Ethanol and Armani
It was my spiritual guru Hunter S. Thompson who sagely quipped that "there is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge." While truer words may never have been written, the fact is, we are a long way from the halcyon days of ether binges. Today, I would modify the aphorism to read: "there is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a drunk in a suit."
I say this having just returned to my room from the bar at the Four Seasons hotel in Chicago. Now, a quick disclaimer is in order--I am on a work trip, but my stay at this elite establishment is courtesy of a gift certificate my father never got around to using, so I tip my mini-bar vodka and soda to you dad. Anyhow, I spent 13 hours roaming Chicago working on a radio story, and made it back to the hotel just before midnight, and I saddled up to the bar just before last call.
I knew things had the potential to get weird as I crossed the lobby towards the bar, and two couple staggered out--both older men with younger women, and all of them... well, not looking right. When I entered the bar I immediately noticed a... hang on, I'm in the Four Seasons, and I can hear the person in the room above me taking a piss--something's fundamentally wrong with that... anyhow, I noticed three people sitting at a couch in the bar--two men in expensive suits, and a moderately expensive blonde woman. The men were toasted to put it politely, and spent more time groping each other than the woman.
And, as I looked around the room--replete with carved wood ornamentation and other refinements--I saw desperation, helplessness, and irresponsibility. Four men staggered in together and immediately spied a table of four women--I'm sure they were all wonderful women, but not exactly the pick of the litter--and the leader of the drunken band approached them saying, "last call for alcohol, ladies." I was the only one in the bar who seemed to notice their intemperate behavior--perhaps because I was only a sip into the only martini I would have since I barely made the 11:55 last call.
Anyhow, the merry men stumbled to the bar for one round, and a haze of booze-fueled depravity filled the room. I asked the bartender if this was a regular crowd, and his expression gave the answer before he could speak. While I was a bit shocked to see such affluent and professional looking people making a Sigma Chi party look like a salon, the bartender seemed non-nonplussed. He said it wasn't they typical crowd, but when I said that I was surprised to see slobbering drunks in such an establishment, he quickly pointed out that suits often think they are invincible as they proceed to drool on themselves in public.
That reminded me of my ethic of avoiding bars on Cinco de Mayo and such events when amateurs make their quarterly pilgrimages to bars to partake of the beverage of the occasion, and make complete asses of themselves so they can brag at work the next day how bent they got. Well, the pros have nothing to prove, and we are much better at concealing our unreasonable levels of consumption...
Well, enough self-righteous talk about drinking... suffice to say, it was a pathetic sight to see people who can actually afford to stay at the Four Seasons drinking themselves stupid and looking neither happy nor sophisticated, but rather helpless and irresponsible...
