That’s it. I’m quitting this world to take up the professional aspirations of becoming an Old Man Bar Fly.
I have just propositioned one mate with this idea. She too is having a bad start to her day. So I suggested we head to the first darkened smoked-up beer-staled bar, install ourselves at the decrepit wooden counter, and be grumbling into our weakened unfrothed drafts by 10.30am.
I am eagerly awaiting her response.
We will sit grumbling. Occasionally we will bother patrons who unwisely pop past us for a cigarette, which we will never ash but let burn down in one long line. We will have our own dish of something vile and British-cuisine-inspired on the menu. We will harass young girls with weak jokes, and try and catch a feel in any possible manner. We will chuckle at these moments, even once the young girl has wiggled as far away from our stench & clench as the bar allows.
The barmen will all know us by name. We will think they are our best friends. Sometimes we will confess this, late into a quiet night, through wet eyes. They will humour us, but mainly stare vacantly at us as we recite boozed philosophies to them.
Most days they will be our only company. And words will rarely need to be passed between us. Just “another”. And much staring that causes unlinked thoughts that break off too often to create adequate ideas.
Sometimes the youth will interrupt and irritate our wonderings and grumblings and we will glare over our beer glasses. When they walk away we will tell our fellow flies how “I could take him on. In my youth, I could have taken out ten of those, but I have not done the necessary exercise in a year or two now” while we pat our ballooning paunch.
Sweet. I am loving this idea.
But Champs, what is your Five Year Plan?? You NEED to have a Five Year Plan. Because it is pretty obvious you stand little chance of getting married, buying a house in a suburb starting with “Park” or in Cookie Cut Tuscan Pretoria South. You do not even own a backpack or a bandana to be a world traveller. You are three degrees behind your peers so our dreams of You & Academia have faded. OBVIOUSLY this means you wish to be a career woman, but we have distressing noted that you do not own a single pencil skirt.
What ARE you planning??
Well, Mom/ Boss/ Maid/ Mate/ Family Friend/ Language Teacher/ Grandmother’s Cousin/ Friend’s Parent/ Achieving School Peer/ Overachieving unconscious/ Sandwich Lady/ Zimbo selling me coat hangers along with this line of questioning ….
I plan on being a skanky enlarged wrinkled-up over-worded glaring angry grumbling aged Bar Fly!
Be sure to send your little just-legal kiddies my way!
It ain’t easy mind you. It will take years of effort. Boeps do not just arrive on internet shopped order. Greyed wrinkles like that take countless cigarette smoke extended encounters. Jokes and flirty lines of such sleaze are hardly the work of any old Joe. True sleaze needs to be inspired and then remoulded. And that breathe, well, now that requires a beer consumed before 10.30am…..
First lesson. Mumbling my gripes. Over a beer. See you spik-and-span-cheery lot at your next bar counter.
I’m off to the pub.
7 comments:
What do you mean you have made a plan? I thought you had been living out the plan for a good few years already?!!
Bar fly? Great aspiration but lacking in the see the light of day department!
Nah, stick to what you do best - keeping HIV/AIDS in the spotlight and being an activist to get funding to fight it.
Rob - occasionally I will walk outside and sip my beer on the pavement. Or I will stand next to a window. That will let me see the light of day.
Right now, the office job does not allow for that either though.
And I will pass out AIDS Awareness flyers, granted maybe a bit beer stained. Perhaps shuffle a condom along the counter to a snogging couple. AND I will be able to tell people if I saw their partners recently at the same bar with another man/ woman so helping lower the infidelity issue. See, Bar Flies are AIDS Activists too.
And that def beats excel and meetings about ARBITRARY elements to a project, or playing PA to my short sighted boss.
So fund my beer drinking, and so in turn, fight HIV!
You are a precious!
Bar fly or no, you will never let an occassion pass by that prevents you doing something to prevent HIV.
Well there is actually.
How does dancing on a table ....oh forget it. It's a sight to behold and occassions coitus interuptus which in turn prevents the spread....
Smart cookie you are think I.
Ha ha ha! You have got them down to a tee. When I worked in Rosebank we had a bunch. Whenever the prices went up they would boycott for 2 days, but ALWAYS come back. They bitch and moan about each other when they aren't there. Give a waitresses a hard time. You can now find the group at Bowls club or the Colon on any one afternoon. I am sure there is an empty seat for you.
Robs - :)
DaveRich - Well then... if you're looking for me, I'll be the shortest one at the Bowls Club bar counter!
...as long as you take your laptop along and keep blogging!
My Life-Plan is based on an old Calvin & Hobbes comic.
I want to signal a passing alien Starship, and get on-board. And start a career in Intergalactic Travel.
Most people think I'm a Space Cadet anyway [shrug].
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