The Secrets of Chambers
K.D. Chambers is a writer/bartender/actress/astrologer living in Venice, CA, who has worked in and around the adult beverage biz for eight years. Plus, she was once expelled from Coronado High School for drinking, making K.D. a natural to write a blog about the in's and out's (mostly outs) of corner-bar boozing.
Never
Trust a Crack Addict
By K.D. Chambers
I've barely arrived for my 7pm shift at Jake’s Place
and Betty Page (the beautiful daytime bartender)
warns me that the crack addict du jour has apparently
gone off the rails. "He seemed cool at first," she
says. Of course he did (Cue Beethoven's 5th). Between
guzzling sessions he seems to have gone outside and
transformed into someone who is more twitching and
distrustful than your average “joe cool.” Crack will
do that.
It’s clear he might – scratch that – WILL fly off the
handle at any minute, and Betty feels bad leaving the
dirty work to me in the event his demons decide that
the c-break wasn't enough to prevent a time-release
rageball in my direction. So she goes over to
where he's twitching and "politely" tells him that
it's just not a good idea that he has anything more
to drink at Jake’s. I can't help but think:
what if we were really honest to the people we cut
off? "Sir, we're afraid of you." How can you politely
tell a grown man he's finished with that beer he's
about to enjoy? Because in his mind, he's just fine.
He's having a good ol' roil at the neigborhood
pub, sniffin' some of the good shit and coming back
in for some revelry with other bar lovers. It's
always a downer to burst someone's bubble even if
it's for our own self-preservation. I mean he
doesn't know he
might kill us. It's not like he's planning
on
shooting liquid capsules of hot spit in my face if
we, say, cut him off somewhere down the line. But
we've seen enough cases to know when to cut our
losses. And the signs are everywhere.
His erratic behavior has even elicited a
commiserative response from Gay Stearns. "I have more
and more compassion for what you guys have to deal
with." Thanks Stearns. Of course I'd like to follow
that comment with the question "then why don't you
stop conducting price comparisons and just pay your
tab...please?" But I don't. I suck that little
dribble of compassion into my heart and continue to
deal. Betty successfully cuts the man off with a
wince-inducing dump of his beer into the slop bin and
when he protests that we owe him for the beer, she
reminds him that the beer was bought for him and
therefore we owe him nothing. He gargles and haws a
bit making no real claim to his dissolved ego and
makes a zig zag out of the bar and into the street
whence he came. It's 7:15.
