| rev:text
| - The Martyred Slaves of Time
It was our wedding anniversary. Time to break the decade-long suspense: "Strap it on, Darlin', we're headin' to the Roost!"
Somewhere back in the mists of architectural time, some cinder-block builder wandered the state, stacking block, carrying hod, and built a whole bunch of bunkers. I mean bars. Each one situated at a crossroad, each angled to face, exactly, that crossroad. Genius? Or merely a stab at defying the soul-crushing monotony that is masonry?
No matter, the Roost is bunker on the outside, 1950's rumpus room on the inside. Six guys sitting on one side of the bar, doing the round-robin smoking outside routine, like watching birds on the feeder, taking their turns. Younger bartender, full of charm if not grace. Old coot at the corner of the bar. (Another old coot, as I was there, too.) Each tavern comes with that one guy, who does the odd fix-em-up work around the joint for a couple free snorts. This was that guy. I wanted to ask him SO many things: How the years impartially grind you down, like a water-driven millstone, until you're nothing but bone-dust; how the half-century of guzzling Old Overholt leaves you literally perforated and yet you continue to spend your days filtering hootch through your liver; how in the end time crushes us all, rich or poor, farmer or king. Instead, I nodded and grunted, which is all you should ever do, your first time at the Roost. Which may be my last time at the Roost.
Here's why this place gets four stars: You know it ain't elegant. Hell, it really ain't even that civilized. But what you want is a shot? A beer? Maybe some remote chance at illicit romance, whether inter- or intra-species? This is your place. They don't pretend. On any level. They know what you want. Cheap drunk. Dark, hence the bunker. No hassles. This is the kind of place where, if you were willing to look closely enough and had a keen eye, you might see how the edge of the bar had been diminished, ever so slightly, warn down by three generations of beer guts. Now that is something. Huh? Yeah, at least there's that.
"Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"
-- "Big Chuck" Baudelaire
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