"Sleepless" Chapter 1 "Real Thing"
The basses on the speakers of the SUV were thudding power behind the punches of the ever-familiar lyrics presented in a newer, stranger aura.
“But can I keep it all together? Waiting for the Real Thing?”
“Can I keep it all together?”
“Waiting for the real…”
“The Real Thing?”
“The Real Thing?”
“The Real Thing?”
“The Real Thing?”
Those lyrics meant near trauma-inducing levels of speed.
Those lyrics meant opening up the craft cocktail bar that took an hour and a half to open within the space of half an hour.
Those lyrics meant all systems go, high presence, high intensity, tireless output for eighteen hours.
Those lyrics meant preparation for an onslaught I never wanted to end.
The onslaught from the back-breaking barbell.
The onslaught from the Frenchman shouting at me to kick the pads harder and faster despite overwhelming exhaustion.
The onslaught of the sprints down the road.
The onslaught from the customers demanding the old fashioneds, manhattans, and pisco sours between the hockey crowd rushes, rushing my being for 12 jack and cokes in one stroke.
Speed. Speed. Speed.
The onslaught had to continue in the silence, in the absence of these demanding externals.
I never wanted to live any other way.
There was praise in this way of life.
There was joy in this way of life.
There was growth in this way of life.
There was power in this way of life.
Keeping the freight train moving with any fuel necessary.
Açaí Bowls.
Sugar-free Rockstars.
Two pounds of lamb souvlaki.
Four fit crunch bars.
Whatever it took.
“Don’t ask me to stop.”
“I don’t want to stop.”
I had cultivated a being that would destroy any task.
I knew I was over-training.
I knew I was living hard.
I knew I was living fast.
I didn’t care if I went out at forty.
I welcomed it even.
“Small price to pay for every moment being as real as real can be.”
Violently disciplined.
Violently Christian.
Violently celibate.
Violently violent.
Bring me to that heroic death, knowing I lived like David Goggins, St. Christopher, Robert Whittaker, Henry Rollins, Jocko Willink, and St. George.
Let me taste my blood in my mouth.
Let me feel those killing blows on the ropes while I snatch a final victory to die in.
Let me feel that moment when I realize this is the final fight, and I can sacrifice myself with the most furious display of combat.
I could be sleep-deprived, fasted, and clean of any caffeine, but if I were to hear those four chords that start that anthem, that battle call, that kill-switch, I’d be ready to fight to the death.
But those lyrics were not brought to me with that daring guitar this time around.
Those lyrics were brought to be me with the kick and snare combination that was native to house and dubstep, the dance music that ruled the American mainstream a decade ago but remained a cult-favorite among the London dance elite.
Those lyrics were brought to me in a gargantuan, wide-open, echoing space. Those lyrics could actually be heard in a frozen chamber outside the confines of time and space itself all while the sound of some melodic kind of static danced in the corner in ecstasy.
“Can I keep it all together? Waiting for the real thing?”
“Can I keep it all together? Waiting for the real? The Real Thing?”
The song concluded after two and a half minutes that jaggedly jabbed my heart like an ice pick. “The Real Thing,” by Baltimore hardcore punk outfit, Turnstile, remixed by London DJ, Mall Grab.
“That was so good,” I confessed.
“No it wasn’t, it was okay,” refuted Darren.
“Shut the fuck up, that was amazing,” I retorted.
Darren was the contrarian of the group to say the very least. Darren had a strange dichotomy that dripped from his lips with every word: viscerally vocal about his personal beliefs both big and small yet chained to post-modern narratives about his race and gender. If you asked me, I thought he was existing in a sadly backwards way.
