Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: bar

  • without spilling a thing

    This beautiful waiter was so caring and funny, he stood for five minutes as a very young guest chose his pizza, then I saw him across the room carrying a fully-laden table with quivering wine glasses, all without spilling a thing. He had flourish and verve but was not show-offy. Afterwards I bailed him up by the register. “We think you have a lot of charisma, a lot of character. My partner reckons you have that gleam in your eye – the gleam of stardom. We think you can do anything you want to with your life. You probably already know this. But in case you didn’t – I wanted to tell you.”

    I thought he might think, who are these people and what do they want from me. I made my companion wait outside in the cold afternoon light so it wouldn’t seem cheesy, like a deputation. The waiter’s face warmed and broadened. As soon as I finished speaking, shyness struck, I ran out of the restaurant. He was still looking after me as I rounded the last corner: “Goodbye! Thank you!” I darted upstairs to the street. “Thank you! Have a wonderful weekend!”

    ~ 2013, Brisbane

  • shriveled bulb of god

    shriveled bulb of god

    My stomach feels like a shrivelled bulb after two martinis, no dinner. Whoever invented alcohol is my god: right now, my god. The last time I had one of those (a martini, a god) was in New York, it was summer then, I came out of the studio where we had been working on the album I’d wanted to make since 1999 and whose songs had been written over fifteen years and it was all so exhausting, so wonderful, on the street a man came past me pedalling his cab, a pedal-cab, like the becaks that used to carry us to the markets when I was a child, in old Batavia. “Take me to a rooftop bar,” I said, and the next twenty minutes were alive with light: those huge buildings shooting up into the sky like terraces, palaces, penthouses’ skeletons, every one stippled with windows alight and the warm evening breeze exciting my cheeks. I was crying with joy. New York! New York! Like Berlin she is one of those cities where on the subway, on the bridge, under the trees you would cry out “New York!” and feel like she hears you. So I found a banquette in the scarlet-lit rooftop bar that was rapidly filling with Manhattenites after work and I told the Spanish bar girl, I like olives, so she made me a martini festooned with skewers, each one so laden with green olives it was as though the glass had greenly exploded. I sat and sipped, turned my pages and sipped. After a while the volume level rose and I drew out the headphones I had bought that day, a remote birthday present from my Australian family, began listening back to the work we had made. Tonight was very different but same, same, same. This Russian bar in my leafy street that I’ve passed several dozen times suddenly beckoned, as if it were a painting of a bar that had come to life. I went in. “Can you make me a dirty martini on Bombay Sapphire?” And she did. The bar was tenderly tended by this woman, in 1950s sailor costume, her hair spooled back with nests of pins behind her ears, the luscious soft sound of the ice cubes as she rattled my drink u and down over her shoulder then poured away all the vermouth down the drain. Apart from the dark-haired girl in a beanie studying at the bar I was then her only customer. The dark-haired girl looked up and said to the bartender, This is so hard. I took my drink by its frost stem and the two of us drifted outside, wicker chairs where in a little while the bartender would come round with her basket, lifting aside the daytime posies of flowers and putting in their place red glass candleholders. I watched the street, where nothing passed. In an hour only two cars, ten pedestrians, five bicycles. The sky has changed, it is settled in a grey now and when I mentioned yesterday “you know at this time of year this means it’s grey for another five months,” the woman clearing my coffee cup said, “Ist das nicht furchtbar!” Isn’t that terrible! Well, yes, it really is. In the balcony opposite, on the first floor, three girl-silhouettes were enjoying their cigarettes. I wished I smoked. Occasionally a yellow leaf sauntered down through the still-warm air and landed on the cobblestones, in the garden bed, on the roof of a vehicle. I have never experiences a Fall before: it is what it is: life falls colourful to the ground. The dark cold skeletons reassert their empire. Winter is arriving, time to get out of here.

