A Potent Publican Primer: Red Square

Nora couldn’t get the name of the bar right to save her life. It was “the Red Hexagon.” “The Red Parallelogram.” “The Red Circle.” It ended up being fitting. Madison couldn't close her tab without another shot of tequila. We came full-circle from drunk to drunk.

If they have a live DJ, it is probably the best place in Burlington to dance, other than at a show at High Ground or Nectar’s. The sleeze category of Lift or Rasputin’s stays at Lift or Rasputin’s, and the place is smaller, more intimate. Dress ranges from 30-something women in their J. Crew “going out” dresses to college students who wander in in the same tank and shorts they wore to North Beach earlier in the day. The waitresses are good. Capable. Veteran. They have to be.

Bouncers are another story. The bouncer looks at my ID, then back up at me. “You just made it,” he tells me. I want to fist my hands in my hair and scream. It’s been this way for the past few days. Kind hostesses wish me a happy belated birthday; bald and beefy security men eye me up and down and offer me a gruff “Congratulations,”; and these tall and weedy pricks at the trendy bars make a huge fucking deal about the fact that 2, 4, or 14 days ago, they would have gotten to bounce me out on my size 6 ass. I want to tell him I was probably drinking before he was. (It could be true.) Instead, I smile tightly and slip into what Alli has dubbed the “heinous bitch” demeanor.

Over a week later. Same bar. Could be the same bouncer, but then again, they all look the same, as if their high school basketball starting-forward days were the best they ever had and ever will have. Same dilemma. “So how’s it feel?” he asks me as I retrieve my ID from him and start to slide in the front door. I decide this jig is up and I’m tired, like so lately in life, of being continuously run over and pretending to not care.

“Well. I just came back from 4 months in Italy, so the bar scene is not new. And I figure, I just now legally get to do everything I’ve been doing since I was 14, so, it’s no big deal, right?”

He looks confused, like he wasn’t expecting that much information, and then just nods. “Yeah.”

The problem with the Red Four-Equilateral-Sided-Shape is, it’s where everyone wants to see and be seen under the mortician’s red lighting. The seats that spill into the alley and onto Church Street are prime see-and-be-seen territory. Some of my older friends, who I used to consider helplessly cool and aloof and just slightly affected in that way that all college students hope they come off as “worldly”, become much more human to me as I watch them shell out three bucks for a can of PBR and perch on the wrought iron chairs, trying, and failing, to look like it still isn’t a big deal. They are, like me, much more at home in the darker, quieter, wood-paneled bars, but if you are over 21, and if you’re in Burlington, you still feel this inexplicable need to go to Red Square, where the drinks are overpriced, the cocktails are almost too heavy on the liquor, the lighting is atrocious, and yet, you can’t help but wanting to be a part of it all.

And at the end of the night, what are you left without, other than an impending hangover in the morning?

Intextication. It's what happens on your cell phone when you get drunk. Luckily for some of us, the quick text link to Twitter is right beneath other phone numbers in our Favorites list, and we end up sending some of those texts to Twitter instead of the intended recipient. Rendering us a little less annoying, and the Twitterverse a bit more amused.

Intoxuation. It's fleeting infatuation that only occurs while you're slurring. So, texting things like "I miss you" at 3 AM while fueled with beer and rum is not the best idea. Because you can guarantee that when you wake up the next morning, you'll still be mad, and not only still mad, but now mad and mortified.

There hasn't been a dryspell like this since Jagger sung "I can't get no SAT-IS-FAC-TION!" In the end, I even kept space between me and George.

XOXO