"Anybody can be a non drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth.” (Henry Chinaski, Barfly)

Bar culture.

It’s a trend that will probably (hopefully) never go out of fashion, if only for the tax revenue.

I love working in bars.

It gives me a buzz, almost akin to that of drinking in bars.

I’m also a regular barfly.

According to Wikipedia, a barfly is ‘a person who spends a significant amount of time at a bar’: a tad vague for such a mixed bag.  It’s not that we ‘barflies’ are particularly fickle – if anything we are predisposed to routine - but in my experience barflies are of varying temperament, ranging from the pleasant or amusing, to desperate and even squalid. And although barflies are frequently bad-mannered and even belligerent, it’s the chatty ones you should be most wary of.  Too often I have found myself in the uncomfortable and irrevocable scenario on the other side of the bar, when a persistent barfly has detained me against my will for an entire shift.

The latest example of such an incident began as jovial banter with an ageing ‘Don Juan’ type bouncing compliments off the end of the bar. He was making a customary visit to confirm some dates for a Salsa class he organises in the basement, and stopped for a ‘quick half’. Unfortunately I was running the bar solo, and the conversation moved swiftly onto the subject of the dangers of a young lady working alone in a late night drinking hole, and three rounds (four hours) later he was prying into my romantic life and showing me pictures of his kids.

I should have seen it coming.

Having worked in a number of similar establishments, as well as managing an ‘erotic’ boutique, I was well accustomed to the furtive discourse of lonely, sexually impoverished men. I reasoned that I must have become unpracticed in the fourteen months since changing profession, but I silently resolved to offset my blunder with an impervious declaration that No: I would not take his number. Nor did I have any desire to accompany him on a date, I insisted, and I returned the piece of paper he had keenly placed by my drink, pressing down firmly as I slid it back across the bar.

Thankfully not all barflies are of the same ilk, although they do tend to fit into one of several generic categories. Another example is what I’ll call the ‘action-oriented’ (socially impotent) barfly, who insists upon adapting their immediate environment to meet individual requirements – primarily by making an artist/ album/ song request, or by recommending an alternative range of ales - but whose tenacity should be respected even if their objections are bigoted, and their taste in music objectionable.

On the brighter side there are the young lovers that keep the bar warm on a Wednesday night, the kind that speak in rhapsody and order a shooter with every round, finally leaving at closing time in fits of laughter. The bar still carries their voices, and their empty shot glasses are stacked on the bar so that the lip of each glass interlocks, emblematic of the barflies’ embrace.

The ultimate barfly – and my personal favourite - has to be the Bukowskian drunk who downs drink after drink, occasionally bothering the bartender with a canny (unwanted) remark or retort. Like Bukowski’s alias Henry Chinaski, he drinks, laughs, and talks from the gut, and makes no apologies for it. At once dignified and depraved, his credo is to simply endure.

By Amanda Carey/MOLI