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I stayed home, avoiding bars, brothels, and even beaches for the rest of my time on the island. I’d had enough. Somewhere along the line, I’d stared Evil in the face and it had frightened me to my core. I don’t know whether it was something I saw on St. Barths—or in the mirror during the worst year of my life—but something had to change. I knew that now.

4

I Drink Alone

People call me “chef.” Still.

Walking down the street, I’ll hear somebody call that out and my head still swivels to see who’s talking to me. Nine years now since I last took up a pan in anger and I still whip around automatically to that title. Of course, it’s no longer true. I am not a chef. Still, it usually makes me happy when I hear that.

There’s something wonderful about drinking in the afternoon. A not-too-cold pint, absolutely alone at the bar—even in this fake-ass Irish pub. It’s new, built to look like old. Erin Go Bragh bullshit with its four flat screens silently flashing sports crawls for games I don’t care about. The generic Irish bric-a-brac they deliver by the truck-load. Empty moving vans roaming the Irish countryside right now, I imagine, waiting for old Missus Meagher to drop dead into her black pudding so they can buy up the contents of her curio shelves. All of it shipped straight off to a central clearing house, where it’s divvied up between Instant Irish Pubs in New York, Milwaukee, Singapore, and Verona.

I’ve been at this bar before, of course. We all have. Yet I’m strangely, indefensibly happy here. Even the stink of Lysol from the too-clean floor, the fruit flies hovering over the garnish tray do not distract me from a general feeling of well-being.

The food, were I silly enough to ask…well, I know what’s on the menu without looking. Fried zucchini sticks, fried mozzarella, surely there’s calamari in red sauce. Look deeper and there will be indifferently prepared shepherd’s pie; a French dip with salty “gravy” made from canned base; a burger with a limp pickle, an unripe tomato slice, and Simplot Classic frozen French fries. “Bangers and mash” will be an Italian sweet sausage—and there might be a gummy approximation of Irish stew, containing too-lean lamb bits and lots of potatoes.

And what of the seafood options? You are on your fucking own there, boyo.

The bartender is Irish. Jumped a student visa about ten years ago but nothing for him to worry about.

The cook, though, is Mexican. Some poor bastard at ten dollars an hour—and probably has to wash the dishes, too. La Migra take notice of his immigration status—they catch sight of his bowl cut on the way home to Queens and he’ll have a problem. He looks different than the Irish and the Canadians—and he’s got Lou Dobbs calling specifically for his head every night on the radio. (You notice, by the way, that you never hear Dobbs wringing his hands over our border to the North. Maybe the “white” in Great White North makes that particular “alien superhighway” more palatable.) The cook at the Irish bar, meanwhile, has the added difficulty of predators waiting by the subway exit for him (and any other Mexican cooks or dishwashers) when he comes home on Friday payday. He’s invariably cashed his check at a check-cashing store; he’s relatively small—and is unlikely to call the cops. The perfect victim.

The guy serving my drinks, on the other hand, as most English-speaking illegal aliens, has been smartly gaming the system for years, a time-honored process everybody at the INS is fully familiar with: a couple of continuing education classes now and again (while working off the books) to get those student visas. Extensions. A work visa. A “farm” visa. Weekend across the border and repeat. Articulate, well-connected friends—the type of guys who own, for instance, lots of Irish bars—who can write letters of support lauding your invaluable and “specialized” skills, unavailable from homegrown bartenders. And nobody’s looking anyway. But I digress…

Bushmills or Jameson, Celtics or Rangers, don’t mean a thing here. This is a nondenominational Irish bar. No difference, no raised eyebrows. Few Irish, now that I think about it. And the Guinness, of course, blows.

The owner’s got ten or twelve of these bars and they all look the same and they all have names like Paddy McGee’s or Seamus O’Doul’s or Molly whatever—none of whom exist or ever existed.

But I am happy here just the same.

Among the pool table, the jukebox, the inevitable dartboard, the moosehead, toy trains, Yankee banners, the photos of Irish authors who never came here and whom nobody here ever read. You want to talk Joyce or Behan? A Yeats’s bust may sit dust-covered on a shelf, but start spouting lines from The Second Coming and you can just fuck off down the street, ya prat.

Who drinks here?