I have a confession. I'm a lightweight. I don't handle my liquor all that well. Beer makes me sleepy, and wine gives me a headache unless I have it with a meal.
It's really hilarious that I would be a designated Barfly for tbt.* It's like choosing a nun to emcee a wrestling match. I feel so out of my element sometimes with alcohol. Drunks have a code, a secret handshake I'm not in on. They've exceeded biological and psychological limits that wimps like me can't imagine.
So I get by on my professional experience, writing about the atmosphere and features of places around Tampa Bay. I think I do okay. I don't get a lot of complaints. If you're in my profession, it's a given that you hear more about errors than a job well done.
Once, a reader took me to task for mistakenly writing Harp's instead of Harp. Something like five other people chimed in on a comment board about how they hate it when people write it incorrectly.
If only people would be that vocal about the mistreatment of the Sudanese.
Sometimes when I enter a festive, Floibbean-style bar - Lord knows there are so many around here - I look at the specialty frozen drink machines and my eyes get big like a kid in front of the 7-Eleven Slurpee contraptions. I want that red one. No that yellow one.
So, I try both. Hiccup. My powers of observation diminish with each sip. Was that a mahogany bar? Was it oak? Oh, no, I forgot to write down the beers on tap. I'm a failure as a human and a reporter. I should be shot.
I can't even spell Harp right. Hiccup.
All jokes aside, my non-alcoholic stature puts me at an advantage. I really feel like the Barfly on the Wall. I can observe the scene as a bit of an outsider.
That's not to say I don't love it. I've learned through my experiences at bars that alcohol is a society-approved Get Out of Jail Free card to being human. We cut so much slack and allow so much openness after a few beers and a shot.
For some reason, it's all good within four cheap-paneled walls and under the glimmer of a lighted Budweiser signs.
That's the magic of bars.
