbor" and "Alabama Slammer." These sounded more like felonies and tragedies than things I wanted to drink, or make. Where were the lovely drinks? The Old Fashioneds? The Manhattans? The Martinis? I paged and paged, past "Irish Car Bomb," "Mudslide" and "Sloe Comfortable Screw," and, thankfully, found them. Martinis are, apparently, still drunk today, but strangely include ingredients such as chocolate syrup, creme de menthe and lemon vodka. Humph.

Each of us had an assigned station behind the bar, about 4 feet wide with our own well, then shared bottles on shelves behind. The idea was to practice pouring colored water until our arms fell off. And we did. I worked between two young women, each about he age of my daughter.

One worked at a strip club, she told me, as a server. Her boss paid for this course so she could move up to a position behind the bar. I asked her about her work, and she said she enjoyed it. She made good tips. Then she added some drunk men could get out of line, but she had ways to make them shut the fuck up, pay their bill, and get the fuck out. I didn't ask what ways, but I noted she could flip a full bottle of vodka upside down and pour from it, with a tiny flick of her wrist. She didn't ask why I was taking the course.

The other woman was a recent immigrant from China, her English accented but early perfect. Tattoos peeked out from her rather loose clothing. She said she worked at an Appleby's as a server and hoped for better pay as a bartender there. She didn't ask why I was taking the course.

When it came time for the practical exam, my bar-neighbors both did it in 10 minutes on their first tries, then 7 minutes after a few more.

On my first try, it took me 20 minutes to make the 20 drinks. So I tried again. It took me 22 minutes. So, once more into the breach, dear friends... I learned that I was highly disorganized when it comes to bottles and ingredients. I learned that I am slow. I learned that I am old.

But then I recalled my woodworking experience. An organized shop is key, where you know where all the tools are, they're in the right place, and you put them back in precisely the same place, and in the same way, each time. In making furniture, repetition teaches unthinking hand knowledge, you just do it, rather than lead your hands through it with your head.

I practiced harder. I learned to pour a four count (1 ounce) without counting, just by feel. I learned to make a gimlet without thinking where the lime juice bottle was, I just found it with my hand. I learned lots, and bent my brain around the logistics of a bar.

In the end, I passed the test in 7:48.The kids didn't look impressed with the oldster. In fact, I'm not sure they knew I was ever there.

I got my Certificate of Bartending, telling the world I had max mixology skills. I also got my BASSET (Beverage Alcohol Sellers and Servers Education and Training) card, making me a legal bartender in the state of Illinois. 

Smoking hot certificate in hand, I was ready to Bartend.

Then, and only then, did I order business cards.

 

Now, it was just a matter of finding that first gig.

The school would occasionally post gig opportunities on their Facebook page, first come first serve. Usually I would be the tenth to respond, and the gig would be taken. Then, it happened-- I was the first to reply, and I got the gig.

"Naughty Bingo Night." Chicago South Side. 6-10 pm. $75 plus tips. That's well above minimum wage, so it was a fantastic catch. I didn't know the South Side well, but it was near the Museum of Science and Industry, an I knew how to get there.

hosted by a Red Hatters group in a retirement home/home for the disabled on the South Side of Chicago. "Bedroom Kandi" toys would be on display, and there would be live demonstrations. I was to run the bar.

I talked with the organizer, who was as sweet as could be. She was with a Red Hatters group, she said, and they were going to be selling Bedroom Kandi sex toys, with demonstrations, during the Naughty Bingo Night. She looked to me entirely for a good drinks menu, and that she was excited to have me join her team.

The school's course book proved useful. I proposed a menu including Sex on the Beach, the Fuzzy Navel, a Slippery Nipple, and the Screaming Orgasm. Drinks apparently everybody likes.

I began to wonder, though. As I often joke, I'm happy to do any job as long as I can keep my clothes on. And, as far as I had observed and experienced in my lifetime up to that point, Bartending was a clothes-on profession. What if I was asked, by a kindly little old disabled lady in a wheelchair, to please help with a demonstration? Was it expected of full-service gig bartenders? Would saying "No" result in fewer tips? It was a lot to consider.

Now, my aversion to working without my clothes is not to disparage sex workers. Not in the least. I have the highest regard for the line of work. I'm simply too shy to consider it. Personally, that is. It's the introvert in me.

Friday -- the day of the event arrived, and I got on the Red Line down to The South Side. Long before the numbered streets begin, and long before my stop, on 63rd Street, the Red Line stops having white passengers. I looked around and wondered, but all I saw was boredom on the faces of weary commuters trying to get home on a Friday. The biggest contrast was that I was going to work.

 

I got off the train and ran for the bus that would take me the rest of the way to the retirement home. The bus stop was in front of a liquor store with bars over the windows, and next to the gas station that hadn't seen a cleaning since 1958. It was not a wealthy neighborhood. The bus ride is uneventful except for a tractor trailer wedged sideways under a bridge, police standing around hands on their hips.

