After the lockdown lifted, I was desperate to get back into the real world and start socialising again.
I took the first job I could, my second job in sobriety, even more of a high-risk one.
In the previous bar I had been able to work day shifts, serving coffees and running food, this new job was a traditional English pub, serving almost entirely alcohol.
It was like my previous hospitality job hadn’t worried everyone enough. This one was a far worse position for a recovering alcoholic.
It wasn’t just out of spite, I loved being a barman: serving and chatting to people, the atmosphere of a busy pub, roaring fire, people laughing.
When you get sober, you’re supposed to burn your whole previous life down, especially if you are a barman.
I suppose I was clinging to my alcoholic lifestyle. Though I had stopped drinking, I was struggling to adapt to sobriety.
Unsurprising, when alcohol had been the centre of my life for years. It’s a huge change to make overnight.
I had a friend at this job from my drinking days. He was a down-and-out, suffered badly with depression, had a fatalistically negative mindset. A lot of people found him hard work.
I have a soft spot for people like this, and gave him the benefit of the doubt, offering him friendship despite his difficulty.
Dealing with my father, my entire life has given me the desire to befriend people like this, because deep down I know I am equally difficult.
Trace this feeling back far enough, and you’ll get to my self-loathing.
I hate writing stuff like this, figuring it out in real time as I type the words, the depth of mine and everybody else’s neurosis.
Clarity of mind hurts. This is my therapy, it’s making me better. I’ve got to view it like this. I’m not going to take antidepressants, and I’m not going to get actual therapy. Writing about these things is as good as it gets. As much as I am willing to do.
Suck it up, keep writing.
This new friend viewed us as eternally at odds, even though we were just workmates. He viewed us as Griffith and Guts from the anime Berserk. I don’t know which of us was Guts (the betrayed) and which of us was Griffith (the betrayer).
Maybe he just loved the show, which is cool, because I introduced him to it. I let him entertain this fantasy scenario. I deemed it harmless.
And then one day, a new barmaid showed up.
She was tall for a girl, but a tiny bit shorter than both me and my friend. She was buxom, had jet black hair and features like a doll.
She was Lithuanian, and extremely playful. My friend was immediately besotted with her, viewing her as potential wife of his dreams. I entertained his infatuation and encouraged him to pursue it.
Out of dedication to his plight, I was merely friendly with her, offering only cursory small talk. If I got too friendly, I knew exactly what would happen. It was a small bar and a small team, I was enjoying the job, as well as my friendship with my old drinking buddy.
Weeks went by, and I witnessed the attempted wooing of this girl, in all its horrific glory. Awkward jokes, rejected date invitations. I cringed, and realised how brutally hard the dating game is.
Attempting to court a woman in a work environment, when she isn’t interested, should be one of the punishments they administer in hell. It’s worse than eternal lashings. I’d sooner be chained to a rock, and have my liver devoured daily by a wild eagle.
After she tired of my friends advances, and when he wasn’t around. She started coming on to me.
At first it was just occasional flirty jokes, but she soon started speaking and acting much more directly.
I have found Eastern European women to be incredibly formidable, they seem to be able to easily deconstruct you. They have very few filters and see directly into the heart of men, where they pick out hidden things.
They can look into your soul and find its deepest essence, then casually comment on it as though it were nothing. They seem to possess this innate ability, possibly they are built different.
It wasn’t long before she was asking me life questions, my sobriety, my exes, everything. It didn’t feel like any kind of flirting I had experienced previously.
I now realise she was sizing me up for all of it: marriage, kids, house ownership.
She asked me questions about my credit score, my parents’ illnesses (all psychological; I assured her). I may as well have been a dog at Crufts having a man with white gloves inspect my sphincter.
All of this I had to hide from my friend, who was still entertaining his large fantasy.
All of a sudden from simply desiring to be part of the working world again, I was having to lead a double life. On one hand offering counsel to my lovesick friend, on the other providing a full medical to the girl of his dreams.
I did like her, but I mostly just appreciated feeling marginally less unattractive as a result of her advances. She liked me a lot. She had described me as having “big dick energy” during one shift. It’s just because I bossed people around even though I was just a barman. She liked that.
And then it happened: the part where I realise what an empathetic stupid people-pleasing idiot I am. How all the kindness and generosity I offer the world not only accounts for naught, but is regularly spat back in my face.
After a late shift, the girl offered me a ride home. She drove a huge brand-new black BMW like a drug dealer. It was ridiculous. She was a “bad bitch.”
When we arrived at my place, she pulled to a stop, and we lingered in the car. She wanted me to invite her in, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how gutted my friend would be if I had slept with this girl.
She was smiling a lot; I told her I’d better get inside, made my excuses. She accepted them but wanted a good night kiss. She pointed to her cheek.
I went to kiss it, and she turned her face at the last second to kiss me on the lips. Absolute trickster. I planted a small one on her lips but then pulled away and laughed. She hovered there, eyes closed, expecting more, but eventually gave up and sighed loudly.
Almost a cute moment, but instead a rejection of her by me. I didn’t invite her in, I didn’t carry on kissing her when she sneakily managed to get on on the lips. I shut the whole thing down, out of commitment to my friend.
She quit the job and left town soon after. When I asked why, she coldly said there was nothing for her in this town anymore, that she was bored.
A brutal exit. At her leaving do at the bar, my friend cried, and I could see she was struggling not to laugh.
Worst part of this story is, years later, the friend would betray me in a horrific way. After I fell out with my father, he sided against me, and with my father.
He views himself as an agent of chaos; it was an attempt to rile me up into doing something stupid. As a person who has very little effect on anyone, he desperately desired to have a negative one on me.
Maybe he knew about the Lithuanians fondness for me, maybe it was his impotent method of revenge, regardless of my rejection of her.
Maybe he hated me all along. Matters not, I cut him out of my life without a moments hesitation.
I’m the nicest guy in the world, until I’m not, and then I’m a monster.
He and my father speak to this day, I’m fairly sure their main shared interest is their mutual hatred of me.
Part of me doesn’t resent them for it, they’re both messed up, both lonely.
The other part of me harbours hideous revenge fantasies, carried out at night.
The ultimate revenge though, is my complete and utter silence, deprival of oxygen to their respective fires.
I guess it turns out he was Griffith, and I was Guts.