The All Seeing Alley Where God Spills The Drinks (standard:other, 4599 words)
Author: Raindog	Added: Mar 18 2001	Views/Reads: 3510/2232	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
An outsider's vision of San Francisco, from the eyes of the author to the minds of its forgotten and displaced inhabitants.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

take me to the airport and he's writing down the number in my diary, 
telling me his parents run a Limo business. I look at my diary when he 
hands it back: 'Ridgeway Limo' and a number. I try to comprehend this 
when - slip! The first hit wears off, reality sinks in and I tell him 
we should get out of here, we're not welcome, "Yeah, you’re right," he 
agrees quietly, but not before he manages to knock his beer across the 
bar with his shaking hands and I notice his nails are as black as tar. 
"Look at me, I'm spillin' beer here like an idiot!" he announces to the 
bar, smiling grimly, trying the harmless addict charm on 'em - but 
nobody is impressed. 

Now I'm getting the Fear and "I'm leaving," I say, and he says, "Well
man, put your beer in a to-go cup!" and I say "What cup?" and he pulls 
a plastic tumbler from over the bar and tips my drink into it and 
smiles, so I pick it up and we're walking away but the barmaid barks 
that, "You boys can't take beer that outta here!" so I leave it on the 
bar, get confused, thinking I bought another beer and drop another 
dollar tip on the bar and then we make it quick out onto the street. We 
stop for another hit inside someone's doorway, for God's sake, and 
mid-operation the woman who lives there comes home and finds these two 
awful degenerates clogging her entrance, both out of their heads, one 
an obvious junkie, the other looking like some attempt at a rock star, 
all black and white Hawaiian shirt and reflective sunglasses. I'm 
trying not to breathe any smoke out and fucken near choking. Seamus is 
trying his addict charm again, asking politely if she minds if we sit 
there and she says, "Just don't make a mess," and goes inside. 
"Probably calling the law. C’mon, let's walk" he says, gathering his 
stuff. Now I'm thinking "I'm doomed." I can hear the police radio 
crackling out our description in my head, the panic sets in again and 
the hit exacerbates it. 

We turn another corner and an SFPD cruise car sidles by us in the other
direction and I'm starting to completely lose it and I'm saying, "Let's 
get out of this district entirely, we'll go back to Chinatown and drink 
beer!" but - too late. He's pulling me onto a bus. So we head out to 
the Lower Haight and hang out with the hippie remnants, smoking 
cigarettes and looking in shops, taking the occasional quiet hit, more 
often him than me I notice, then we catch a bus back to ... where? And 
warning beacons start pulsing, because I realise that I don't know 
where we're going, much less where we are, only that we're high up in 
the San Francisco hills and Seamus is playing tour guide: "Awesome view 
to your left, dude" and I look left and it is awesome - a huge, sharply 
dropping hill which opens out onto the entire city and the bay is in 
the distance, and that’s all well and good, but where the fuck are we? 
The bus trundles down steep inclines and levels out ... and oh God, 
sure enough, we're back in the fucken Mission! We swing out of the bus 
and I notice that never paid for a ticket, he always went in through 
the rear door. Now everything's hanging off Seamus. We're walking 
faster and faster and he's spewing out a string of available drugs and 
contacts we can get our hands on, like a child’s skipping rhyme: 