At the retirement home I am buzzed in through two sets of doors by a security guard. She looks at me with just a hint of confusion and asks "Who you here to see?" I explain that I'm here for the event, and she relaxes, and points down the hall to the common room.

I walk into a light yellow and green painted room with circular tables spread around. In the middle sit three black women in their 60's or 70s. There's a moment of incomprehension, then one says “Oh, I know who you are,” in a very matter of fact way. It is good, I admit, to being known, and expected.

The organizer, my contact, arrives and give me a big warm hug--she's so happy I'm a part of her team, and frankly, so am I. I'm beginning to feel less nervous about messing up my first gig, and more comfortable to be part of a fun night.

I'm early, so there's time before the crowd is due to arrive. I wander over to the sex toy display. Bedroom Kandi dildos, vibrators, jars of spicy jellies are all arranged on a big folding table. A young man in his mid-twenties sits behind them, minding the bingo squirrel cage roller thing. He's hiding inside down inside a gray hoodie, as if he's really cold, or trying not to be noticed. We shake hands as he introduces himself as the organizer's son. He's just there to support his mom, trying to help, and that he's trying not to look at anything. His mom teases from across the room "He’s acting like he don’t know where he come from." He smiles back but still doesn't look at anything.

 

Then people begin to arrive, and I start slinging drinks. They are mostly in their 60's 70's and 80's, mostly women, though one table is a group of ladies in their late 20's.

 

The first is a Sex on the Beach for an older man who looks already drunk. I make it with a little more than a 4 count (1 ounce of liquor), perhaps a 5 or 6 count, as I figure people need to get merry for the event, and the organizers don't seem to be big on making a profit off the bar. He wanders off with his drink.

 

One of the organizers comes over and asks "Please make your drinks stronger." I move to an 8 count, or twice the liquor my school course book tells me to. Then she comes back. 'Um, these are still weak." I start to make triples. And the happiness flows through the room.

 

The naughty bingo starts.

 

The organizer holds up the first prize, a vibrator. She explains to the crowd, about 15 people, that "God gave us bodies and sex for our pleasure, and there's nothing wrong with it." Also that "A woman's G-spot is just an inch inside near her clitoris and a man's in an inch inside his asshole." The crowd relaxes.

 

One of other organizers, wearing red feathers in her hair, reads out the Bingo balls as they tumble out of the cage.

"G 31, Can we get it on?"

"O 72, Spread 'em wide"

 

She comes up with a tag line for each ball, all bawdy.

 

"G 56, Sex me up sex me down"

"I 16, I wish I was 16"

"B 30, she's on top"

 

The crowd has been told that when they're one Bingo number away from winning, they have to make a noise like they're about to come. The first woman gets up from her seat, grabs her walker, an shouts "Oh! Oh Oh!" the organizer comes over with a complimentary ticket, perhaps a 10% off anything on the table.

 

I make more drinks.

 

I get requests for stronger drinks. I make a few quadruples. I'm told not to worry about drunk driving as pretty much everybody lives upstairs.I relax some more, as I'm making some pretty stiff drinks.

 

"B 9, Lick that stick"

A woman with striking silver lipstick come up and I ask her what she'll have.

 

"Just do what you all do."

 

So I make her a Sex on the Beach. It's what I do.

 

"Strong?" I ask her.

 

"Hell yeah. Don't give me no soft drink."

 

I make her a triple pushing a quadruple.

 

"You can slap me if that's not strong," I tell her.

 

"I will spank you if it ain't." She drinks and frowns. "It ain't strong at all."

 

In the spirit the moment, I turn my ass to her and she gives me a spank. I top up her quadruple and send her on her merry and merrier way.

 

I begin to wonder if I've broken my basic rule, that I'll do anything as long as I get to keep my clothes on. Technically my pants are still on, and yet.... but then I think I'm just beginning to break my shyness instead. What's a little spank on a Friday night?"

 

"I came twice tonight!" a man yells when he wins the Bingo round, and with it a strange rubbery object I really could not guess the use of, and I don't think he could either. He held it one way, then another, then up to the light.

 

It's turning into the best first gig ever.

 

A woman wins a vibrator at a distant table, I hear her talk with her friends.

 

"Girl, you can send that boyfriend home!" one says with glee.

 

"He can take his dick home," she replies, somewhat resigned.

 

"G 12, G spot is what I got."

 

After the event, as laughter echoes down the hallway, I clean up my bar area.

 

I get compliments for my drinks, though a comment that they were weak to start. "But you learned."

 

The organizer gave me a huge tip, and send me home with a smile. I could not have asked to work with a nicer, friendlier, or funnier group of people.

 

Next month, apparently, we're doing it all over again. I think I'll put the "Sloe Comfortable Screw" on the menu this time.

Comments

[Sis]

Lmao!