Bookstores

Bookstores are great places. You look seem like a better person just for walking in the door. People think you're a smarter, more sensitive person just for being there. You can’t help but play up to that. I like to make sure I'm catching the eye of the cute girls - 'yeah, that's right, baby. I'm in the philosophy section. No sci-fi for me. I'm a real man. I don't even wear glasses or anything. I'm not even a virgin... technically.'

The best part about bookstores is they're like libraries - except they're well stocked, adequately staffed and don't smell of children and old people. You can saunter in, read a bunch of blurbs and leave with a whole canon of fodder (see what I did there?) for dinner parties. Who am I kidding? My friends don't have dinner parties. They have souvlakis at three in the morning in an attempt to cork the inevitable geyser of frothy, yeasty vomit fermenting below. There are, of course, many opportunities for sterling intellectual repartee before the great greasy lamb-damming, but the satisfaction of passing-off someone else's great idea as your own lacks a little lustre when no one can remember your brilliance the next day. More's the pity.

One such great concept I recently flogged came from a book about habit, ritual and addiction. I think it was called "Habit, Ritual & Addiction" - these academics bore the shit out of people for a living, the title is nothing if not fitting. The work riffed on this idea of 'mythicised participation' which particularly tickled my nuts. It was a critique on how modern man, stripped of religion and his affinity with the land, has no ritual in his life. Listless and without community, he turns to the drink. The only solace left to seek is that in this "mythical" perception that when he drinks, he is actually part of something - a socially acceptable pastime. A way of life.

There's no activity so ambivalently righteous and wretched as drinking. A night slamming cans can make or break a man. Make or break. Sometimes the difference is only a pint in either direction. I've seen it. I've been it. But, for the most part, we drinking men who are neither great nor garish live comfortably cushioned in the ether of the inbetween. Our boozy buffer from the world of 'real human moments' is only ever as alienating as the particular stool we choose at that evening's bar. Thankfully now we have the endearing exile of outdoor smoking to draw us closer together - the mythical is practically tangible.

Bars are great places. You seem like a better person just for walking in the door. People think you're a cooler, more interesting person just for being there. You can't help but play up to that. I like to make sure I'm catching the ey of the cute girls - 'yeah, that's right baby. I'm having casual conversation with the bartender. He totally knows me. And look at the size of the beer I'm drinking! It's like a fucking fish bowl! Oh, yeah I'm a real man. If I could see you across the room without closing one eye, I might even try to talk to you. Maybe I need glasses... maybe then I wouldn't be a virgin... technically.'