    ~ from Berlin via New York City, 2013

  • shriveled bulb of god

    shriveled bulb of god

    My stomach feels like a shrivelled bulb after two martinis, no dinner. Whoever invented alcohol is my god: right now, my god. The last time I had one of those (a martini, a god) was in New York, it was summer then, I came out of the studio where we had been working on the album I’d wanted to make since 1999 and whose songs had been written over fifteen years and it was all so exhausting, so wonderful, on the street a man came past me pedalling his cab, a pedal-cab, like the becaks that used to carry us to the markets when I was a child, in old Batavia. “Take me to a rooftop bar,” I said, and the next twenty minutes were alive with light: those huge buildings shooting up into the sky like terraces, palaces, penthouses’ skeletons, every one stippled with windows alight and the warm evening breeze exciting my cheeks. I was crying with joy. New York! New York! Like Berlin she is one of those cities where on the subway, on the bridge, under the trees you would cry out “New York!” and feel like she hears you. So I found a banquette in the scarlet-lit rooftop bar that was rapidly filling with Manhattenites after work and I told the Spanish bar girl, I like olives, so she made me a martini festooned with skewers, each one so laden with green olives it was as though the glass had greenly exploded. I sat and sipped, turned my pages and sipped. After a while the volume level rose and I drew out the headphones I had bought that day, a remote birthday present from my Australian family, began listening back to the work we had made. Tonight was very different but same, same, same. This Russian bar in my leafy street that I’ve passed several dozen times suddenly beckoned, as if it were a painting of a bar that had come to life. I went in. “Can you make me a dirty martini on Bombay Sapphire?” And she did. The bar was tenderly tended by this woman, in 1950s sailor costume, her hair spooled back with nests of pins behind her ears, the luscious soft sound of the ice cubes as she rattled my drink u and down over her shoulder then poured away all the vermouth down the drain. Apart from the dark-haired girl in a beanie studying at the bar I was then her only customer. The dark-haired girl looked up and said to the bartender, This is so hard. I took my drink by its frost stem and the two of us drifted outside, wicker chairs where in a little while the bartender would come round with her basket, lifting aside the daytime posies of flowers and putting in their place red glass candleholders. I watched the street, where nothing passed. In an hour only two cars, ten pedestrians, five bicycles. The sky has changed, it is settled in a grey now and when I mentioned yesterday “you know at this time of year this means it’s grey for another five months,” the woman clearing my coffee cup said, “Ist das nicht furchtbar!” Isn’t that terrible! Well, yes, it really is. In the balcony opposite, on the first floor, three girl-silhouettes were enjoying their cigarettes. I wished I smoked. Occasionally a yellow leaf sauntered down through the still-warm air and landed on the cobblestones, in the garden bed, on the roof of a vehicle. I have never experiences a Fall before: it is what it is: life falls colourful to the ground. The dark cold skeletons reassert their empire. Winter is arriving, time to get out of here.

    ~ from Berlin via New York City, 2013

  • her wild laugh, like birds

    My date took me to a bar that was open late. We sat round a splendid banquette like pashas. At the table one tier down, a girl sitting with her friends unfurled a really strange laugh.

    It was high and sort of squeaky-grunty, very loud: within moments she had drained the whole place of its attention. People began to smile at each other over her head. A drunk guy tottered up to her, plump like a teddy bear, his arms comically held out, a skewed fishermen. The one that got away was this big.

    “Can I have a hug?” he asked the laughing girl, somberly. She couldn’t speak for squeaking but held up one hand for a high five. “Hug,” he said, nodding, insisting, reasonable. Drunk. So she opened up her arms and hugged him over the table. All the while her maniacal laugh was rising over his shoulder like a series of photos of the moon. Her male friend said, “She’s allergic to you.” Her female friend giggled. The drunk guy straightened and slowly smiled and only even slower realised, a bit hurt, a bit taken aback, “Really?”

    “Nah,” said the girl’s friend. “That’s really her laugh.” The girl’s shoulder’s shook and her honking squeals kept coming. By now everyone was laughing: the cute girl wiping the bar counter, the drunk guy’s drunk friends, my companion and I holding our sides, leaking tears. The hugged, drunken guy turned a sloppy somersault on his way back to his mates: an unforeseeable magical item.

