“A good bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.” -Albert Einstein

Regulars comes and go. It’s all part of it. People move, the menu changes, drinking habits disappear…there’s a multitude of reasons why people don’t come in to see anymore (you stop ordering their shitty liquor). I work in a neighborhood restaurant bar, not a “real” bar. I’ve always done this. I’ve never had to work late nights until the wee hours of the morning in a bucket of blood or urine soaked hellhole serving cheap draft beer and shots of Jame-o to drunken twenty year old college kids rabid with lust and prone to projectile vomiting all over the toilet seats. Anyway, to get to the point here, in my experience one of the biggest reasons why regulars quit coming in–break ups, separations, divorce.

We’ve got one guy who “got the bar.” But most couples, I think, don’t want to be reminded of the good times which is why they stay away. It’s too painful. Yes, the days when all was hunky dory and they sat in front of yours truly and it was one of the nights I was on fire telling jokes and filling their bellies with just the right amount of rum (I kick ass about twice a week, your job is to show up on the right night).

Sometimes these regulars become more than just people sitting at the bar. Over the years, we get to know one another and speak of the trials and tribulations surrounding our own lives. It’s technically a breach of the patient/therapist confidentiality, but I’m a bartender, not a licensed expert. Funny though, that I almost never see these people outside the restaurant. We’re considered “friends” but in the times these people don’t visit the bar, I never see them.

Case in point. We’ll call her Dolores. She came in last night after being a ghost for six months or so. An older woman who came in with her significant other for many years. I’ve met her siblings and offspring. I figured something had happened. I mean, that’s life, right? Unlike most people, I really like her. She’s had a wild life and over the years has regaled me with her tales (I’ve stored them away for further use in my novels). She’s a real life badass. A self made person who uses her powers to help those who need it most.

She sat down and I noticed right away she had lost some weight on her body but replaced it with a different sort of gravity clinging to her shoulders. First off, we exchanged how happy we were to see one another. Small talk ensued and then I fired off the icebreaker I knew was the reason she had not come around. “How is ____?” I said. “Well,” she said. “We’re no longer together.” Yeah, I felt that. We’ve all been there and it sucks.

Breaking up is such an odd thing. You meet some person, you’re attracted to them in some way, drawn in, and they to you. You become fast friends, lovers, maybe even life mates. You live together, spend all this time with them, make all the compromises to be together and like that, it can be gone, and that person you were once so close to is now a complete stranger once again. They say a break up causes the same feeling as a death. I believe that. It’s gut wrenching.

In most cases it’s a good thing. My dad always congratulates people on their divorce (he’s a divorcee himself). My old therapist (a real one) once told me, “All relationships are temporary.” True but disturbing nonetheless. It’s always good to get toxic people away from you. We learn. We continue. That’s what we do. We’re never the same after a break up. The people who integrated themselves into our lives change us, give us expressions, beliefs, mindsets, we never had before meeting them.

Dolores told me she didn’t see it coming. Yeah, been there too. She shed a few tears after a glass of wine. It got a little bit awkward as it was a Friday night and other people sat there dining. But, being an experienced bartender, after getting through a spell of the weeds, I focused my attention on her, brought her around. Hangovers became the subject for a moment and somehow, yes, the old tome, On Drink by Kingsley Amis, found its dusty way off the shelves and I got them all laughing at his particular view of how to deal with the aftermath of having a fun night.

Amis graces us with tidbits like this:

“With that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. You are not sickening for anything, you have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at your job, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a shit you are, you have not come at last to see life as it really is, and there is no use crying over spilt milk. If this works, if you can convince yourself, you need do no more, as provided in the markedly philosophical–he who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.“

At any rate, Amis separates the hangover into two parts, the physical and the metaphysical and goes on at some length. It’s hilarious. Scroll down a touch on this page to read the whole thing.

I got them all rolling a bit, the mood lightened, and as Dolores and I got to speaking more I hit her with a revelation of my own I had been working on just that day. Shit sandwiches appear every so often. Most of the time it’s something we did ourselves but often it’s something we have no control over whatsoever. In these cases, where we can do nothing, our only choice is to accept, take a big ol’ bite, grimace and chew down that smelly turd between two slices of bread. We can only control ourselves, our own actions, emotions, etc. In other words, when life gives you lemons, make lemon sherbet and then add gin.

Easier said than done.