Speed and coke and grass and heroin 

I know a guy on twenty first 

Gotta room there 

Getchya some powder 

Pep ya up nice and fine 

The last of the dose is wearing off him rapidly and the next issue on
his list is to score again, and Jesus, this could go on all afternoon 
and all night and all the next day! Christ this is his fucking job, 
this is what he does, scoring and smoking crack, and am I going to 
bankroll this entire exercise? And now the dealers fucking know us! 
Within two hours they know us, up and down the strip! And we're eight 
blocks from where we got the first score! And they are actually walking 
up to me when they never did before, like I’m wearing a sign that says 
"Sell Here!" and openly displaying handfuls of crack and, "You boys 
wanna buy?" they're drawling, smiling that evil, ratty, dealer-sneer. 
"No, we're good, we're good!" I'm blathering at them, waving my hands 
and they're laughing at me, saying, "You boys gonna be back, you boys 
gonna be back, ah yup, ah yup" as they saunter off. Then to my left I 
hear, "Where's mah bread, nigger? Damn, I give this fool 10 dollars to 
buy me some bread rolls a mutherfuckin' hour ago and nigger comes back 
wit nuttin'! Where's yo head at, fool? Damn, what's up wit dat shit?" 
and I look over and a huge black apparition is berating his associate 
for not coming back with his bread rolls, or was it really bread rolls? 
I'm almost laughing from the Fear and holy shit what's this? Seamus is 
now speaking fluent Spanish to some deranged dealer, the street is full 
of people and I think the entire district is ridden with smoke and junk 
disease and I'm about to have a goddamn coronary, right there on the 
corner. And more SFPD cruisers are drifting by, and the cops are 
looking straight ahead, what the fuck? What do they care if these 
people depopulate themselves and the surrounding area? Save the cops 
doing it! And I think I can hear and see the cop in the cruiser 
radioing his newly found street wisdom back to base ... 

"CRACKLE! We will maintain law and order in the ‘socio-economic
regression zones’ by doing nothing, Chief, repeat nothing and let them 
do away with themselves! We’ve got the clean hands chief and so does 
the mayor and it's a sure thing for the Governor, too. We bang up a 
dealer once in a while and stick him in rehab for 30 days, not that 
dealers need rehab, ha ha ha Chief! And then we send him the fuck back 
out here! It’s a beautiful thing! 

... and I start to hate them and City Hall even more than the crazed
lunatics around me and I wonder why nobody helps anybody out here 
unless its for a fix and how a whole district can run on its own agenda 
of addiction and death and misery and nobody cares and the tourist 
guide books tell you not to come here and now I know why. I see what 
they're hiding. I'm getting blind with smoke and afternoon sunlight so 
I tell Seamus I'm going back to my hotel. "I gotta get back to 
Chinatown! Call me in two hours!" I spill out, blindly waving my phone 
at him, reeling backwards, remembering I gave him my mobile number in 
that lesbian bar but that he couldn't get to it without dialing 
internationally, but oh God, he'll find a way! I'm thinking about some 
hot won ton soup and Chinese tea, to rid this foul drug from my guts, 
and Seamus gets upset - because he suddenly realises that his supply 
has now been cut - but he doesn't get angry about it and instead 
eventually smiles glumly, shakes my hand, fist over fist, and wishes me 
good luck as he turns and walks away. I run like a bastard, against the 
red lights, sweat pouring off me - down the steps and into the 24th 
Street subway station and I get the fuck out of there and I never go 
back. 

And every day after that, every cigarette I lit tasted like the little
white cube and the taste reminded me of Seamus and his sad, glum face 
and those crow black fingernails, so I smashed the lighter to bits one 
night, outside Mr Bing's Cocktail Bar, in Chinatown. 

II 

THE ALL SEEING ALLEY 

In a by-the-week-no-questions-asked boarding house in Chinatown, a boy
of 21 going on 60 sits cowered and glaring on the edge of his bed, 
chewing noisily and spilling pizza down his shirt as he watches CNN on 
a TV he picked up for 20 bucks from Hamish the grocer. The television 
makes everything else in the room too dark, throws too many shadows 
around. At his feet, the eye of folded aluminium that lies empty next 
to his glass pipe glints, wickedly watching every mouthful. He dumps 
the pizza in the plastic bag that hangs from the door handle and leans 
against the wash basin, grinning at himself crookedly in the mirror. A 
trail of blood seeps from his upper gums. "I was leaving anyway," he 
drawls thickly to himself, "I said good night and that’s politeness for 
you." He notices the blood and wipes it away dismissively. "So I say 
goodnight," he begins, his voice rising slowly, "and off I fuck, into 
the street and I get some pepperoni pizza to go. The guy sees me coming 
and practically has it in the fucking oven before I get into the shop 
and I think I hear him say 'Drinkin' again, son?' so I nod and smile 
and tip him, though there’s no need if not being served and getting 
pizza to go in a greasy joint, it was stupid, but it made him smile and 
Jesus how many smiles do I have left? When I'm so sick! I can’t 
understand anyone in this stinking town. They’re all gutter snipes and 
hustlers!" he hisses. 

