Dangers of the Trade

Unfortunately, there's been very little to write about. Having discovered there's quite a passel of money to be made here in Anchorage as a bartender, I took the requisite class to get my certification to serve alcohol. Without experience, however, getting anyone to bite on any of the applications I've submitted has proved fruitless so far. Nonetheless, I've spent much of my time in bars.

I did have one noteworthy incident in the past few days. While at a bar named, appropriate or inappropriately enough, "Humpy's", after filling out an application, I struck up a conversation with a local. Rich was a 6'3", 290lbs native (a mixture of "Inupak", as they call themselves here, and Tlingit) who worked for a local environmental non-profit. He politely brought me a very healthy (ie properly toxic) Long Island Iced Tea, which, since it tasted like Iced Tea and we were busy discussing that common point about which all American men, no matter where they're from, can expertly converse: sports, I drained without a second thought. The bartendress set three more down in front of me and they vanished in short order. It was seven pm.

I awoke to the sunlight streaming in my eyes. "Damn sun!" was my first thought. "I'm entirely too big for this couch" was my second thought, as my legs spilled awkwardly over the side. "Who in the hell's couch am I on?" was my third thought. My fourth thought, and the one which overrode all others once I became aware of my condition was "Oh Jesus! I'm in my tidy-whities!"

Covered in a blanket, looking at my inexpertly strewn clothes on the floor, I heard footsteps coming from another room. Ordinarily I would not pray for a 6'3", 290lbs man, who could snap me like a twig, to walk in, but I don't think my fragile, still wildly inebriated, psyche would have handled being in a total stranger's house.

"Hey, man? You up?" Thank God! It was Rich. Rich who had told me all about his girlfriend and son at the bar so I wasn't terrified for my chastity.

"Um...yeah...what happened?" I asked sheepishly.

"Well, when I went to leave, I saw a friend and spoke to him. On my way out the door, I saw you try to get off the bar stool and you were having...trouble."

"Yeah...I don't remember anything."

"I brought you here. You curled in a ball on the couch and went to sleep."

"Yeah."

"When I checked on you in the middle of the night, you'd stripped down to your skivvies so I gave you a blanket. You looked cold."

"Yeah..."

It was nearly 10am. I was still profoundly drunk. Rich made me a waffle, which I promptly projectile vomited in his toilet, while he was off in another room, tending to his girlfriend. He offered to drop me off downtown, but I wanted to walk it off. Even with a compass around my neck it took me three hours to figure out where I was as I walked the outskirts of Anchorage, occasionally depositing bile and the other remnants of my stomach lining along the sidewalks. I finally made it back to the hostel, where I lay in my bunk, groaned, and thought to myself, "I didn't think they made hangovers this size." I will NEVER go Long Island Iced Tea for Long Island Iced Tea with anyone, let alone a much larger man, ever again.

Other than that, my time here has been filled with lots of walking, reading, and sleeping. In a few more days, if I haven't gotten a job, I'll head down to the fishing town of Homer.