Drunk of the Day: The Terrifying Tongue

Lord, that looks like a slug! I think he’s trying to lick the moisture off his pal’s forehead.

(Hard) Liquor-Free Libations

Who needs liquor? Not me! For Metromix today, I penned a piece on cocktails crafted sans booze. Read it up!

Drunk of the Day: The $1 Boozer

 

Oh, what do we have here? Some farty-smarty who’s too good to get made fun of? Not quite. For Metromix today, I’ve penned another Dollar Grub feature—this one about beer. Watch me slowly devolve into a drunken mess!

Drunk of the Day: Fashion Is Smashing

Drunkenness: It makes all of us think we can dress like a ’90s candy raver yet again. Menthol cigarettes, anyone?

Gut Instinct: Laverne and Surly

“Now listen here,” says the lady in pink, eyes bouncing like lottery balls. “That’s Laverne. Don’t kill her.”

I sip my Corona and carefully select my nouns and verbs. “We’re not going to kill her,” I say, pointing to a leafy, globe-size plant topping the rickety table. My drinking companions nod vigorously. We are many things—drunks, emotional cripples, Midwesterners—but not murderers.

“I named that plant after my mom,” she says, her pony-tailed head bobbing like an oil well.

“My mom also named a plant after her mom,” I say. My inquisitor looks pleased. I continue, “The Grandma Alice. My parents have had her for decades.”

“Is it still alive?” she asks. Translation: Are you a homicidal maniac?

“Still blooming,” I say, owing more to my dad’s green thumb than my black, wizened digit.

She smiles, satisfied. “I’m Devondra, the daytime bartender.” She extends her festive fingernails. “Welcome to the Stop Inn.”

This 34-year-old dive (432 Nostrand Ave. betw. Madison St. & Putnam Ave., B’klyn) blends into Bed-Stuy’s low-slung landscape like gum on a sidewalk. There’s no awning. Dim lights. The only identifying characteristic is a hand-painted red stop sign. I’ve pedaled past frequently, watching folks drink, converse and—

“Can I help you?” asked a fedora-topped gent one eve.

“No, no,” I mumbled, a shamefaced Peeping Tom. I biked away with haste, my tail or something floppier tucked between my legs.

But tonight, curiosity has finally sent several cohorts and I across the buzzer-entry threshold. We nod to seasoned, middle-aged drinkers—“Mmmhmm,” says one—and peruse the booze. Dusty champagne bottles sit beside a fridge filled with Corona, Guinness, Heineken and Bud. The floral-shirted bartender drums her long, brown fingers. Behind her awaits a sturdy baseball bat.

“What’s your specialty?” I inquire.

“Beer and liquor,” comes the answer. I deserved that.

We order a domestic-beer trio: $10. Not bad. Even better, the bartender pops our bottle tops and wipes the mouths with white napkins, then tucked inside like a Molotov cocktail.

“Enjoy, sweeties,” she says, passing us bottles like they’re brown-bagged school lunches. Lord, mom-aged bartenders are the best.

We escort our beers to a deep booth, near the window, when Devondra shuffles over. “I’m not going to lie,” she says, wrapping up her Laverne lecture, “but I’ve had a bit to drink. I’m not crazy; I just talk a lot. You tell me when I should go.”

“Stay, stay,” I say. Alcohol enhances any story. She leans over our table. We lean forward.

“You really got to pluck out Laverne’s dead leaves,” she says. “It’s a lot of work.” Well, alcohol enhances almost any conversation. Nonetheless, Devondra is a good-natured blowhard with an easy laugh. Her motor-mouth discourse eventually winds from horticulture to love (“Treat your women right!”) to speakeasies.

“Nostrand Avenue was once lined with after-hours clubs,” she says, her eyes misting over with early-morning reminiscences. “But they’re all gone. We almost were too, after a fire a couple years ago”—that explains the fresh paint, the unscuffed tables—“but we survived. We’re licensed. We can sell beer and liquor, but no mixers.”

“Why no mixers?” I ask.

“You know what?”

“Uh…”

“Today I won $7 in scratch-off tickets. And I want to buy you all a drink.”

Really? Typically, no one wants to—or should—buy me another drink. She purchases beers and a plastic cup brimming with ice and Jack.

“Can you handle that?” she asks, appraising my straw arms and chunky specs.

“Please,” I say. I swig whiskey like water, which is my eyes’ response. She nods, pleased. A soul song comes alive, something bass-heavy and sensual, and Devondra sashays to her barstool.

We drink our freebies, our smiles unaided by booze. Many moons have passed since I’ve visited such a welcoming watering hole. Stop Inn belongs to a dwindling breed: It’s a neighborhood bar built on bonhomie, not the bottom line. Sure, there’s danger (no baseball bat to my forehead, please) and kooks, but I’ll take eccentricities and inexpensive drinks over another TV-packed tavern or techno-pumping cocktail lounge.