    There was quite a lot of moon left in the high sky on the walk home but now these cold clouds have dulled it over. The exhaustion that comes from laughing too much is not like any other form of tiredness that I know of.

  • grappapa

    I found a bar lit solely by candles. To get there I had to pass twenty-five Christmas trees, laid out to die on the stones. A wax-stick notice scribbled in the window of a nearby cafe said, Be at least epic. I found a bar I liked and it took me two passes to work up the courage to go in. The barman was Spanish and wearing a beautiful waistcoat. He brought me a clean glass of water, a fresh white napkin, a glass bowl of pretzels, and an ashtray. He folded his hands and said, Was darf’s sein?

    I said, I’ve had a fight with my boyfriend and we’re living in one room, I’ve got nowhere to go so I came here. No, actually, I said: have you got some kind of grappa, or something? Sure, he said, and poured me a large measure. He swung the bottle between his middlemost fingers, to show me it now rung empty. “That would be it,” he said. Some more Spanish guys came in and the world was lost in embracing. I saw them pull out their tobacco pouches and grabbed my drink and took it right up the back. Couches. Little spindly tables. Candles.

    There was a note written on a napkin framed on the wall. I translated it for myself. Dear Sebastian. Once again we have to find ourselves another bar. This sucks. This is the 85th time! Please let us know when you are opening once more. Next to it a sampler stitched in cursive said, Liquor. I got out my notebook and started to analyse. Last night was his fault, and he’s apologized. This one was probably more to do with me. I guess I overreacted. We neither of us do well with sharing the one room: us and the dog. Two individualists sharing four walls. Baby, I was born to run.

    Last night a quarrel blew up over dinner, a civilized affair involving a bottle of red wine from Spain I’d fetched and some luscious spaghetti he had made. I couldn’t stand it, simply just couldn’t stand it. “What is the matter with you?” I asked him. He went out to drink a beer with his friend, a darling man whose snarling cat has just died. I mean, just in the last week. “Tell him from me I’m sorry, very sorry about the little one. Don’t let anyone tell him it’s only a cat, or he should get another one. Love hurts.” “Ok, I’ll tell him.” When he got back I had just finished my book – Robinson Crusoe – and was disposed to complain. “It starts out so adventuresome then it ends in a ten-page account of his tax debts and financial affairs. Ducat by ducat.” He said, “Didn’t anything exciting happen?” “O yes,” I said, shrugging, “I suppose – he and 12 other people got set upon by 300 wolves in the Pyrenees. But it somehow made dry reading.” He sat down beside me and stroked my hair. I said, “I can’t believe he went into all that detail about his monetary decisions and didn’t mention one word about how it felt when he left his island, where he had lived alone for almost 28 years!” He swung his long legs up beside me and opened his own book with one elegant finger. “I wish I could read you some of this,” he said. “But I think you’ve already read it.” I lay my book on his chest so that it slid into his lap. “Read me some of this,” I said, wheedlingly. I felt so baffled by Berlin. I felt homesick but hardly knew for where. The point of the city began only gradually to seep back into me as I strolled this late evening, my fury settling, looking in the windows of bars. I felt transplanted, my roots snapped and shrivelled. That tiny village of a few hundred souls where we had made our home – unexpectedly, unplanned, sleepily – since just before Christmas was gone. I needed to be held.

