My New Life

  I worked in a bar longer than I thought I would. I started at the bottom - which meant standing out front - checking licenses and carrying televisions inside and getting people out of the bar when they needed to leave. After a few months I moved inside and washed glasses that I would then go around and pick up and wash again. When the glasses where clean and stocked I cut limes, took out the trash, mopped up vomit in the bathroom and wiped out ashtrays until my hands stunk like cigarettes. Almost a year ago I was promoted to bartender. This meant pouring the booze while somebody else broke up the fights and somebody else cut the limes. The job was to make drinks and talk to the people who drank them and I became good enough at both to support myself and pay off a debt and even save a little. But the money stopped being enough of a reason eventually; alcohol makes everybody ugly if you give them enough. And I got tired of hating people.

  The bar isn’t a bad deal. You’re making thirty, forty, fifty, sometimes sixty dollars an hour and no place else that’s hiring pays like that. It has those moments – every job does – like when a guy waves money in your face and asks if you’re ever going to take his order and then when you tell him how much it costs, complains you short-poured him. That’s when you behave like you never would have before you started this life and so you stop what you’re doing and look him right in the face and tell him that he can pay for the drink or he can get the fuck out and if he doesn’t feel like doing either then you’d be more than happy to come around to that side of the bar and discuss it further. You don’t say it like that always, though you wish you did. But you say something close, only louder, and the night goes on.

  On the drive home, when the highway is dark and strangely empty and you’re tired from ten hours on your feet, you wonder if you might be better off working in a cubicle in some generic office building or someplace where you never have to listen to that music or talk to people again.

  The danger is that you will never leave. Not because the job is what you want but because it’s all you have. So you drive home tired and you wake up the following morning and the anger you went to bed with is gone but the money isn’t so you show up the next night and the next and the next. Everyone does.

  I searched half-heartedly for other work. The market is an easy thing to blame, so I tried that for a while. And it’s not hard to get distracted.

  Things changed at the bar. Cameras were installed so we could be monitored at all times. Our allowance to buy drinks was cut from six to five and then to three and then two. We were continually sent e-mails imploring us to step up, to stay on edge, to care more. I did my best to do none. My favourite message was the one that specified the chain of command, starting with the owner at the top and beneath the owner’s name was an arrow pointing downwards and then the general manager’s name and so on. None of our names were on there. We were all bar staff. I thought about sending management an e-mail reminding that we all worked in a bar, but someone talked me out of it. It was probably for the best.

  I submitted online applications for anything that sounded interesting. More applications than I can count. I heard back from one and they said my education and experience did not fulfil their qualifications. I sent them a thank you e-mail, which they did not respond to. It probably didn’t meet their thank-you-response qualifications.

   Then, with Dad’s guidance, things started happening. People responded to Peter’s son. Some even called. Within a matter of weeks, I got an offer for a writing job that paid better than the bar.

   An hour after I’d accepted the new job, I had to work my last shift at the bar. I can’t describe to you what was in my heart and head and stomach that night. At best it would be an incomplete list, partly because I don’t know how to make you feel the emptiness of those cold, slow nights.
  

   Now I am a writer. A real one. I no longer have to spit out lines about bartending allowing me to “pay for my writing habit” and all that. I wake up at seven and go to bed at eleven and in between I write and edit and read things that interest and sharpen me and when I’m taking a break I normally abuse Dad’s offer to help me if I need it or I give Kristin a hard time about her shopping habits.

   A couple nights ago, after I’d finished writing for the day, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. I’d done this so many nights before except those nights I’d look up and wonder how the hell this was all going to play out. I didn’t see much then other than closed doors that stayed closed for people like me. I saw the life I wanted to lead but no way to lead it.

  It was that same ceiling I stared at a few nights ago. To my left was a beautiful girl who is sweet and wonderful and makes my life better just because of who she is and the way she looks at me and how she laughs at my jokes. I was proud as I lay there; as proud as I can remember being. This is what I would do if I could do anything.

  There is more down the road. I will sell a screenplay because I must pick up the phone and call my parents and after they say hello I am going to just say “I did it”. I simply must do that. There is a nice house with a 50m pool in the back and I’m going to swim laps with my Dad and my brother and anyone else in the family who feels like swimming and then I’ll cook a barbecue (Dad and Jim have already done their fair share) and beneath the stars we can end the night with wine and the conversations we always have. There’s a hill in the botanic gardens I must run up again, though I will keep running after I’ve reached the top. I will keep running until my legs hurt and then hope for that tropical rain to cover everything, even me. Then I will run a little longer and take in that humid air and drag myself back home and then go down by the river and eat ribs. A cold draft in Dublin awaits, as long as it poured in a small bar that is warm and cosy. Reading in a hammock by the water sounds nice, too, especially if I can share it with a cute blonde.

  It is exciting to think this way; where hammocks and barbecues feel more possible than ever; where I am a writer - a paid one - after trying to be for seven years; where I look at the ceiling because I am excited, not because I am too worried to fall asleep.

  I would not have made it without the people I love. As they have done before, though under very different circumstances, they were a reason to not stop. They were much more, of course, but I can’t explain that either.