“I wanted to chew the Cud… that was all, Ralphie. Just chat a little.”

“Yeah, well she doesn’t want to chat with you. Now go back to your drink at the end of the bar and settle down or I won’t let you buy another drink... You’ve probably had enough already as it is.”

“Okay, okay,” stammered the old drunk. “Don’t get your knickers all tied up. I’ll take a seat, then.”

Ralph Gansky shook his head wearily and, after Fred had plopped despondently back on the stool, returned to wiping down the bar-top. Lost in his thoughts he didn’t even notice as the pretty blonde smiled sweetly at him in gratitude for removing the lighter-fuel breath nuisance that had been hovering over her only moments before. But Ralph didn’t notice those little things any more. Things like the sweet, admiring smile of a pretty blonde that may well have provided him with some welcome distraction –and joy- that could take him far away from the musty, dark surrounds of the Doyle Street Bar that had been his home for near each and every day of the last thirty-five years.

He’d originally started working shifts for old man Carruthers just after his twenty-first birthday. Ralph never really took to the books and so his time at university was brief, much to his father’s disappointment. But, it was the middle of summer, he was broke and not sure where he was headed, and short of joining the army he figured that Carruthers’ offer of two or three shifts a week might at least buy some time and earn him a couple of bucks from tips until he figured out exactly what he was going to do next. And yet somehow -inexplicably, it seemed- that one summer when he first learned to pour a perfect glass of beer from the tap and master how a few calm, carefully chosen words could placate even the angriest drunk, three months rolled into a year, two years into five, then ten, twenty, and before too long he was not only working five nights a week, he was managing the bar, and finally, upon the directions of old man Carruthers’ will, now, thirty-five years on, he owned the damn place. Scrubbing away at the bar as the young blonde looked on, Ralph wondered to himself where it had been exactly that a brief summer stint had transformed itself into a permanent career for him. He paused a moment and studied the stained, damp rag in his hand. Had he ever even contemplated, through all these years, something else it might have been he could do with his life?

A regular – Bill Masterson – entered the bar and took a seat. Hardly even acknowledging the burly man’s presence, Ralph moved automatically to the wall of bottles behind him and reached for the rum. Bill’s order hadn’t changed in twenty years, just as Ralph’s life hadn’t. One straight shot of rum, and a glass of Heineken. Ralph slid the drinks over to Bill and punched the total into the register. Like so many of the other locals that frequented the Doyle Street Bar, Bill either didn’t have a home life to attend to, or he had a crummy one that was best left alone.

The minute he opened the doors each morning at 10am Ralph was always greeted by the same tired faces, the same ever-thirsty regulars. Names like Bill, Steve, Gary, Lenny, Graham and Craig. He knew them all, but they might as well have been the same person, for they all looked the same –huge, beer-invested bellies, red, shining noses and the kind of emptiness in their eyes that immediately spoke of lost opportunities, a misspent youth and wayward errors. Sometimes Ralph feared he caught those same despondent eyes staring back at him when he’d catch his reflection in the oversized bar mirror that he patiently re-polished each day. And the regulars all sounded the same as well. They shared a low, gravely grunt in their voices that only altered pitch when the newspaper intervened to inform them of a hot horseracing tip in the next race, or the television offered the dim news of yet another hot horseracing tip that had run awry. With each drink and each passing hour, the life slowly ebbed out of these regulars and Ralph stood witness as the cynicism and anger gradually crept into their tone and topics of conversation, until, like Fred, who was now lost in a hypnotic trance with his beer, the grunts ceased altogether and were replaced by a silent misery of regret. It was in these late hours that Ralph despised his work the most, for it was in the silence that the wretched souls that patronized his bar now came to realise again –as they had the night before and a thousand nights before that- their lives had come to nothing, and they would never again seize the day.

By the time Ralph looked up the young blonde had left. She had either grown tired of waiting on the absent barman caught up with faraway thoughts or had finally come to her senses and realised that, looking for a drink at the end of her working day, she had inadvertently stumbled into a dive. Either way, Ralph was glad she’d left. He had never touched a drop of alcohol in his life, but among these wretched few lolling about and waiting, patiently, with yet another round of drinks for their lives to mercilessly end, he at least felt he served a purpose. Here, in the Doyle Street Bar he was a failure among a roomful of failures, but he was the only man that would understand and appreciate their misfortune.

Shame had no need for company. It was best that others stay away.