Problematic blockheads make up for a tiresome, strenuous, elongated work week. Fights and disputes with significant others added. Feelings are as cold and numb as the frozen tundra from lack of stimulation and affection. Vexed and frustrated with only one outlet to take the edge off. Drown your sorrows out at the nearby hole-in-the-wall tavern as a safe haven. Coincidentally opened at your convenience for when you've hit your lowest point. Enter through the neon lit beer signs of the tap room in a dark, damp atmosphere. The bar keep already knows your name. Grab a barstool at the u-shaped countertop, light up a smoke, tuck the pack in your front pocket, order up your first pint and take a look around at this all-star lineup. As the smoke clears.... it's like the city of the dead. Necropolis for the local drunkards. Crippled motards and disabled vets play cards and scream of old war stories and tell bad jokes. Swimming in a sea of mechanics uniforms with their names etched upon their hearts. Neighborhood friendly bar ***** with raspy voices. Quenching for lust in demeaning mannerisms. Like a cigarette vending machine, exchanging the poussoise for free drinks and moloko. Rowdy, ****-Eyed wonder boys gather round at Sunday's mass for alcoholics and hover over pool tables and smother dartboards. Slipping pills in the dead soldiers of the innocence. All, over controlling the jukebox with the appalling top 40 hits. Pitcher after pitcher. Empty and refilling their dog dishes over and over again until they're in a complete state of incoherence and belligerence without pacing and/or enjoying the simply effects of alcohol. Sober to blackout with no in between. Gilded with suds of low budget malts. Treated with over priced sugary cocktails and watered down aqua vitae with colorful names. You sit alone. Head tilted back. Drink slow. Let it flow as you pour the shots and drafts down your throat with that burning sensation aftermath. Fueled by barley and hops. You're catapulted into that warm, fuzzy feeling of being buzzed and you let it overtake you. It may not be much but it's all you got at the moment. Entire paychecks blown. Myriad of ashtrays fill up while engaging with preposterous claptrap conversationalists. Muscled, mustache macho men feel pilloried over petty and trivial coin tricks and have to swing their over compensated ***** by quickly escalating in violence and breaking beer bottles over the heads of Neanderthals who are evolutionary one step behind. Gummed by shanky old hags in bathroom blow jobs. Eight ball party favors lined up for indulgence on the seats of the scummiest toilets. And those mirrors..... Those ******* mirrors behind the bar. Every time you look into them, only to see yourself and your surroundings. You are reminded of the shameful digest and wonders of how it is, that it all comes down to this. Yet, there you are, still sipping beer through a straw. Morning arrives, you wake up feeling below par and hazy. As you gather your thoughts, you roll over next to that butterface haggard horrid wet spot you avoided on the last stop of your tour of profligacy. Feeling ashamed of yourself as this lifestyle hardens you. You drink to remember. You drink to forget. You drink to your losses. You drink to your gains. You drink to celebrate. You drink to your melancholy and loneliness. Either way.... you drink.