Immortality

So listen, I'm in this pub. This real seedy place. You know the type
of place I'm talking about. Red leather chairs and red leather
customers. Must have been almost twenty year ago now cos' I was my late
teens, if memory serves me correct. I had got lost from my mates
somehow and ended up getting drunk in this dodgy bar in the middle of
nowhere. Anyway, there's no-one else in the place apart from me of
course, the barman and some old cunt, who's even more drunk than I
was.
So, I'm on a mission. Sitting there trying to be the most drunkest
person on the planet that night. Working my way along a row of bottles
on the shelf behind the bar. As you do. Left to right. Taking a shot
from each bottle. As good a way as any to get completely blitzed out my
head, don't you think?. It was pretty hard going though because I'd
already had a bucketful before I arrived at that pub and about three
quarters of the way along the shelf, I'm taking a shot of this
disgusting blue Portuguese stuff and to be truthful with you, I was
starting to feel the pace.
So anyway this old guy a couple of stools along, turns to me and says
'Hey, just take it easy son, ye'll be doing yersel' some right damage
drinkin' that stuff' So I look over at him the way you do when you're
in your late teens and say, 'Don't worry about me, auld yin, I'm
immortal' The old man just smiles before whispering back ,'Yeah, but
for how long'?
The only reason I mention it was because I recently found myself back
in that same pub. Totally by accident. It was that kind of place. You
could only find it by accident.
So I go inside and nothing's changed. I mean absolutely fucking
nothing. Except the barman, who was now a barmaid if you get my
meaning. She's a kind of hard looking barmaid as it happens, as you'd
expect in a hard looking place, I suppose. She's got one of these
permanent 'Don't even think about it' expressions on her face, one of
these self-preservation expressions. You must know the type of bird I
mean. Just another pussy trying to be a tom. In reality the most
dangerous thing about her was her perfume. Anyway, the pub itself is
just the same. Still a shady lights and shady customers kind of
place.
So I order a beer, sit down and remember the first time I'd been there
on that long lost night years before. I look at the shelf, still there,
with all the multi- coloured bottles on it. I guess it had all these
foreign drinks because the pub was situated near the docks, who knows.
That first night, by the way, I didn't make it to the end of the shelf.
I think I fell off just after drinking some green French crap.
So nothing had changed. Except me, perhaps. I liked to think of myself
as being a little wiser than I was in my younger years. As you do. Then
I realized I was there for the very same reason I had been there all
those years before. To get completely and utterly drunk. In that
respect nothing had changed. Except I was no longer under the youthful
illusion of being a happy drunk. Through life and experience I had lost
the immortality of youth. And I got to thinking, that old guy was right
in his own way, immortality doesn't last for ever. Now I was just a
drunk just like everyone else. Trying be oblivious to consciousness,
thought and memory. Trying to forget there was a yesterday and a
tomorrow. Drinking to forget I was a drunk.
So anyway, I'm sitting there, in this bar remembering being there years
before and I'm thinking maybe I didn't arrive there by accident after
all. As a matter of fact maybe it was the opposite. See, for the
record, my dad was an alcoholic. He probably drank in this very same
pub, got drunk in this very same pub just like I'm doing. I mean that's
what they say isn't it. That's it in the genes. That it's hereditary
and all that. See, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that before
I thought this was the kind of bar you could only find by accident.
Sitting on that very same bar stool years later, I got to thinking.