“Pour the whiskey into that half-clean glass, and dont you dare forget my ice” he smiled,  and then calmly yelled back as he pointed to my left at a moderate stack of glasses. I discovered what he had meant by ‘half-clean’, with a quick horizontal skim of the glasses spread around before me. I really should take some time to properly clean my glasses.

I didn’t really have much time anymore though, i had important things to take care of, things that mattered, a clean glass was the least of my worries. My customers never really seemed to mind anyways. I had inherited this bar from my father after he died,  he also left me a note in an envelope with the words ‘instructions’ quickly jotted down in black pen.

They simply read “Don’t fuck this one up, like you do everything else, Love Dad.” I topped off the glass with dark-brown bourbon and dropped in an ice-cube, and then released a sigh of relief. “How’s that drink looking, jack?” his words startle me out of a self-induced coma, as i grab the drink i had just poured and quickly turned around facing my accusor “Now… you know that my name isn’t Jack. How long have you been drinking at this bar that you don’t even remember a mans name?” I place a glass in front of him, satisfied at my service. I create an amnesia in men, few seem to recognize this as a gift.

This gives me an idea, i truly wanted to know if this man even remembered my name, that is if i could remember his. I start to stutter outloud sounding like a damn retard, trying to gain a grasp on who this fellow was, i remember that the first letter of his name was also the fifth letter of the alphabet. The only reason that this mneumonic worked for me is because after five shots he was done, and we no longer need to be acqainted. The bartending business is not very far off course from prostitution, however, if my male customers discovered this they would find new means to make themselves useless. Muttering under my breath, while counting each of my fingers until i reached the thumb “a,b,c,d…E!, Edgar.., Edgar, do you actually remember my name?” To my astonishment without even blinking he whispered in that raspy voice “Mitch” and gulped down what had been left of the whiskey i had just got him, at this point i didn’t even know if that was right or wrong, but the amount of confidence this man had made me believe my name was indeed Mitch. A loud slam rang through the air as the glass hit the bar, and he proceded to wipe his mouth, and remove the expression of bad whiskey from his face. “You used to make them so much stronger, what happened to you, aye..are you trying to rip me off?” I stood there dazed trying to remember if my name was actually Mitch, or if there were any alternatives, all i could hear was a muffled pissed off old man in the distance, but all i could see was a dingy reflection of myself from the back area i had been looking at when i had asked Edgar the question.