But me, Darren, and Jane were driving a short trip to Albany, the town two towns North of Oakland. The comedic part of the initial proposition of the trip was the nonchalant and cavalier sales pitch of Albany simply being the town just two towns over. Darren moaned that he lived in East Oakland, which for those who know Oakland is really the imposing swath of the town that’s Southeast and directly South of Lake Merritt. Getting to Albany would require getting around the lake, driving through the entirety of downtown and North Oakland as well as the entire city of Berkeley and its narrow roads congested with University of California students and hippy “Berkeley Bowl” farmers market shoppers. Darren hated Berkeley with every fiber of his being, and it was almost concerning to witness a 25 year old hate anything with such an essence resembling a curmudgeonly elderly man. Yet Jane and I convinced him to be the designated driver through the depths of Oakland and the gauntlet of Berkeley to get to Albany, the safer sleepier town, home to the pair of alcoholic institutions we had heard so much about from our friends in the industry who were truly “in the know.”
The “Hotsy Totsy Club” and “Club Mallard” are two bars that sit across the street from each other on a major boulevard in the Western part of town.
Both bars were stops on the "Fernet Branca- East Bay Fernet Passport” challenge.
The bar world has a habit of doing this with alcohol brought to folks by lucrative sponsors: make bartending one giant, sexy, hipster, “behind the scenes,” lore-filled, endless club and party.
“The Tales of the Cocktail” is the domestic Cajun bartending super party located in New Orleans where thousands of bartenders commune for two weeks for prestigious award ceremonies for the best cocktail bars both domestically and internationally and a gigantic, drunken “rager” that even makes a debaucherous town like “NOLA” nervous.
Fernet Branca is the name in the bar world synonymous with all the parties you don’t need to travel for, the greatest of which is the “Barback Games” held in every major bar city in the country. The Barback Games is the most hyperbolic display of bartender culture that sees the best barbacks in each metro compete in a series of challenges that involve sprinting, padded violence, and bottle recognition. This is surrounded by a night time festival rooted in indulgence involving drinking, shooting Fernet shots, drinking Fernet cocktails, drinking games, food trucks, a concert, and drinking a final, ceremonial shot of Fernet.
To be asked by a bartender if you want to take a shot of Fernet Branca with them is to receive the salute, handshake, and seal of approval from him.
If you’re a patron, it means you’re not insufferable, carry a good conversation, don’t rush the bartender like a classless Wall Street yuppie nouveau riche trying to impress old money, and just know how to carry yourself in a place that is both kind and aggressive.
If you’re a bartender, it means you’re being recognized as one of the tribe. It means you’re not just someone who shares the same profession but shares the same sensibility and understanding of the way the hustle and game works. It means you can talk shop and talk culture to his liking. It’s far more preferential on the bartender’s part as opposed to the pass/fail grading system of the patron.
The classic dive bars will probably have you shoot Jameson, Evan Williams, or even Jack Daniel’s for a “cheeky,” and the clubs tend to gravitate towards tequila. But the poison of the craft bars and the industry bars, the bars where bartenders go is almost always Fernet Branca.
Mezcal rides the trendy factor into the traditions of bars in San Francisco and New York, but even there, Fernet Branca reigns supreme.
This is so much the case, that bartenders will participate in preposterous, vaudevillian activities and challenges to obtain a Fernet coin.
The “legend” goes that if one bartender knows that another bartender has a Fernet coin and bartender A “challenges” bartender B, bartender B needs to present his Fernet coin. If bartender B does not have said coin, he owes bartender A a shot of Fernet Branca. If bartender B does indeed have his coin, bartender A owes bartender B a shot of Fernet Branca.
This challenge is usually met with one of two responses.
Response A is to engage in the challenge.
Response B is a statement like, “oh fuck off,” or “go fuck yourself.” Word-smithing at its finest.
Response B is the response of the old school, tougher breed of bartenders who came up through dive bars and seedy clubs before finding themselves behind cocktail cockpits of fine strainers and rose gold bar spoons characteristic of craft bars.
“Yeah, I do cocktails now, but I’m not a fucking dork.”
Response A is the response of someone who has decided that bartending is his personality. He likely sports suspenders, wide-brimmed hats, holsters, denim aprons, and more pins on those aprons than empty space.
