Scotland: Day 4 Part I

(Quick note: I took a trip to Scotland in April, 2014. After spending an amazingly long time not writing about it, and forgetting which friends I'd told which stories to, I decided to post my experiences over the next few days. I am not back-dating these entries, but know that they occurred last year and that I am not writing intentionally with the benefit of eight months of hindsight.)

• Thursday: arrive in Edinburgh. Nap. Go out drinking.
• Friday: wander the neighborhood. Nap. Show starts at 7:30.
• Saturday: train to Inverness. Show starts around 9:00.
• Sunday: wander the neighborhood. Nap. Go out drinking.
• Monday: train to Edinburgh. Wander the neighborhood. Nap. Go out drinking.
• Tuesday: wander the neighborhood. Nap. Go out drinking.
• Wednesday: fly back to Seattle.

Day four, Sunday, started off with a massive bit of sleeping. I rolled out of my hotel room around 2:00, got food (from McDonald's... that's authentic Scottish cuisine, right?), and wandered the Earth. Or at least I walked around for a few hours.

I visited another cemetery. I saw a weird store that seemed to have American junk food as its focus. I had a delicious dinner with a waiter who was utterly incapable of working my autofocusing cameraphone.

And when I was done wandering: I had absolutely no idea what to do next.

The previous three nights had been rather structured, with the serendipitous karaoke bar and then back-to-back nights of amazing-music-I-love awesomeness.

But there I was, around 8:00 with only "go out drinking" as my plan. And it was Saturday night.

What could I do? I had to go out drinking.

I went to several bars (way more bars than I would have guessed a 72,000 person town would have had). I think that I ended up going to about six bars/clubs that night. It was nuts.

One was a great mix of men and women, gender-wise, but it had the strangest age distribution I've ever seen. Specifically, it was young women and old men. As an old man and a fan of young women, I am generally in favor of this, but I think I need to use italics to say they were old men. It was so odd that I feel compelled to create this ultra-scientific chart to communicate the reality:

It was, perhaps, the most alien I felt on my whole trip. Not only were they all speaking with heavy accents, and not only were they dressed like they last shopped in 2003... semi-serious American metropolitan snobbery aside, the age distribution just blew my mind. Old guys being flirted with by women half their age. It might happen in Seattle, too (and, in fact, I wouldn't mind being there when it did!), but in its totality the scene was very odd.

It might have been that, for once on my trip, I was more sober than everyone else. I was playing catch-up, but we're talking "Someone call an ambulance, Earl fell down the stairs and cracked his head open"-level of drunk. I took the arrival of the paramedics as a good time for me to leave.

A couple of bars later, I went to one that  had the best jukebox I've ever seen. Not that I've seen THAT many jukeboxes, but this one will be tough to beat by any ones I see in the future. I think it was, like, connected to the Internet or something and it had songs I'd never seen on a jukebox before. I actually ended up txting a couple of friends about it that night, which shows you how oddly excited I was.

I also, not surprisingly given the intimate nature of Inverness, saw a couple of the same people I'd seen at the OMYW ("Old men, young women") bar... by this time, I'd had enough booze to be more conversational and, shockingly, the women had transformed into more attractive creatures.

Also not surprisingly, I said something wrong--or did something wrong, or something--when I approached a pair of ladies from the OMYW place. I received the coldest shoulder I received the entire time I was in Scotland. After determining, internally, that I was a couple of decades too young for their tastes, I finished my drink and went to the next place.

The next place turned out to be a club that was simultaneously the most empty and most discotech-like I've ever entered.

As I sat in a booth, talking to two kind but plain women, I sipped on another couple of drinks and marveled at the lights in the floor and how the place was still open in spite of being almost entirely empty. It was a Sunday night/Monday morning, but the place had a fog machine up and running! It was kind of amazing, but I needed to keep on moving.


Eventually, after another stop or two, I settled in a bar that was right around the corner from my hotel... to be fair, everything was pretty close to my hotel.

This place was odd. It was odd in at least two ways:

• It had two distinct wings. I don't know if they had two buildings that they simply merged by knocking a wall down or what, but two distinct bar areas existed, and there were few places where you could move (or even see) between the two spaces.
• I got cut off.

I have, or, rather had, never EVER been cut off by a bartender. I've almost certainly deserved to be, but I never had been.

We need a map. Each number on the map corresponds with part of my little story, below.

When I approached a bartender in the "left" wing of the bar for a (presumably last for the evening) drink, she did the unthinkable: she said no. (See: location 1 on the map.)

Now, granted: I should be used to hearing "no" from women. The monosyllabic expression is so omnipresent in my life that I often liken it to a throbbing social tinnitus.

"No, I don't want to go out with you again"? OK.
"No, I prefer not to watch more Tim & Eric"? Fine.
"No, I won't invite her to join us in bed"? Understandable.

But "No, I won't serve you more alcohol"?

That just confuses me. The words all make sense individually, but strung together, they are gibberish. "No, orange DVD air or ponytail" would have resonated with me at the same level.

After I parsed out her meaning, which I'll admit is rather straightforward on the surface, even accounting for her funny-talking ways, I think I strung together a series of statements and queries that ranged from, "What?" to "Why?" and "Huh?" and "Are you kidding? I'm not even that drunk..."

But she would not be swayed.

So I shook my head in disappointment (in her, as a human, even more than in my lack of more alcohol) but I didn't give up.

Her bar was an island. Not emotionally, as far as I could tell, but a bar surrounded by potential patrons. So I simply walked to the other side of the island and ordered from another bartender. (Location 2.)

Or a tried to.

Instead, Original B saw my efforts and cut across the area and told me I couldn't have a drink.

It still didn't make sense to me, but I was starting to get a bit peeved.

I performed a tactical retreat, though, and moved to the other wing of the establishment. I wandered to the right wing and, upon entering, stood there, waiting to order. (Location 3.)

30 seconds later, a bouncer tapped me on the shoulder and said that I wasn't supposed to have more. I must have made an "Are you shitting me?" face because he shrugged and pointed back to the other wing, where Original B had a DIRECT line of sight to where I was standing (one of the only connectors between the two wings) and I shook my head. Defeated.

Seemingly.

I slumped my shoulders and walked down the bar, towards the exit in the right wing. I slowed. I looked around for Original B and the bouncer. They were nowhere to be found. So I ordered another drink. (Location 4.) And tipped the SHIT out of the bartender that served me.

Success!

As the semi-foul liquid slid down my throat strange thoughts popped into my head (am I right, ladies?)... did I just want to drink the alcohol? Or did I want more?

Obviously, I want more. Because I will never get my comeuppance.

So I downed about 80% of it and walked back up along the bar, turning left towards the Original B's bar.

I spied her and I put a big smile on my face and I finished my drink. And I slammed the glass down in front of her immediately after. (Location 5.)

At that point, I moved REALLY quickly to get the fuck out of the bar. I don't know if she was rolling her eyes or sputtering indignantly or lighting up the "kick the American's ass" bat-signal, but I wasn't gonna wait around to find out.

I made it outside (location 6) without incident. I was not tackled. No one threw anything at me. I did not fall down (see? Not that drunk!). I escaped.

But I didn't keep walking to my hotel room. It might have been three o'clock in the morning, but I had about seven hours before I had to catch my train back to Edinburgh, and I wanted to see if Inverness had more adventure for me.

And it did.