This story is from back when I worked in some bars that were unlikely to feature on any tourist guide. The delightful clientele varied their tastes from “jacksancoke” to “jacksstubbee” and their partners usually drank the most over-sugared, brightly coloured cocktails we could invent. Usually with stupid names (the “Smurf in a Blender” used to sell quite well). We regularly heard questions like "whaddya got inna can?" and "got anything stronger than metho?". Yes, this was a place where your regulars included uniformed police and we occasionally closed early because we ran out of glassware that wasn’t being used to stab someone.
Somehow the idea that our Sunday nights were a bit lacking in the quantity and quality of patrons got up to management and, after what I’m sure was a severe drinking session, enough brain cells had been duly silenced for a karaoke night to sound like a good idea. Apparently no-one considered half-smashed bogans belting out their favourite tracks from that bible-on-CD of musical taste “Best Beer Drinking Songs in the World Ever (Volume 2)” to be bad for business. Thanks to this idea Sundays suddenly became a ghost town. You couldn’t even get staff in the place. That’s right, people who were being paid to be there would honestly have paid money to be somewhere else. The music was so bad and so loud that deaf people would show up to sit around, watch people’s facial expressions and feel better about their lot in life. But that came later.
This story is about the opening night of karaoke though. That fun, lively first night that was like that first sip of beer after a long hard day at work (the following weeks were more like eating the entire carton of beer bottles, then trying to pass the resulting shards the next day on the toilet). That first night most of the usual crew decided to hang around after their shifts to see how this would go, and maybe see who was brave enough to get on stage (hint: not me, I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket).
Jim and me both finished up nice and early so we settled down with a couple of pints and some dinner before the show started. Dinner ended up being a monstrous chicken parmi and 4 pints. Jim had knocked back about 3 pints as well by this point and we agreed that in the interest of road safety, one of us should be the designated driver. We had both had a few too many to pull this off legally, so we figured the next best thing was to halve our chances of getting caught by only one of us driving (Brilliant plan, drunk logic). Since Jim lived closer, we figured we’d drop his car home and then I’d drive us both back. We both had bought similar sports cars and spent more time and money than I’d like to admit trying to make them go fast (or fixing things we broke) so it was going to be a quick trip. One of the apprentice chefs caught wind of this and asked if he and his attractive female friend could come along for the ride. Attractive female friend? Sure there’s room!
What happened next wasn’t responsible, or safe, or good for anyone’s tyres. It involved phrases like “yellow light... fuckit, I can make it” and a girl clawing at the dashboard while shrieking like a cheerleader. When you’re cornering through a set of lights that have been yellow for what feels like forever at 90kph and the guy in the passenger seat asks “was that a cop car?” while pointing to traffic on the opposite side of the road, you can only hope to put as much distance between you and him as possible. As quickly as possible. Sadly that wasn’t my only brush with the law that night (more about that in part 2). I won’t go into much more detail about that trip, but bragging rights extend as far as claiming to have survived it (and if Jim’s to be believed, the wet patch the girl left on his seat).
One we had returned to the bar and grabbed another round of drinks we settled in to watch a few hours of sheepish looking regulars and a few staff climb on stage to try the odd duet. It was like the outtakes of Australian Idol. Not the hilariously bad ones, just the average and less-than-average singers. Luckily we didn’t really mind, a few more rounds had helped soften the blows of the jarringly missed notes and slurred lyrics.
Suddenly it was getting towards closing time and the head chef suggested we keep drinking back at her place. The call went out “who has a car?” and being one of the very few people who worked at the pub that had both a car and a licence I put my hand in the air and said those classic words: “sure, i’m fiiiiine”. At this point that was about as good as it was going to get from the assembled train-wreck of waisted waitresses and blitzed bartenders, so a few of us piled back into my cramped car and raced off towards the nearest bottle shop. Pablo was in the passenger seat and had worked at this particular place (picture a riot with a 6 drink minimum) prior to moving to my slightly less blood-stained venue, so he was able to convince the manager to sell us a couple of cartons and a few bottles despite having already closed for the night. The stories Pablo would tell about that place never ceased to amaze me.
Now with all of us crammed back into the car with the addition of a few crates of booze we dashed back to the bar and our gratefully awaiting friends. Who had already left for chef’s house. Dicks. On the upside, Sunday night was also pour-off night. This was the night we cleaned the beer lines, and to clean them, you had to empty out the beer first, and there’s no sense in wasting good beer, so why not have a drink while you do it. We arrived back on the scene to see a line of fresh pints waiting on the bar, not that we could take them with us to the party though. It would be stealing to take glasses from a bar and stealing is wrong...
So now we had a very small car with 5 very drunk people in it, each holding a pint, and 3 cartons of booze squeezed in on top. It would’ve been dangerous to light a match anywhere near us. Somehow still being the designated driver for the night, we’ve headed off to the chef’s house. It took about 10 minutes of driving before we figured out that no one actually knew where the chef lived and started making the appropriate phone calls. I’m not going to tell you about the quality of the directions I received, but the number of times I heard “wait! Turn here!” caused me to corner so sharply that Pablo in the passenger seat had to hold my pint for me.
I hate to leave you guys hanging, but I don’t want to make these too long. So it looks like this will have to be a two-part series.
Next week, Part Two: The Second Coming-Back (with beer).
-Worst Guy Ever
No comments:
Post a Comment