His voice pitches against the basin, rolls in it and bounces back a
metallic reverberation, rising in line with his fury. 

"Last night ... I went blindly up the all seeing alley, the one where
God spills the drinks, but not even that helped me understand, it only 
left me hanging upon a midnight handle of misery and rottenness. But it 
bought it anyway and I smoked it down without so much as a wheeze. And 
then I gleamed, haughty as a fuckin’ lord, looking out of the window at 
the street below where I could hear them pointing to the window of the 
hotel room and screaming, 'Behold! The vicious bellow of the traitor! 
He lies between foreign teeth and eats the bread that is not his to 
eat! He breathes filthy smoke into the crisp night air and dares to 
dream what others fail to care!' So I go back downstairs, to find the 
fuckers screeching at me, and I get a smack in the face for no good 
goddamn reason and then they apologise and put a few bills back in my 
wallet and buy me a fuckin’ drink! So it just goes to show how useless 
anger is, because much more can be won with a dollar on the bar!" 

Satisfied and spent, he pushes forwards against the basin and lets the
inertia carry him back. He collapses onto the bed and lets his arm hang 
lightly down the side. Grasping the oily remote, he turns up volume of 
the TV, just enough to quiet the ringing noise in his head and let him 
get a few hours of sleep. "Not much to ask on a hot afternoon," he 
mumbles as he sails into sleep. 

III 

JOE'S LAMENT 

Joe the cab driver drinks at the Lost and Found Saloon, but the barmaid
claims she knows all the cab drivers and she’s never seen him. 
Furthermore, Joe doesn't just drink there, he drinks there heavily. At 
this particular moment, he's seated at the end of the bar, waving his 
cigarette angrily in the late afternoon dim and beating the bar with 
his fists, spilling his shots of bourbon as he laments the fall of the 
city to his neighbouring drinker. 

"They ain't never seen the fuckin' sun like I seen, stuck up there in
their fuckin' penthouse apartments those lousy fucks and I'm a goddamn 
cab driver!" His neighbour is nodding, saying nothing, hoping Joe will 
shut up because now his chances of getting another goddamn shot are 
gonna be ruined and Lord, how he knows it. Christ, just look at that 
fat assed owner lulling back there like Buddha himself! Hell, he's 
ready to kick 'em both out now, and look at Joe, reeling on his stool 
and losing the plot in increasingly bizarre ways. He becomes obsessed 
with the phrase, "Godammit, I'm a cab driver!" and he keeps repeating 
it, beating the bar with his fist, wraparound sunglasses shaking almost 
comically on his little white face. And each time the words switch 
places and take on new emphasis: "I'm a goddamn cab driver!" BANG! "I 
drive a goddamn cab!" BANG! "Goddammit, it's a cab I drive!" BANG! But 
this time there's a thud too, because Joe's fallen right off his perch 
and slammed his boozed up frame against the floor. 

Now everyone's had enough. Discontent is hindering the numb alcoholic
serenity and the patrons are getting restless. The owner is marching 
down to haul Joe's "sorry cab drivin' ass" out the front door, but his 
neighbour placates the situation by getting Joe out of there and on top 
of this, leaving the bar himself as the barmaid calls to the owner, 
"Hey, ya date just left!" and the fixtures of the bar erupt, relieved, 
into great bales of mirth, slapping their thighs and ordering more 
bourbon and beer all round and spilling tips onto the bar in pure glee 
as Joe shambles off up the street. "Ya date's just left!" the barmaid 
squeals again and everyone screeches like banshees. 

