mgmcintyre

[mgmcintyre]

Lease Old And Own Lush

Halifax is a city in name only, in a lot of ways. I'm not one of those people that just slags it off for fun, I genuinely like it here, but that's reality. We've only got a couple hundred thousand in the city proper, we lack the amenities that larger cities draw to them by virtue of the population density, and getting a decent band to travel here for a concert costs an arm and a leg and your life savings (trust me, I'm still paying it off). But we're the eastern hub of our country, we're the capital city of the Maritimes, arguably, and that leads us to straddle the definition somewhat. We get some big city things, but we keep some of the small town charm. Less shootings, more stabbings, that kind of thing. And the best part of being a small town that pretends to be a big city is that things stay the same. Not all the things, that would suck, things need to change, evolve, get with the times. But certain things you need to stay the same. To keep them as psychic anchors. To make sure you have one place to run when you just need a minute.

Tom's was that kind of place.

"Tom's Little Havana" isn't what anyone who goes there has called it in a dozen years or so, but that's what it was originally. A cuban themed cigar bar, tucked into a narrow, high ceiling'd slot in an old department of education building on Doyle street. For those of you too young to remember smoking in bars, I will tell you three things: smoking is stupid and will kill you, I haven't smoked in over a year, and if you told me this second I could light a cigarette or cigar at my table at whatever bar I was in I would immediately find one to light. Call it nostalgia I guess, but this is a eulogy for a bar. They had this big humidor and you could nab a cuban and smoke it with your scotch or beer. Sometimes you couldn't smoke cigarettes. Sometimes you could. Depended on who was working.

I don't think I ever went there when all the toilets were working at once. One time I went into the men's room and a guy was standing by the sink with his dick out, peeing into the stall and the toilet about seven feet away. The urinal was covered with a garbage bag. The spare stall was open, adorned with a printer paper sign, originally saying 'Please Hold Down To Flush'. In pen, someone had changed it to 'Lease Old And Own Lush'.

You read about dive bars that people loved, either journalists or literary figures or barflies, and they talk in this reverential tone that I never properly understood. They talked of the dirty floor tiles and the chipped tables and the cracking leather on the stool like it was a holy land they were hoping to visit again some day. I liked going to Toms, sure, but I wasn't about to pray at the alter. But then I realized all these people were writing about bars that didn't exist anymore. No one laments something that's still there.

Tom's shut down the original location because of development, and moved to the space on Birmingham. It was a converted mall front space, which was a little weird for sure, but it was weird as hell to me because part of it occupied the same space as a wine store I spent a year unhappily working in before changing my entire life and going back to school. So it felt like kismet to me. They brought the wall mural and booths and tables to the new space, so if you got enough of a drunk on it was like a weird dream. Like someone was making a film about the old Tom's with a slightly better budget.

They lost a lot of casual customers on that initial move to the new space, but the core regulars were there first day first pour. I bartended for four years, worked in liquor stores for 5 before that, the regulars at Toms are real regulars. Gus' Pub has them too. Charlie's has them. Characters. Back stories. Feuds. Someone chatted up the others ex-wife sixteen years ago and I'll be damned if I share a bar with him, unless he's buying.

The reason they have real regulars is because of their real bartenders. Ian, Angie, Crusher, Mark, a dozen others I can't remember because I always just nodded to them and never needed to order a drink. To work a room like that alone takes a lot of skill. In the industry we referred to Tom's as Bartender Retirement, because no one could possibly work there before running through the gamut of every problem there is and end up a master of juggling tasks and people. I never once gave a bartender a credit card for a tab at Tom's, and my bill was more or less accurate. Well. It was never more than I had. It was frequently less, especially in the old days. With a nod and a wink.

My pals became my friends became my family at Tom's. Tom Collins with Conor, scotch with Tristan, endless pints with Jeremy (IPA) and Kris (Keith's with a side car of lime cordial from a bottle they kept behind the bar for him). I celebrated parts of four birthdays at Tom's. I made the stupidest financial decision of my life at Tom's. I drank off two very bad break-up's at Tom's, one for a night and the other for three months.

A girl I used to know told me about a first date she went on at the old Tom's. They tucked into a quiet table around the back corner. He told her he was kind of broke, but he had brought a bottle of wine in his backpack and if they could just get glasses, he could open it with a pen. I think that's fucking beautiful.

Being nostalgic about the places you used to get drunk and make stupid life choices is incredibly ugly behaviour I'm sure, in anyone but yourself. But you still drift off into those Facebook photos after a few glasses of wine. Thinking about what it was like to be so young, or so thin, or so stressed, or so free. When I think about Tom's I don't think of 'good' memories. I think of memories. It's like a first house. Tom's was the first place I felt at home, that I felt like anyone could be at home. Tom's didn't judge. It's Tuesday at 3pm and you need a beer, haven't seen you in two months but let's talk about that fantasy novel I recommended, how's your dad?

