CHAPTER 1
Finding a good bar is like finding a good barber or an honest mechanic. You have to search around for awhile. You’ll have take a lot of crap and fork over your money with a smile, more times than you’ll ever care to admit. And afterward you’ll always end up feeling like you just shared your first night in a prison cell with some violent bull dyke three times your size. But when you finally find it…when you finally walk into that room that just makes you smile. That’s when you’ve made it.
That my friend, is when you’ll drink with impunity. These are the type of places where you’ll start out by making out with some foreign chick. Then later in the evening find yourself in the middle of an argument with an ex Raiders linebacker for some unknown reason and somehow always end up teleporting to a parking lot with the messy leftovers of two tacos all over your shirt.
Raul “Grande” Lopez knew about those type of bars. Hell, he owned one of those type of bars. Probably the best one in Old Downtown. He had spent most of his younger days watching his father drink himself to a bitter and early grave and was now spending the latter years watching complete strangers do the same. Life is funny like that sometimes. You move something here, you change something there and you think you’ve escaped your worst fear, but it turns out you’ve done nothing but make a nice little nest for it . In his 51 years Grande had heard and seen just about everything. He could tell you stories you wouldn’t believe. There was the time where some blond girl got carried away and after smashing her glass into someone’s head she fended off the bouncers with a pool stick. Grande has the pictures to prove it, which are still taped to the side of the register. He’ll tell you how once, during an argument, one guy sprinted across the bar, lumped into the air and knocked the other out with a kick to the throat. At another instance, some poor sap had been drinking heavily and had spent most of the night dancing and cuddling with this girl, all of a sudden the guy scrambles to the bar asks for a double shot, gulps it down then relates that the girl turned out to have been a guy. So when Damaz Sanchez showed up that particular night out of breath and bleeding lightly from the nose, his biggest question was “so did you beat his ***?”
“Let me a have shot of Sauza gold and a bud light”
The bartender immediately complied with the shot and was already reaching for the beer. Damaz quickly gulped it and received his bottle of light. “Thanks, Big”
The old man behind the counter was a barrel chested mammoth with hands that were as limber in their age as they were massive. He had a wide forehead, a thick mustache and black, graying hair which was still full and always gracefully combed back. His eyes were centered close together in the fashion of most of all of Gods natural predators. And in the corner of both were enough wrinkles to tell you he was a man who subscribed to Dean martin’s idea that if you couldn’t laugh anymore then you might as well dig a hole and have them throw dirt on you. He was known by most of the population on this side of the bridge simply as “Grande” or “Big” He was a man who didn’t actually belong in Old Dowtown but could never actually find a good enough reason to move out.
“So?”
“Excuse me?” Damaz was startled out of his trance by the question. He took a sip out of his beer.
“did you beat his ***?”
“What? Oh,” he shook his head as if clearing out the spider webs. “Uh yeah, sure did.” for the first time in the night he smiled.In the mood for a short intro on an alcoholic?I think the %26quot;foreign chick%26quot; remark is fine because it's in context. This is a story about a drunk, after all. It wouldn't very well fit the tone if he said %26quot;proper lady%26quot; now, would it?
Very well-written and edgy (I'll disregard the formatting because this is yahoo). I like it. Write some more.In the mood for a short intro on an alcoholic?OK... thanks.In the mood for a short intro on an alcoholic?not too bad. early on its spoilt by saying foreign chick. always try and avoid calling women chicks unless its someone speaking and its the way they speak. but you write well.
please answer mine
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/ind…