Of these folks is the poser who wants to look good while not pushing himself to be the best he can be in his profession but coasting in a slothful drunken way while feeling important.
But there are a minority group of these “response A” brethren who can back all their precious peacocking with the skill that should go with it. These bartenders can make you 600 different cocktails without hesitation, have flawless technique, exude charisma and rhetoric deployed in lockstep, and have a genuine care for the seated bar guest in front of them. They are poised paragons of a dying art of true service. This of course is much more common in establishments of higher costs and older age. These are the bartenders who are perfecting their profession with a humility that knows no bounds and a personality that makes a sea of loyal patrons ONLY want service from THEM. They are the bartenders of the oldest and finest bars in London, the bustling barmen of Manhattan’s greatest heights, the captains of edge both in aesthetic and innovation of San Francisco, and the fiery folk of continental Europe’s grandest hotel bars.
When you’re the minority few of response A who are like this, the Fernet Branca coin challenge stops being a cringey display of pomp and starts being a fascinating piece of lore and subculture.
I wasn’t aware of these coins when I competed in the San Francisco barback games in the fall of 2017, so I decided to take the challenge of obtaining the “East Bay” edition coin by getting a shot of Fernet in 17 different bars as far south as Jack London Square in Oakland and as far North as Albany.
I admittedly had one foot in response B, “this is stupid, go fuck yourself,” and response A, the response of inquiring for more lore. I rarely allowed myself to be sucked into being part of the “socializing for socializing’s sake,” part of the bar world, but this was an interesting development that would at the very least see me know all the key bars in the Bay Area bar world outside of San Francisco. I always loved an opportunity to explore different nooks and crannies previously unknown.
When the keys of Darren’s car were ejected, the spacey sound of Turnstile’s next remixed anthem, “I Wanna be Blind,” rudely ceased without conclusion.
The Hotsy Totsy is a storied dive bar that was founded in 1939 and opted for a facelift in 2009. The actual definition for “dive bar” is as follows:
“A dive bar is an informal bar or pub. Such bars are sometimes referred to as neighborhood bars, where local residents gather to drink and socialize. Individual bars may be considered to be disreputable, sinister, or even a detriment to the community.”
It’s both depressing and strangely alluring that one can make twice if not three times as much money working at a bar like than at a high end craft cocktail bar. All that labor for less money is a point of bitterness for many a craftsman of cocktails. Part of this is due to a numbers game: dive bars sell cheaper drinks of shorter consumption in higher numbers. The other reason for this discrepancy is the horde of loyal patrons that have worn the affliction of alcoholism like a badge of honor and drink in these bars seven days a week without fail. These bars are open on Christmas because many of their patrons have nowhere else to go.
The Hotsy Totsy, is still a rundown, blue box of a bar with a neon sign of its own that spells “Hotsy Totsy,” in the form of an x with the two words converging on the “t” they share in common.
Stepping into its wooden confines was to enter a sleepy den that many a drunk, many a writer, many a sad man, and many a tired laborer would not want to leave after one drink. It’s a place for the weary to go to think or go to drink, and only one can take center stage. The far corners of the bar are dark, and the smells of salt water and rusty metal from the nearby shipyards of Oakland and Emeryville are thick, carrying their essence of a boundless ocean with them. There are a few rooms where time and space do not exist as they are presented. This is one of them.
Darren and Jane were fare more present with the bartender than I was. I practically grunted for a neat pour of rye while disassociating from my friends in order to go deeper into my thoughts and the dark waters of that atmosphere. Jane was talking to the bartender about their craft cocktail program, while Darren was losing his mind over the bar carrying a beer he’s only seen in the college bars he socialized at during his time at the University of Wisconsin. Craft cocktails in dive bars is exceedingly charming, but I just didn’t care that evening. There was something else there. There was an answer there. There was an answer about “the Real Thing.” I felt it wasn’t physically there, but a piece of the map was there.
“Why do I feel like I’m swimming?” I pondered.