I said I love you to my friends more times at Tom's than I think in any other room in this world. That's just what Tom's was for. It was for backgammon and card games and a coffee with something in it and talking about the play or the novel or the music festival or the movie or the new job or the new love or the new life you were working on. It was about eulogies and congratulations, hope and despair, laughter and tears.

It's a stupid sickness I have, to care so much about brick and mortar and kegs and table cloths. But the quiet comfort of that one solitary booth was everything to me when I needed it. That one stolen glance, that laughter echoing off every wall and reverberating in your chest, that sparkle of energy at 9pm on a Friday night telling you 'yes, this is real, this is good, this is your life, and you belong here'.

[mgmcintyre]

Anyone Still Up

We, the few and tired, drunk, weary, blind to the clocks on the walls and phones and laptops and taxicab dashboards we struggle toward the dawn with the quicksand limbs of something already dead or so near its beyond caring. We night shift zombies, bartenders, nurses, students, loners listeners peering down from balconies at the half plowed streets wishing just anyone or anything would walk through that door and make us a cup of tea and ask how our day was. Our books piled on side tables Our Netflix cue perpetually half watched Our novels unwritten, songs unfinished, screenplays unedited, paintings gracefully tucked away in closets until we can really get those reds how they should be if only we had the time. Our lovers, bored of our long sleeps and late awakenings, left, onward to a sunnier disposition and an easier schedule to maintain more's the pity. We, the broken hearted, we the cleaners and fixers of the world, we the many and the few, the cue in the drive thru at quarter to five, we the lost and wandering and lonely and alone, staring at our phones, thinking I wonder if they're up too?

[mgmcintyre]

Crow Song

And now the waters have risen And the crows have come home There’s a spark in the air Smells of ashes and bones

There’s a lake in the distance But I’m here on the shore I just have to keep walking But I can’t walk anymore

I will see you again In the warm afternoon In the blazing October With the chill of the moon

I will be with you always Til The crows have no wings Til the ravens are silent And the seagulls won’t sing

I will be with you endless If you’ll wait for me still I can see the horizon Past the crest of each hill

Well the church bells are broken And they lie in the pews And the demons and devils And the Christians and Jews

They’ve all gathered in darkness All exchanging their hymns And they sing to the silence And the water and wind

I will do anything If you give me a sign I will paint you a mural If you lend me some time

I will worship your ashes I will bend to your might If you banish the darkness And bring me the light

But the shores still are empty The rivers run high There’s a crack through the highway And there’s fire in the sky

And I just keep on walking Don’t know how far it goes All I’ve got is my song And the river and crows

Somewhere the summers are endless And the waters don’t freeze There’s a sweet smell of sage fire On a warm August breeze

Where the forests still flourish And the beaches aren’t black Where the oceans still sapphire And alters aren’t cracked

In that Elysium dream You will come back to me And we’ll walk through the shadows Of the canopied trees

And I’ll sing to you softly Of the waters that flowed And the ravens and seagulls And the rivers and crows.

#poetry

[mgmcintyre]

Crackle and Hum

Did that kind of love ever really exist. In shop front window displays and pop songs and paintings and novels, maybe so but did it ever really exist, those hot summer storms filled with petrichor and steam and desperate, clinging, longing, did we live those or imagine them or invent them as a noble lie to sing us back to sleep like soul music from an old car radio, the crackle and hum rocking us gently as we meander through the wooded country road nestled deep within the nighttime of our memories and minds.

If it never existed, we would have created it, the Rockwell painting of our love warm tones and rose cheeks and baseball and malt shoppes, comic books and skinned knees to keep our minds away from the darkness and the pain and the loneliness and honour, the privilege of glorious victory painted in muted ceramic, all those beautiful lies.

Did I ever love something so much more than I loved myself, or was that a lie too? Dreaming of those beaches and holidays and long winter nights memories scotch taped into our photo album, a prophecy of ‘love which has yet come to pass’.

You were there, I’m sure you were, big eyed and blonde and witty and warm and pulling me toward you in alleyways and bathrooms, bedrooms and floors, whispering film reel promises against my ear

I’m going to kiss you like the war is over.

and then gone.

The war is over now. Surrendered, white flag snapping in the wind, relics of our country’s good scattered on beaches, bronze plaques set in the old stone to commemorate those lives lost and lingering, the solemn faces of our matinee idol rememberences, haunting this desolate place eternal in the pursuit of happiness and peace and a soft place to lay ones head at night.

#poetry