They all saw Joe about an hour later, sunglasses still on in the cool
evening dusk, playing a sad and out of tune melody on a harmonica as he 
stumbled back past the bar. They didn't laugh that time, they just 
murmured softly, shook their heads and turned to look down into their 
drinks. 

IV 

GETTING ALL GODDAMN TEARY EYED 

Sometime in the late evening, somewhere in a bar in North Beach, Harry
keeps the last stained dollar tucked away in his jacket’s inner pocket, 
like some tired memento of the night. He grins, a little too ugly and 
sneering, at the assorted flotsam and jetsam, cliché upon general maxim 
rolling in his head, because he can’t find the phrase to describe his 
loneliness without getting all goddamn teary eyed about it. Shit, 
what’s left for him now? Just uniforms, dusky brass buttons and stale 
photographs that don’t fit right in frames. Nothing but hollowed out 
shells that once landed smoking, to no purpose, or lay buried beneath 
the rim of the earth to take out some poor, innocent fucker, who went 
out one day with the admirable notion of sowing a vegetable garden. He 
sits and stares at 'em all lined up - the soldiers of his personal 
army. Major Ouzo, Lieutenant Hennessey, Wing Commander Corona, Private 
Heineken, Machine Gunner Guinness, Rear Admiral Remy Martin ... all 
good men, and true. "Everywhere I go, it’s all drinks and plastic 
muzak." He sighs to himself. He’s almost mumbling his thoughts 
inaudibly now, but it’s clear enough for the barmaid to detect. They 
have radars, you know. But it’s not like they really want to hear. It’s 
a curse. 

"Take the cash I don't need it anymore, why would I, when I've got an
overpriced cocktail served by a pissed off waitress? Jesus, that's 
enough for me! I’ll just sit here and listen to the voices all around!" 
He gives a quick glance left and right and in a conspiratorial tone, 
whispers, "Hear how they flood and flow, riding on the nictoine trails? 
Listen! what’s that ... tired? G'night! ... save a kiss for me you can 
kiss my ass! ... like that when I miss you  ... if you’d called her ... 
she ain't there ... a black and tan and a shot on the side ... love the 
way you play!" Harry looks at the barmaid, all eyes and lashes and 
pathetic sodden smiles, but she isn’t interested. Jesus, what is there 
to be interested in when you’re just providing service for the sick and 
quietly hoping they’ll die? She’s the good old Night Nurse, that’s all 
she is. She sits down and lights up, so very tired, her aching feet 
stretching down in between all the drinks and tips. She stubs out the 
straight and stands, she flips the lights off and on, a Morse code 
signal that spells "H O M E" and breathes deep before announcing "Last 
Call!" Her streaked blonde hair falls lazily around her shoulders and 
drifts indifferently to the curvature of her breasts beneath the white 
apron ... well, you know, in differing circumstances she might ... but 
no, because someone is close to Harry’s ear and it’s not lovely Ms 
Night Nurse whispering sweet somethings, but a gruff male voice 
ordering him to leave. 

"I'll see ya!" the voice barks cheerfully, sliding an arm around his
shoulder and guiding him door-wards. "I’ll see ya later!" it comes 
again as he trips out the exit. And as he staggers off along the uneven 
street the voice calls, "Have yourself a nice night, you fuckin’ 
loser!" 

V 

THE BALLAD OF THE WHISKEY PRIEST 

The whiskey priest sat at the SFO Airport Bar, nursing a double Jack
Daniels on ice. Some foul bastard had managed to slip on a soundtrack 
of cheap 80's love songs. They dripped down the walls of the bar, and 
one by one they sidled into the spaces between the stools where they 
lingered ... niggling, insistent. The whiskey priest sighed, deep in 
his selfish repose, hording the space around him. The bar was slathered 
in formica surfaces and fake marble. It swirled before his eyes as he 
peaked his fingers and narrowed his eyes in concentration. Doctor 
Banshee, a man with in possession of more frequent flyer points than 
brain cells, stalked in and demanded that the TV be turned on for the 
live telecast of a major sporting event. "Nah. No good. It's busted." 
the bartender sneered, his foreign accent thick and unwavering in the 
heavy heat. "Thanks be to God!" thought the priest, as the good Doctor 
turned angrily and stormed out, cursing "that gypsy bartending 
bastard!" 

