A STORY ABOUT BEER
On this first drinking session there was no cannabis. Nevertheless there was beer, wine, vodka, maybe a little cranberry juice, several packets of sweets, crisps and a messy kebab from Esperantos round the corner. Barry, Hamish, Emmett and James went to the off-licence.
The off-licence was just south of Tate’s Avenue on the Lisburn Road. It was a pokey place, small for a place that served such a large community. The main way the proprietor overcame this problem was to pile beer ceiling high – it was a low ceiling – in boxes of twenty-four and let the incomers lift their Carlsberg or Guinness or Harp or Tennants. They then circled round the stack towards the counter. Occasionally there were more obscure beers on offer along the walls, amongst which was one entitled Michelobb. It became a great staple drink of the Pinkonians. For now the four contented themselves with regular Carlsberg and Harp.
They got back to the house. Neil Steed and Levin MacHill were chatting on opposite sofas. The livingroom, Barry noted once again, was a large one. Big enough to contain many crates, parties and whiskey bottles. Strong enough to hold out during massive protracted speaking-for-hours-on-end with good folks in lengthy and very happiness-inducing session. This would do, he judged, for his last year at university. Study, hard study, and much booze, both, mixed in quantities that only a properly focused individual could handle. He cracked open a bottle with an opener that lay on top of the TV. The filthy beer foamed up and Barry, eyes lighting, quickly slurped the open top to stop the precious liquid dripping on the floor.
Levin McCochall entered the room. There was a moment of muted conversation as if the piano player had ceased to patter. Barry, unaware that within hours he and Levin would be facing shotgun at each other, looked at the stranger carefully. Levin sauntered over to an empty armchair and slouched down into it. There was a free-wheeling demeanour to the kid of which Barry could only approve.
Crumpled cans and the tabs of refreshed Heineken and several Carlsberg bubbled forth with a click and histle while submerged sentences weaved in a cacophonous tapestry of wild dogs hunting termites and scholarly Chopin argonauts. This was what Barry liked to hear. Words and phrases buzzed like flies around the corpse of some slain animal. The first flushes of conversation were always the best, the mixed sense of alcohol and freedom which stimulated the mind into a not altogether fearful symmetry. Barry liked the way they spoke and listened to each other, as if there were a real meshing and melding, though the garbage used to interlace the meeting was unremarkable to say the least. Yes, spiky sympathy skewered them on the same roast.
At some point in the evening there somehow came to be a challenge. The precise origin was hazy; it was probably inherently hazy, like Quine’s doctrine of indeterminacy. The challenge came before Barry Mitchell and Levin McCochall. It no doubt developed during the course of conversation, growing organically like a tree. Since they were drinking much beer. Probably Barry was recounting to Levin a mode of drinking that Levin had not encountered before. Levin had (and still has) a fascination with formal methods of doing things, outlandish practices and imaginative activities. As soon as Barry outlined the method, which we will describe shortly, Levin wanted to try it. Barry went to the kitchen and courtesy of Levin MacHill sourced two shot glasses. And an accurate watch.
‘This watch has a second hand.’ He showed Levin.
Levin took the watch and examined it. ‘Yep.’
‘Are you sure you want to do this? It could end with either of us as limpid as squashed toads on a road.’
Levin gave him a withering look.
‘Ok, let’s do it.’
They drank beer.
On the 61st minute Levin began to feel distinctly queasy and stopped.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘How long is this supposed to go on for?’
Barry shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
Levin stuck out his tongue and rubbed his bloated belly. ‘It’s the amount of liquid – the beer isn’t the difficulty, it’s the friggin’ volume,’ he complained. In truth his flushed face gave him away: he was not suffering just from an excess of intake-ache-ation, but also from acute intoxication. Further: the curve had just begun.
‘How much, do you reckon?’
Levin, without changing his prostate position on the armchair, rubbed his belly, raised an arm and gingerly lifted one of the Harp bottles. He cast an eye over the label.
‘Uhh. 330mls.’
Barry checked the shot glasses. He made a rough estimate of their probable carrying capacity. It seemed to him most likely to be 50 mls.
‘If that’s 50 mls and the bottle is 330 mls …’ There is a reason that people don’t do mental arithmetic drunk: you can’t be assed. ‘330 mls … six, or seven. Shots in a bottle. 60 shots …’
‘Naw. We missed a whole pile out.’
‘Mm. What then, 40?’
‘Aye … probably.’
‘That’s about … 40, about six bottles.’
‘Six bottle in one hour?’ asked Emmett.
‘Aye,’ confirmed Barry.
Levin winced and grimaced. There seemed to be some evil competition going on inside his body. A vicious struggle between the forces of alcohol and sobriety. Or so it seemed to Barry. Barry observed the tell-tale signs, the independent rotation of the visual orbs, the spotted red of the cheeks, the insensitive blaring and honking of the music. The latter was also a symptom.
