Mixologists, that’s what they’re calling us now. I like it -- kind of makes it sound like I went to Dartmouth for five years to learn how to make a margarita. Little do my patrons know my older brother’s girlfriend taught me everything I need to know about alcohol, amongst other things. No, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t have a Ph.D. in neurodestruction but I can pour whiskey in a cup, pour coke in that very same cup, grin and wink at you, and slide it over to you without spilling a drop. That, my friends is worth seven fifty and if you don’t like it you can talk to Gordo the bouncer and he can take you out back and punch you in the face for free if you want, God bless America. 

I think I would rank being a bartender in the United States as one of the top three most exciting jobs in the world to have, right alongside commercial fishermen and the dudes who rub oil into models before a photo shoot. My four years of working here nearly every night have introduced me to many things: like what a hundred thousand dollars looks like in cash, and what a broken bottle can do to a man if applied correctly, and what a guy is willing to do to take a girl home, including alienating friends, tell explicit lies, and of course the one that makes me shiver without fail every time -- spending money they don’t have. 

I don’t work at a club bar called Transcendence. I don’t work alongside Destiny and Fabio. I work with my roommates Matt and Ken and our solemn boss Tom the Vietnam Vet in a bar named Tommy’s named after -- you guessed it -- you guys are smart bunch aren’t you. Tom lives on the second floor of the bar and only comes down to talk to the police or take a bottle of rum. For as long as I’ve worked here he’s maybe said about two dozen words to me. So we pretty much run the bar ourselves and we live across the street but I swear we might as well only have mattresses on the floors of our apartment because eighty percent of our time is spent in the bar and….oh wait, we do only have mattresses on the floor. 

So many tragedies and victories and tales of happiness and sorrow have been played out in this continental bar that I do them shame for only one retelling of what I believe to be the most eventful day in its history and my life. On a dreary Sunday afternoon I stood behind the bar wiping down a pint glass for the thousandth time that day to seem busy, avoiding other more pressing maintenance issues like cleaning our one and only unisex bathroom or pulling the sheets softly over Tom’s comatose body and removing the Glock from his cold and unyielding fingers while he muttered about war crimes in his sleep. Our first patron was a rough bearded homeless man, or a hipster. He bought one bottle of mountain peach whiskey and sat far in the back by himself taking pictures of the drink with an iPhone and taking long sips with his dirty fingerless gloved hand. I still couldn’t tell whether or not he was homeless or hipster. The bar was dead quiet but in about three or four hours that would change drastically. Luckily I would be relieved from my post by then by Matt and Ken, who were due in about an hour, so I could take some rest and gain energy for a date I had that night. I don’t remember who she was but boy I had a story for her that night.

Our next customer was a regular, Denise. She was a former prison guard who won the lottery a few years back and she couldn’t come up with anything more interesting to do than spend it all on tropical drinks in a bar downtown when she could easily live in a tropical place intaking happiness in different states of matter other than liquid. She had a flat nose, copper skin and broad shoulders, causing us to call her Denephew when she wasn’t around. As I served her she remarked on how ugly a day it was but that on the bright side there was no one currently in the bar who had slept with her. She then glanced to her left toward our only other customer, the homeless hipster, lying face down in a stupor and sighed. “Never mind,” she breathed.

Other than Denephew’s exaggerated huffing and puffing to get my attention and Tom and the bearded fellow’s duet of snoring, the bar was relatively quiet. 

“Hands up b****es this is a robbery!” 

Denise and I were the only ones to comply with the order. She had worked in a prison and had probably been in a few intense situations, so she kept cool and had put her hands up immediately. I only did so because loud noises scare me and when I get scared I do whatever loud voices tell me to do, especially when said voices refer to me as b****. The hipster lay still, ignorant of the chaos, lost in his dreams and still battling Tom’s snoring with his own. Looking back on it later, I realized that in all honesty I had no idea what was transpiring till two minutes into the robbery. 

He was tall and lanky, sporting a ski mask and looking like he was having difficulty carrying around the big Colt 45 as he swung from my stupid face into Denise’s frightned eyes and then back to mine. Every time he pointed it at me I winced. 

“Give me all you got in the register-- nice and slow f**.” 

Jesus this guy’s insult game so far was lacking. I guess he didn’t live up to the Samuel Jacksonesque character I had formed in my mind during boring hours of work contemplating how I would save the day if anything like this ever occurred.

“Sure thing,” I said in a voice lighter than middle school girl in church choir. 

I pulled out all the cash we had made that day and handed it over to him. He grabbed it coarsely and made to leave till he counted how much money I had actually given him. He paced back, grabbed me by the collar, pulled me close to his face 

“Forty bucks!” he exclaimed. 

“That’s all we’ve made today I swear!” I squeaked. 

Just then we heard a sound from the stair hallway and I saw Tom standing there, tall and heroic pointing his gun right at the robber. He let out the loudest belch I’ve ever heard and toppled over onto the floor, continuing his battle of snores with the homeless guy.

The robber turned back from the failed rescue attempt and grabbed me by the collar again. 

“You and me are going on a ride.” he said, grinning devilishly.

I was terrified but not surprised at this statement -- proof of why he called me what he had earlier. Another sound came from the doorway to the outside.  Matt stepped through first and dropped the eggs he was carrying when he saw what was going on. 

Ken was right behind him, shouting, “F***ing idiot how does one drop eggs in that manner wha….” 

His hands flew up when he saw the glint of the gun and ski mask and put two and two together. The gunman cursed under his breath. I felt for him; I mean how was he going to be able to rape me if he was being interrupted every ten seconds. Then another noise -- the noise of a hero, the noise of a champion.

With a guttural roar the barbarian-like hipster had crossed the distance from booth to gunman in less than a second and smashed his empty bottle into the villain’s face, knocking him out cold. The piss on my pants had just started to cool but in that instant I warmed it right back up again. The homeless Viking began to stride out of the bar like nothing had gone down but I stopped him halfway down the street. 

“Wait” I wailed. He turned around “Are you living on the streets or do you reject blind consumerism?” He scoffed and kept walking. I still don’t know.