Cheat

Drunk at midnight in Ginza doesn’t have the same delicious feeling that drunk at three in the afternoon in Juarez has. Drunk in Ginza feels forced, desperate. Drunk in Ginza feels like you’re paying so you should have a good time, although you’re not, which makes it feel like you’re paying too much. You’re being cheated.

In Juarez, the bar was tiled with tiny aqua blue tiles, and the mirror behind the bar was so old that its silver backing was beginning to tarnish. The bartender cut limes in half and squeezed the juice from the halves into glasses and added contreau and then tequila and then he shook and strained it into glasses of ice and then he passed the glasses and passed the glasses and passed the glasses across the bar until the world only made sense if you were half-on half-off your barstool, hanging onto the bar with both hands while everything spun first one direction then spun the other direction and you couldn’t make it stop and you couldn’t change directions. The blue tiled bar had a spit trench at the foot, also tiled in the same aqua blue tiles, and water ran there and you could try to spit into it while you were hanging onto the bar, but mostly your measly mouthful of spittle would land on your shoe and the bartender wouldn’t try to hide that he was laughing at you.

In Juarez, the toilet was a white plastic five-gallon bucket behind a curtain in the corner and you passed it up then, though these days you wouldn’t. These days you squat over porcelain holes while a recording plays the sound of flushing to hide the sound of your urine hitting the water.

These days drunk is beer drunk, a bloated, too forced kind of drunk and the company you keep jokes about sex and this is because their humor can’t reach any higher. This could be the language barrier, but you doubt it. This is the company you keep now.

While they drink, everyone changes seats--not because they each want a chance to pet the foreigners, but because this is what they do here. Petting the foreigners is incidental, a treat. It’s a treat for them and you endure it with a smile. These are the people who pay your way here and you could feel something about that, but there’s no reason to bother.

All day long. You. Speak. English. Like. This. And. And. You. Want. You. Want. To. Have. A. Conversation. You. Want. To. Talk. About. Something. Im. Something. Important. And. Instead. You. Force. Laughter. You. Laugh. And you let yourself be pet by all the help--and, as always, you have to be really drunk before you'll let strangers touch you--because they think they know who you are already and that knowledge is wrong but not easy to fix.

Food comes and you eat and beer comes and you drink and the bar is dark and it is midnight and you’ve missed your last train for more money than fun.

You think: Your heroes drank.

Hemingway drank and sweated it out in the boxing ring the next day, going round after round with his drinking buddies. Hemingway drank so that he dulled the edge of a too keen perception. You haven’t the need to drink for this reason.

Garcia Marquez drank in brothels and cafes that never closed and he argued poetry and literature and though he came at dawn home penniless, he never felt cheated.

You feel cheated.