THE WISDOM IN DRINKING ALONE

 

 

            Sick and tired of hanging out with pea-size brained beer-drinkers, I retreated to myself. I could no longer stomach their noisy outpour of imbalanced understanding of what life is. One minute we would be talking about how difficult it is nowadays to find a good bargain on books yet the next minute I would find my ears assaulted by a confession on marital woes which I personally wouldn’t like to listen to, as it had only been minutes since the exchanged of greetings with the “new acquaintance” who took the stool beside me.

           

            Drinking has its unwritten rules that every mug-emptier should adhere to. So, its really very puzzling why, for instance, a suddenly confident chap carries his mug and nastily crosses borders and ends up in your group’s table, as if the very fact alone that you’re drinking the same brand of beer gives him the right to “socialize.”

 

            Since the atmosphere inside bars is more freewheeling than their very posh counterparts, waiters or the manager would just expect you to be more tolerant. Waiters may even sometimes justify the intrusion by mouthing discreetly that the intruder is a big-spender, and that soon your table would virtually be a wellspring of malt.

 

            Okay, no problem with that, as long as your bill before the attack ends up also being paid for by the invader.

 

            But what of the fellow who reveals a really, really serious problem for which your opinion is sought? After mulling things over in between sips while you listen to his oral download in between his gulps, you begin to give him a piece of your mind by taking first the point-of-view of the absent subject of the conversation, yet you instantly becomes cast as the antagonist sent to complicate things (“Who are you? Who sent you?”) The world is so in-grained in paranoia even an unsuspecting bottle of beer seems to contain a distrust-inducing bubble from the cane fields in the Philippines.

 

            Worst of all, of course, is the suddenly brave beer-guzzler who can be provoked into an Old-West duel posture when irritated by the lightest things (“I’m tired of this mug. Give me a glass that I can easily grip!”). These are the fellows who would eventually meet their match, and they’ll soon turn the neighborhood bar into an Irish pub, complete with a brawl (“Ye stinking oaf! Werz thee bloody barrel o’ beer y’owe mee?!”).

 

            And, oh yes, the fellow at the far corner whose hands seem to serve only two well-defined purposes? The left hand holds the cigarette, the right clutches the bottle. The interplay of the hands’ mechanical movements can really be hypnotizing, but he ends up being hypnotized himself as, before long, having no one to talk to, his right cheek soon rests on the table – his right arm still firm on the bottle, while his left hand dangles by his sides, the cigarette scorching itself into the iron legs of his seat.

 

            These scenes do not fail to unfold themselves before me every time I visit a bar – any bar.

 

            So, sick and tired of hanging out with fellow beer-lovers whose brains suddenly resize themselves to the size of a pea when inebriated, I decided to just drink at home, by myself. And as I stare at my reflection in the wall mirror by the cooler as I take out another bottle, I hiss “What the hell are you staring at, bozo?”