“Please don’t ask me to be present either of you, I actually feel alive right now. I’m lucid inside. Things feel real again. I’m in this background world away from all that white noise,” I frantically pleaded within the confines of my mind.
“I’m in dark waters. Where I’m supposed to be. I’m sitting on a bar stool yes, but I’m simply elsewhere,” I posited to myself.
“I know this essence. I’ve felt it before. I’ve been here before. It’s been so long,” I lamented internally.
“Where did it go for all this time?” I wondered.
“Am I beginning to return?” I questioned with hope.
“Why can I not find this in the disciplines of the day anymore?” I asked in frustration.
“Why are all those actions so shallow in these past two years?” I asked in disgust.
“Why can I only be like this now in these rare instances?”
“Arthur, let’s close out our tab and head to Mallard,” said Jane.
“Yeah let’s head out,” agreed Darren.
“No, I want to stay a while longer,” I declared.
“Dude, come on, we’ve been here for almost two hours,” pestered Darren.
Taken aback by how much time had passed, I gathered my bearings and purchased a shot of Fernet for the coveted stamp on my passport.
“Do you want it?” I asked the bartender.
“What, you don’t?” she questioned.
“I just bought it for the stamp. I hate Fernet.” I stated.
“Well cheers then,” she toasted.
As I walked out, of the dusty den, I felt the clarity of the depths disappear.
I had half a mind to tell my friends to go ahead without me, so I could stay. But that would have been rude, and that would have cost me my ride.
I was back in the droning normalcy of being a man on a bar crawl again. We walked up the street to cross over to the other side and enter the hunting lodge, two story bar known as Club Mallard.
Club Mallard was the punk rock bar meets party bar that seemed to fit every demographic that walked in. The wood was new, and the lights were a bit brighter. The patio in the back was welcoming, and the bartenders had the clear enthusiastic camaraderie of a family. A hot toddy with rye was the poison this time around, and suddenly, I was feeling far more present. After talking some normie sportsball talk about the 49ers making it to the playoffs that year, I sat at a high top with Darren and Jane to have a genuinely good time.
Our conversation ranged from work to drinking to dating to music.
The three top table we sat at had equidistant chairs from each other in the form of a triangle, but the picture Darren swiped for his Instagram story framed Jane and myself in such a way that made us genuinely look like a couple.
This greatly disturbed me.
My fiancé, Celine was back in England, waiting to visit me next month for the first of a series of visits before she would eventually move the United States.
I never spent time alone with any other woman regardless of context because the context never mattered to me. Loyalty is loyalty. If I had to explain it, I was already causing speculation of dishonor which sometimes is just as bad as real dishonor.
My inevitable descent into brooding came, and Darren complained he wanted to go home. Darren was world class at complaining.
Upon exiting Club Mallard after a Fernet shot I gave to the bartender and a generous tip to the staff, I saw the Hotsy Totsy across the street and a block down.
I gazed upon it with intrigue.
“You’re still there. You piece of the map, you’re still there,” I thought.
“We’re not finished are we?” I questioned.
“Help me to understand,” I pleaded in calm.
I was about to ask if they wanted to go back to the Hotsy Totsy, but Jane jumped in an Uber home after my asking Darren if I could crash at his place. He said yes, as it was after Midnight. The BART was closed, and an Uber all the way back home to my house in Dublin would be well over $40, which was an amount I was not willing to spend.
There was a time when after one of these outings, I would get in an Uber and head to a 24 hour strength gym where I would jump rope for an hour to sweat out all of the alcohol and commence my originally scheduled training. I would always outwork the poison and outwork any creeping complacency. But I was headed to a living room floor in East Oakland to stare at the ceiling fan and hopefully sleep.
I couldn’t escape the pull of whatever it was to be discovered in that room.
“Can I keep it all together, waiting for the Real Thing?”
“Can I keep it all together, waiting for the Real…”
“The Real Thing?”
“The Real Thing?”
“The Real Thing?”
“The Real Thing?”