James came over to look. Had he known Levin better at this point he may have pestered him continuously for the next forty minutes until Levin became pathological. As it was James confined himself to saying that Levin was fucked – fucked indeed. Levin gave the fellow a two-fingered salute.
‘I’m goin’ for a piss. Don’t no-one take my seat while I’m gone,’ Levin said.
Barry got to the chair first. Emmett had anticipated this and made a lunge but Barry pushed him aside. Emmett sunk his teeth into the armchair in defiance.
‘Fuck you!’ he said.
‘How the glorious victors in battle do boast,’ said Barry, boasting and laughing.
Levin stood at the door, giving the pair a look of pain and disgust. He left the room without any further comment.
‘Levin looked wounded,’ James observed.
‘His liver is wounded,’ said Barry.
Emmett nodded. He glanced about the room with a look of pain. He shielded his eyes from the glare of the naked bulb.
‘Time to sort this situation out,’ he said.
Emmett switched on a lamp in the corner in preference to the hundred watts from the ceiling.
Empty beer cans and bottles lay strewn across the floor. Videos spilt from the space beneath the TV. Several crumpled 1L cartons of orange squeezed out from behind the sofa. The remains of an Esperanto kebab languished in a yellow polystyrene box, and a fork was jabbed into it, like a fork jabbed into the side of society. An ashtray mounted hill-like with James’ cigarettes occupied the armrest of a chair. Clothes – coats and jumpers – lay scattered in hapless irregularity. The people themselves lay in just as slovenly a state, nattering and chatting about things that hardly lay within the realm of human ken.
The people themselves, I say, occupied all the available seating space with extended limbs and languorous, intoxicated eyes. Neil Steed sat talking to Levin MacHill on the sofa next to the door. Emmett, James and Hamish debated the fortunes of football teams in the English Premier League. Barry, like a hawk on a high perch, appraised the world, taking in a glance every gesture and motion of the people in the room. He caught a word of Neil’s discourse with MacHill and lurched himself over there.
Half an hour later Levin staggered back in.
Barry looked up, surprised. ‘I thought you’d gone to bed,’ he said.
Levin rolled his eyes and shook his head. He walked to his armchair, vacant since Barry had joined Neil and MacHill on the sofa. Flopping into it he stared at everyone with something like malevolent content.
Led Zep were on the stereo. Emmett kept them going by pla
ying air guitar. ‘Where were you dude?’ he asked, after a magnificent solo.
‘Kitchen,’ he said.
Levin picked up the shot glass from the low table beside him where it remained after the recent exercise. He absent-mindedly turned it in his fingers, only seeming to notice it when it fell with a clatter.
Barry observed all this with interest: the arched eyebrows above the tired eyes, the tapping, hesitant fingers on the armrest, the faint look of disappointment curling the lips that belied a fierce probing spirit locked within. Barry thought it likely something might happen.
Emmett got up and put some other music on the stereo. Neil Young’s clear voice came through the speakers.
Hello cowgirl in the sand,
(Hello cowgirl in the sand)
Levin took the shot glass in his hand again. He looked up at Barry and nodded significantly at the small tumbler.
Barry stroked an invisible beard and bobbed his own head back.
‘You up for it sir?’ asked Levin.
Barry rose from the sofa and left the room.
Is this place at your command?
Hamish looked at Levin with some amusement. ‘You goin’ to keep on with the shots?’
Levin seemed bemused. ‘That was my plan, before Barry left the room.’
Emmett and James were in an entirely separate zone. ‘There’s something about Neil Young that’s indefinably excellent,’ said Emmett.
‘He’s all right,’ said James.
Can I stay here for a while?
Can I see your sweet sweet smile?
Barry came slamming through the livingroom door again with his arms full of Harp bottles from the fridge.
‘All right!’ said Levin.
Barry plonked them down on the small table beside the armchair.
‘Every three minutes this time. See if we can get up to a hundred.’
‘Naw,’ said Levin with a severe frown; ‘every minute. Or nothing.’
‘Naw man. Every three minutes. One minute’s too fast; it’s meant to be every three minutes.’
Levin was adamant. ‘No. Every minute. That’s the only way – one every minute.’
Barry shook his head. ‘No, man. One every three minutes. That’s it.’
Old enough now to change your name
‘Ok,’ said Levin.
‘Good,’ said Barry.
When so many love you, is it the same?
Barry laid out the shots and used the same timekeeper as before. The thin hand reached zero.
‘Right, drink,’ he said.
It’s the woman in you that makes you want to play this game.
Barry and Levin drank, with only two brief pauses, for the next two and a half hours. They almost certainly reached one hundred shots, if the previous forty are counted. They got trollied.