BY SCOTT HOWDESHELL
In May 2020, my girl and I had been pretty much completely quarantined outside of weekly trips to the grocery store and the liquor store. Clearly there had not been and wouldn’t be a need for bartenders for a while. I was okay with the time off. I got bored, fat, at times insouciant. Then some pals I lived with in DC a decade ago got a cabin in Butler, Tennessee, and called me to ask if we would come and stay with them for a week; they said they were going crazy in their solitude. We agreed even though this was during the apex of contagion fear. Obviously, I didn’t have any work, so we went. It was a wonderful time, secluded, great food as we are from the restaurant and hospitality business, drugs to get us out of a funk and to revisit other dumb shit we’d done. We took a pontoon boat out on a lake and my lady and I got married in a goofy ceremony. It cleared all of our heads for a while. A fine thing, fine time.
Thereafter things are boring. 5000 beers. Filing for unemployment. We cleaned out the garage like some adults doing smart things.Things are good enough, shit, we don’t have a mortgage. Months go by, we drink 5000 more beers. The bar opens up again, slowly. I mask up and go in. It feels good for the most part. Months go by with some fear, some reticence and much booze. I wonder if my industry will ever come back. Then a pal calls me and says, “I can get a vial of acid.” Even being near 50, I can not say no. It’s fantastic, the first time. First time in a while. We are away from the menace for a few hours. We let the cats run around us. We listen to “Heard It Through The Grapevine ” by CCR, that 11 minute groove. LCD Soundsystem. Coltrane. We watch that Sturgill Simpson anime flick, “Sound and Fury.” My blood sugar goes wildly low, and my wife and pal freak out because I’m too high to properly test and fix it for a minute or so. But I figured it out. Everything turns out fine. I get another beer. We listen to more music. A few more hours of it and we are ready for sleep. I send my friend off to the guest room. I meet my wife in bed with about half of the cats jumping in. For a brief moment or so, I’m not ready to fight an asshole in the grocery store who is yelling at an old lady about her wearing a mask. I’m weirdly happy, an adjective few who know me would use in regards to me. I promise to wake up early and cook breakfast for them. I sleep, at first not so easy, turning back and forth to find the right spot, but then slack and deep. When I wake up, I fail to deliver breakfast. I go grab some Milo’s burgers and sweet tea. Menace denied for a day.
