Malachy's Blues

I got an incredible case of the Malachy's Blues tonight.  

It was less of the classic mournful rainy day sing into your Guiness kind that the joint is famous for.  The place is a gem, albeit in need of a polish, and is one of the last great Irish with a capitol I, Erin Go Braugh, dives on the Upper West Side,  There's a bartender named Fenton with a bonafide brogue, if you know what I mean.

It's like Cheers only dirtier, and if Sam Malone was a mean, barking brogue speaker who teaches Catholic school during the day,  and I played both the parts of Carla and Diane.

Back to my blues, since this is my narcissistic blog.

I was pouring two  thick pints of Guiness somewhere around 8- an activity I generally find really Zen- and waves of something kept rising in me.  Nothing was wrong.  I felt okay, but the tears were beginning to brim.  So much so in fact, that I did that dumb thing you do when you're about to cry- open your eyes bigger and bigger with the hope that if the eye socket is big enough it will somehow stop the sob.

Maybe I'm becoming Irish.

I am prone to ethnic osmosis.  In the dark days of Williamsburg, I assumed a very cracked out Puerto Rican persona.  In the East Village I was especially bitchy in that Ukranian way.  And the Upper West Side, my current locale, has provided the neurotic/natural fit of the  Jewishish writer/actor, who scribbles notes about her misery in dark dank pubs called Malachy's.

Maybe it was the jukebox barrage of classic NYC suicide songs that had me down.  There's only so many times one can hear, "New York State of Mind."  Or perhaps it was the same old sweet, slightly pathetic crowd of career alcoholics that line the bar.  Everyone has their unofficial assigned seat and if someone is missing, it goes noticed,  This bar is their living room, life, and their family.  

But probably it was just the sometimes overwhelming feeling that life is relentless and I too am relentless and tired and I wish to never serve another pint of anything for the rest of my life.

  Then again, it could just be hormones.

Whate'er it be, I've got the Malachy's blues.  Oh yah.