    So he took up the book I had offered, a novel from Mills and Boon. Gravely he read me the title and author and all of the details on the inside sleeve page. “Towards the Dawn, by Jane Arbor. First published 1956. This edition 1969.” I curled into his belly and listened there to the secondary rumble of his voice. The soft hesitancy of his European accent that executes perfectly the French towns and train stations and hesitates over words like “battleaxe” (pronounced “battle eggs”). A few pages in the girl alights at an unknown French provincial station. It is late and dark, the station sign almost seems to swing overhead. We had ourselves just recently alighted from a long European rail journey, all the way back to Berlin through the night from his family to our tiny apartment. As she looks blankly round the empty platform, a shadow looms. “‘Mademoiselle finds herself in difficulties?’ he asked.” He stopped reading and we both indulged a romantic shiver. “He….!” he said, just as I said, “He!” I confided, “I can tell you how to tell if this is the hero. If he’s charming and frank with her, he is just an obstacle the hero will remove. But if he is grumpy and has no patience with her, if they strike sparks off one another… that means he’s definitely the one.” “I see,” he said, nodding as if wisely, taking up the little book and slicking back its page. I coiled into the doona and listened and he picked his way over the words written long, long, long before my parents were courting. Another world. Reminder of the true world we’re in. The book has yellowed stiff pages and its cover is printed dark pink. I took up one of my heavy bedtime plaits and dropped it over my eye so that the bed light wouldn’t disturb me. I started falling asleep. As I fell I remembered another gentle man I had loved in the past who once when I could not sleep at all drew barely a sigh when I woke him for the dozenth time, saying patiently, “Alright listen. I’ll roll over and you cling onto me and off we’ll go into sleep together. You ready? Hold on tight! You hangin’ on?”

  • fight for your right to part ways for the night

    My boyfriend and I had a huge fight and I went storming into a bar and ordered a dirty martini. I was wearing a big scarlet onesie with a Danish flag down the back, had jumped out of the car and wasn’t dressed for city life. This blonde girl came up to me, drunk on her swaying heels. “Excuse me. Are you a musician?” I started to laugh. “Is it the ugg boots?”

  • easy cure

    Found this dim-lit, twinkling little bar in an unexpected quarter of town. All seats were empty and the bar owner and his staff were sat around a corral of lounges playing The Cure and playing guitar. I mean The Cure, as in 1979: doomph/slup/doomph/slup/“Accuracy…” We sat down and the barman quickly flipped for the Rolling Stones. Ugh, I said to my companion as we let our eyes run over the heads and shoulders of the weird beers they had on display, these guys are like one-twelfth the band The Cure were. Sir Jagger left his garden party prematurely to drizzle out “Ruby Tuesday” and it felt like flat champagne, the musical excitement level had just dropped to a sad low tide. I remembered how actually the supposedly sweet, supposedly fulsome folk singer Melanie had turned this drear song inside out, stringently, dragging out of its melancholic chorus the brisk, tripping threat “stillummonnamissyou…” Guy who owned the bar came over to talk beers. He was finally able to explain why a German person would never have heard of a “lager.” (“How come now I’m in Australia I never see anyone drinking Fosters?” “ugh. Those are our… Export Beers.”) Lager is like a Pilsner only, he told us, “more lager.” They wanted to know would we like to join them. Meanwhile two ladies had burst in asking “do you do coffees?” then ordered tea. I described to him the album I had made with “a kind of collective” of musos recruited in clubs, on the streets, how part of it was kind of jazz and part of it “a kind of folk.” He took from me a card saying, “How did you know I would be into that stuff?” I lifted my hand to flop round the bare ceiling, the little white-clad tables, the squashy couches, the bare backed beers, the I dunno… “The Cure, baby.”

     

  • three dog night

    three dog night

    A bar in Berlin. I am greeted by a dog. “Na hallöchen! (‘little hello’) Wer bist denn du?” He is wiry and rough-haired and nuzzles my bag, clearly scenting the traces of Another Dog on its old leather. Then said Other Dog bursts in. Writhes himself in an ecstasy into my lap. Now we are three. Dog owner joins us: four. A lanky dude with his lanky red-headed setter lopes into the bar just as the music changes. Red-headed setter slides under our table where all the dog action is at. Berlin, I love how you let dogs into your bars. How a person thirsty but inconclusive and confused can say, Was war denn das? Was du gerade gemacht hast? What was that you just made? And the barkeep will explain. “A very old-fashioned Old Fashioned.” It was so good I sucked all the sugar out of the orange peel. A wreath of contented dogs round my feet lying like drunks. A man who sells Motz (homelessness magazine) came in and made his pleading spiel. Along the bar a line of hipsters sweet and tilt-headed as birds.

