Days Volume Two

* A lesson, a gesture, a story, a philosophy, an attitude—I took something from every man in Steve's bar. I was a master at “identity theft” when that crime was more benign. I became sarcastic like Cager, melodramatic like Uncle Charlie, a roughneck like Joey D. I strived to be solid like Bob the Cop, cool like Colt, and to rationalize my rage by telling myself that it was no worse than the righteous wrath of Smelly. Eventually I applied the mimicry I'd learned at Dickens to those I met outside the bar—friends, lovers, parents, bosses, even strangers. The bar fostered in me the habit of turning each person who crossed my path into a mentor, or a character, and I credit the bar, and blame it, for my becoming a reflection, or a refraction, of them all. Every regular at Steve's bar was fond of metaphors. One old bourbon drinker told me that a man's life is all a matter of mountains and caves—mountains we must climb, caves where we hide when we can't face our mountains.

* "We're in a bit of a pickle here, boy," Drew said. "Maybe you should stop drinking." "Maybe you should start," Perry said. "I killed my best friend, cut off my own junk, and I'm some kind of psychic call-in line for these things. And you? Dude, you're dropping bombs in America. You're in charge of fighting honest-to-God aliens. Ask me, that's a pretty good reason for a snort or three." Perry held out the bottle. Drew looked at the nasty scar on Perry's left forearm. War scars, that's what Perry had. Drew accepted the bottle. The kid was right. Drew took a long swig. The bourbon tang was a welcome sensation, a friendly memory of distant times when he could just have a drink and relax. He knocked back another long pull... Scott Sigler, Contagion. Apart from some vague notion of the universe as an infinite and amazing place, like most people, he had no real knowledge or even desire for knowledge of God or a higher power

* I used to say I'd found in Steve's bar the fathers I needed, but this wasn't quite right. At some point the bar itself became my father, its dozens of men melding into one enormous male eye looking over my shoulder, providing that needed alternative to my mother, that Y chromosome to her X. My mother didn't know she was competing with the men of the bar, and the men didn't know they were vying with her. They all assumed that they were on the same page, because they all shared one antiquated idea about manhood. My mother and the men believed that being a good man is an art, and being a bad man is a tragedy, for the world as much as for those who depend on the tragic man in question. Though my mother first introduced me to this idea, Steve's bar was where I saw its truth demonstrated daily. Steve's bar attracted all kinds of women, a stunning array, but as a boy I noticed only its improbable assortment of good and bad men. Wandering freely among this unlikel

* Everyone has a holy place, a refuge, where their heart is purer, their mind clearer, where they feel closer to God or love or truth or whatever it is they happen to worship. For better or worse my holy place was Steve's bar. And because I found it in my youth, the bar was that much more sacred, its image clouded by that special reverence children accord those places where they feel safe. Others might feel this way about a classroom or playground, a theater or church, a laboratory or library or stadium. Even a home. But none of these places claimed me. We exalt what is at hand. Had I grown up beside a river or an ocean, some natural avenue of self-discovery and escape, I might have mythologized it. Instead I grew up 142 steps from a glorious old American tavern, and that has made all the difference. I didn't spend every waking minute in the bar. I went into the world, worked and failed, fell in love, played the fool, had my heart broken and my threshold tested. But because of

* Violent conflict, not confinded to the home and hearth, spills out onto the streets. Moreover, I discovered that British cities such as my own even had torture chambers: run not by the government, as in dictatorships, but by those representatives of slum enterprise, the drug dealers. Young men and women in debt to drug dealers are kidnapped, taken to the torture chambers, tied to beds, and beaten or whipped. Of compunction there is none - only a residual fear of going too far. Perhaps the most alarming feature of this low-level but endemic evil, the one that brings it close to the conception of original sin, is that it is unforced and spontaneous. No one requires people to commit in. In the worst dictatorships, some of the evil that ordinary men and women do, they do out of fear of not committing it. Theodore Dalrymple. And so it goes, the time sequences, the flash floods, the aching hearts. If all was well he would not be here, in this place, begging forgiveness. He felt so ashamed

* I had the choice to do something more pleasing if I had wished, and I was paid, if not munificently, at least adequately. I chose the disagreeable neighbourhood in which I practiced because, medically speaking, the poor are more interesting, at least to me, than the rich; their pathology is more florid, their need for attention greater. Their dilemmas, if cruder, seem to me more compelling, nearer to the fundamentals of human existence. No doubt I also felt my services would be more valuable there: in other words, that I had some kind of duty to perform. Perhaps for that reason, like the prisoner on his release, I feel I have paid my debt to society. Certainly the work has taken a toll on me, and it is time to do something else. Someone else can do battle with the metastasizing social pathology of Great Britain while I lead a life aesthetically more pleasing to me. Theodore Dalrymple. There were so many days flying by, he was shocked at the way his life had disappeared. Where were al

* My work has caused me to become perhaps unhealthily preoccupied with the problem of evil. Why do people commit evil? What conditions allow it to flourish? How is it best prevented and, when necessary, suppressed? Each time I listen to a patient recounting the cruelty to which he or she has been subjected, or has committed (and I have listened to several such patients every day for fourteen years), these questions revolve endlessly in my mind. Theodore Dalrymple. There were fateful moments. There was no excuse. He found himself in situations he would never have believed, fateful days cursed by God. The last time he overdosed was the worst of them all. The children were crying in the lounge room, shocked and scared their beloved dad had passed out, again, not understanding what was going on. Suzy had to go next door to ring the ambulance, again, because the phone had been cut off, again. And sadness crept through every bone of his body, every second of his life, permeated his every las

* Like love affairs, bars depend on a delicate mix of timing, chemistry, lighting, luck and--maybe above all--generosity. From the start Steve declared that no one at Dickens would feel slighted. His burgers would be three-inch souffl_s of filet mignon, his closing time would be negotiable, no matter what the law said, and his bartenders would give an extra--extra--long pour. A standard drink at Dickens would be a double anywhere else. A double would leave you cross-eyed. A triple would “cream your spinach,” according to my mother's younger brother, my Uncle Charlie, the first bartender Steve ever hired. A true son of Manhasset, Steve believed in booze. Everything he was, he owed to booze. His father, a Heineken distributor, died and left Steve a small fortune when he was young. Steve's daughter was named Brandy, his speedboat was named Dipsomania, and his face, after years of homeric drinking, was that telltale shade of scarlet. He saw himself as a Pied Piper of Alcohol, and t