I suspect the hotel may be on fire. At any rate, room service doesn’t respond and I’ve been reduced to collecting rainwater outside the one window I can pry open–the gap is too narrow for me to make an escape through, though.
My whole life revolves around beverages. I’m not sure how this happened, or if this is a writer thing, since writers have been stereotyped as hopeless alcoholics whose talents run proportional to their liquor intake. All I know is that my days are loose chunks of time defined by what I’m drinking at the moment. The fact that many of these beverages are alcoholic in nature is just coincidence, don’t you think? Right? Hello?
In the morning, it’s Our God Coffee. I’d like to be one of those mysterious, intellectual writer types who drinks obscure Moroccan drinks whilst sitting on their veranda, thinking deeply, but the fact is I have the palate of a junkyard dog. Just about everything in the food and beverage world pleases me, and the subtle differences of quality people talk about elude me. I’ve never met a bottle of wine I didn’t like, and the while I can’t quite say the same thing about coffee–there is bad coffee in the world, Virginia, and I’ve had it–I am still pretty easy about coffee. The only real rule is, no Starbucks. I have nothing particularly against Starbucks as an evil corporation sucking the life out of the world, they can oppress the workers and rip off the consumer all they want. No, it’s their terrible, over-roasted coffee that offends me. That shit could be used to remove paint.
So where do I get my coffee? I live near and work in Manhattan, fans, which means one thing: Coffee Carts run by Arab Men. Used to be $1 a cup for a large, now the evil of inflation has raised it to $1.25. It’s the best damn coffee in the universe, bar none.
The cart has been run by a series of Arabic men for years. They tend to work there for a few years and then disappear, without explanation. I assume there is a steady stream of family and friends coming into this country, getting jobs in the coffee cart empire, and then moving on when they’re established, but maybe it’s just the sort of job you can only take for so long before you go mad.
After coffee, nothing much happens for a very long time, and then there’s lunch. At lunch, I start working on a huge bottle of water. Now, I feel like a chump buying bottled water, I do. Water is water–at home I drink it from the tap, without any filters, and generally speaking I’m easy about the water. But any time I’ve tried to avoid buying the bottles, I’ve been frustrated, most probably by my weak brain and spineless tendencies. The water out of the tap at my office is deadly–when I did drink it for a week or so, I got sick every single day. Not sick enough to go home and call for lawyers in order to make my will, but nauseous nonetheless, and nothing makes a shitty day spent at work worse than nausea. Unless it’s suddenly realizing all that snickering talk around the water cooler is about you. So I’ve been stuck with bottled water, like a sucker.
After work, there is a beer when I get home–nothing heals like an ice cold beer, my beautiful babies. Whenever there is no beer in the icebox because of my incompetence, there are tears and recriminations, breast-beating and despair. Because I am an American, I’ve been drinking Yuengling. I completely agree with Homer Simpson, who once said of beer (well, he was actually talking about women, but he was using beer as a metaphor) “They smell good, they look good, you’d step over your own mother just to get one! But you can’t stop at one.”
Ahem. I must stop here before my wife or agent has me forcibly committed to a 12-step program.
After dinner, there’s more water. Hoboken water! Best water in the world. Of course, I’ve never been anywhere, so Hoboken water might suck for all I know. I mean, no one is pumping water out of Hoboken and bottling it, are they? Then again, from what I hear about bottled water, maybe they are.
Later, before bed, it’s a glass of good whiskey. I’d like to say that I sit and think deeply on the world’s problems while sipping some good 40-year old Scotch, but there’s only one thing true about that statement: I am sitting. The Scotch is usually a little younger, and my thoughts generally focus on baseball scores and whatever is itching me that evening. Now you know, and you are no better for it. Maybe I should maintain a little more mystery on this site.
I don’t remember what my point was going to be. So I will simply stop typing, before making things worse. Bon soir, people!