  • whiskey sour

    whiskey sour

    Dear God, if there is a god. Save my soul, if I have a soul. Today grew miserable and I cannot say why. It was silly really. Guy in a cafe was rude. So rude! We grew happy again. The way bean stalks grow beans. Who cares about him. Anyway I set out on some work I have put off a long long time. Perusing old photographs for a publishing project. It took ages. Was frustrating. How unhappy I was, way back then. Finally I took off my computer and turned to my host and one-room housemate, who is also the man I like, and we had a blazing dark anchor lightbulb row. It didn’t make any sense. I hated him for being him he hated me for being me. God, we were furious. I felt like hurling things. I wanted to hurt someone. Not injure them but hurt them. I stormed out, fuck you. He had thrown my suitcase ineinander and stowed it by the door, Get Out~! I found a bar a few doors down. Ich was the only customer. Leaving, three hours later, I hugged across the bar the keep and told him, I was so unhappy when I came in here! Yeah, he said. I know. Anyway at first I asked him could he make me something strong, some kind of cocktail. Maybe something old-fashioned. Maybe a whiskey sour, he said. Sure, I said. I had three of those, then four, then five, Kai (the barkeep) showed me the postcards of his uncanny, dreamlike horse portraits, he used to sing in a band but now more photography is the dream. In his bar the lights were low-low and the music song by song. I think of you Brisbane. I think of you all the stupid men I have loved. Evolution, evolution. A third person came in, a “Handwerker” in heating whose name was Robert. I asked, was this the kind of song you like was that. How was it when the Wall came down. God, it’s ridiculous, we loved each other. Then I spilled out onto the street, I paid with all my hackneyed coins some of which are from Denmark and some Swiss and the rest, we promised we would look up one another’s blogs – cos we are modern – and I came home so enlightened with drunkenness that I just embraced my daft would you agh! lovely loving roommate and all is well, a well of wells, we are one Leute and I am here in Berlin the city which almost killed me and das Kiez, the neighbourhood, that saved my life.

    H2O HoL berlin red riding hood

  • a last-minute shimmy of the hips

    a last-minute shimmy of the hips

    Last night was the first evening in Portugal for either of us & we wanted to hear fado. Went for an evening stroll, and lo! on the first hilly corner was a handwritten sign saying, Fado Tonight. And on the next corner! And the next! We’re in the old quarter and fado is a boom industry. Touts walked backwards in front of us, crooning, Just buy one drink & entry’s free. Prices in the fado restaurants are oddly Scandinavian. We kept climbing. Up a side street festooned with colourful laundry, pelargoniums spilling from plastic pots, was a stooping little bar with crumbling steps. The bar owner was affable and had a genial, rubbery face. We ordered dessert. In a shadowy corner two fellows were playing guitar. One of them tilted his curly head back against the wall and began to sing. After his first song there was a modest commotion at the doorway: up there at street level stood a small, gleaming, bald man of 70 or 75 resplendent in a cream suit with wide lapels and the most gorgeous pale blue tie. He came down the steps and conferred with the musicians. Then standing easily with no affectation of manner he closed his eyes and sang. His voice was throaty and weathered, from time to time it throbbed. Caramel rice custard dissolved down my throat like sweet tears. He sang two songs and then vanished with a kind of conqueror’s wave. Then it was the turn of the bar owner, who turned up some canned background music and puffed out his chest. His voice was big and round, his gestures dramatic, he was a natural-born ham. His wife kept serving, stoically. He slid past all the tables and with three pinched fingers took up a trilby hat from the top of the cash register. Setting it on his head he went on singing, oh so roundly, oh so bigly. His wife behind him gestured to a table of Germans “two beers? oh, three? three beers” and as her husband simperingly launched a second song (“I sing just one more,” he said, “one more,” so apologetically that my heart rushed to love him and their hard-working marriage) she glided round the bar with three beers and presented them, carrying a little last-minute shimmy of the hips. He had tears in his eyes when he finished. Because music makes queens of us all.

    H2O HoL lisbon colours