He made a chapel of his fingers again, giving thanks, and drained his
glass. To his right was a small, bent Chinaman, cowered over his brandy 
like a man possessed of intense desires. But there was no fight left in 
him. All he did was stare at the drink as if willing it into his rotten 
liver by osmosis. The priest raised his empty glass to the bartender. 
"If ya gonna screw me on these prices, ya might as well put less ice in 
here!" he rasped. The bartender smiled with the vague hatred and 
ambivalence that airport bartenders wear so well with their uniforms 
and poured another double, adding more ice than ever before. 

The priest had had the shakes for the last half hour, and this was the
only cure he could think of. Airports gave him the Fear, like hospitals 
and that scent of disinfectant they carry. There was death threatening 
to leap out and strike everywhere he looked. He felt as though parts of 
his very soul were being burnt to a crisp by the turbine engines that 
spewed fumes over the tarmac. The priest ordered yet another double 
Black Jack and counted the fly droppings on the counter. "How can an 
airport bar be so ridden with disease?" he grimaced internally. "Why, 
I’ve been in shit house dives wouldn't pass inspection by a corrupt 
Mexican health official hooked on junk and this is by God a hundred 
times worse!" He scowled at the bourbon in front of him and wondered 
how it was possible. 

In a place of leaving and of beginning, of arrivals and departures, he
felt as if in the arms of the Eternal Wheel. Health and sickness. Life 
and death. All that really important shit. Could all of the sad tale of 
human existence be boiled down to this? The priest was, of course, 
thinking of alchemy and the subtle way in which ancient rites and 
beliefs never died, just regenerated into newer forms of self 
deception. Alchemy, machinery and technology. What would be the next 
magic oracle, and who would be left behind? The priest looked around 
and about him slowly. Lonely, transient booze hounds was all he could 
see. "These sad remnants," he thought, "I could have time to save them 
before I leave!" But his ear was suddenly jarred by a particularly 
penetrating, syrup coated note from a saxophone solo. "Jesus," he 
gritted his teeth, "this horrible, fucking music!" he thought - or said 
- it was becoming increasingly unclear which was which. 

The whiskey priest rifled through his wallet, dropping dollar bills all
over the bar and crying out, "Your tips, you scurvy bastards, take 
them! I'm tipping everyone in here!" He stood suddenly, sending his 
drink flying and his stool rocking back and falling, a towering inferno 
of mad, rotten drunkenness, seeing double of his enemies in every 
bottle, each block of thick ice melting on the bar throwing his fallen 
image back at him, one thousand times over. "I can't see a thing and I 
can't save anyone! I'm about to cry like a child ... and I have a 
fucking plane to catch!" he bellowed. The contents of the bar looked up 
and looked down in unison, trying to avoid his whirling gaze - all 
except the Chinaman who cackled insanely and rocked back and forth on 
his stool, nodding. The priest turned, a tragic figure, mourning 
quietly. Out the doors he went, cursing all the way through the tax 
free havens, through the boarding gates and onto the plane. 

That night, the fog was thicker in San Francisco than ever before. Ash,
mounds of it, dropped like bad shit over the tips of the skyscrapers in 
the financial district. It fell into cups of tea in Chinatown. It 
poisoned the drinkers in North Beach. The whiskey priest, well ... he 
wasn't much of a man - a crab’s shell. But he left a mark on the city 
that no fistfuls of green bills could ever scrub away. 

_____________________________________________________________________
Copyright (C) Andrew Keese 2001 

e-mail: ikeese@zeta.org.au 

web: http://www.zeta.org.au/~ikeese/andrew/


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