“Where are you going?” Devondra asks, as we bus our empty bottles. Home. Sleep.

“You’re not leaving before I kiss everyone,” she says, puckering up.

I point to my lips. She nods. Does this constitute cheating?

“No,” she says, chiding me. “I’m not that kind of woman.” 

One by one she smooches our cheeks, her lips leaving their pink mark. “I’ll see you soon,” she says. “And when you come back, don’t kill Laverne!” 

Drunk of the Day: More Tongue, Mysterious Hands

It almost looks like he’s possessed by some devilish spirit…like tequila.

Drunk of the Day: Men. I’m Confused

Why is there always one dude in the crew who insists on removing his shirt to reveal a barely toned, slightly hairy body?

Little Italy’s Hidden Gems

Mmm…prosciutto bread. Look, I uncover tasty Little Italy finds for Metromix. Huzzah, clogged arteries!

Drunk of the Day: Get Forked

Lord, this picture makes me nostalgic for high school, when all I needed to be happy was a sixer of Busch Light and an all-night diner serving greasy, greasy eggs. I had Waffle House and Perkins. You?

Drunk of the Day: Sleeping Beauty

Ah, the perfect tableau of youth. Now where is that kid’s right hand? Hmm…

Gut Instinct: Something Fishy

I clasp the spicy Mexican between my chopsticks and mutter a prayer: Please don’t let me vomit. Please don’t let me vomit. If I vomit, let me do it quietly and into a napkin.

Eyes shut, mouth open, I plop that union of tuna, rice, cucumber and tempura flakes onto my tongue and grind it between my molars. The firm fish dissolves into the crisp cucumber and crunchy flakes, while a squiggle of fired-up mayo unscrews my sinuses. I grab a napkin. With haste.

“Are you going to puke?” asks my dining partner Emily, her brown eyes wide. She scoots back. Around us at cartoon-decorated sushi emporium Geido (331 Flatbush Ave. betw. Park & Prospect Pls., B’klyn; 718-638-8866), lively seafood lovers munch crabby California rolls and recently alive eel.

“No, no,” I say, audibly emptying my mucous membrane into a napkin. A lesbian couple to my left looks up, aghast. “I’m aces. That was actually…good.”

I pat my belly like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Emily is flabbergasted, as if I insisted pigs could fly or Sarah Palin isn’t the antichrist. At 30 years and 29 days, I’d finally eaten sushi.

Ever since I stopped weaning, I’ve despised seafood. Fluke, flounder, salmon, haddock, what have you: If it lived underwater, it wouldn’t cross my lips. The aversion was strong, absolute and utterly idiotic. And I blame my mother.

My mom is a strong woman whose compassion and sharp smarts have led her to her profession’s pinnacle, as a nursing-home administrator. More impressively, she loves me unconditionally, despite my porno-editor past, the brain-shocking medical experiments—and most damning, recently writing about how she blasted me with breast milk.

“I read your story,” she said on the phone. I squirmed in my seat, caught red-handed at committing family-secret treason. The woman was first-rate at doling out guilt.

Her skills stem from being raised Catholic in then-rough Washington Heights. That meant loads of church and fish Fridays. Hers was a strict household, and she was forced to eat every oily, odorous morsel before bedtime. Strong-arming someone into an activity—be it eating flounder, playing the piano or performing oral sex—often conditions a Pavlovian aversion. Fittingly, my mother grew to abhor water-born cuisine—save for, inexplicably, clam chowder and the sporadic tuna-fish sandwich.

“I just don’t like other fish, Josh,” my mother explained to me at an early, impressionable age. Those words were cattle-branded into my gray matter, forming an indelible dining code. I love my mom. My mom hates fish, and so do I. My brother and sister followed in seafood-loathing concert. My omnivorous father was crestfallen.

“Our kids are corrupted,” he’d half-joke, as our family dined on medium-rare flank steak or perhaps stir-fried ginger chicken. Dad only consumed seafood at restaurants, devouring shrimp or scallops like Eve’s forbidden fruit.

Puberty brought changes to both my siblings’ bodies and taste buds. My younger, taller brother started willfully, even eagerly ingesting fish and shrimp. So did my curly-tressed sis. Even my mother experimented with salmon. As they drifted from the fish-hating ranks, I remained a clueless insurgent, fighting a war against seafood I was unsure I supported.

Like a college freshman experimenting with lesbianism, how could I be certain of my seafood odium unless I dined on Nemo and his kin? Two years ago, I tweaked my dining DNA by moving to Portland, Maine. For a month, I subsisted on buttery lobster rolls and creamy clam chowder, deep-fried cod planks and golden commas of shrimp. They were delectable, though you could probably deep-fry dirt or coat earthworms in garlic butter and I’d find them appetizing.

I returned to New York with expanded horizons and a new girlfriend. Fittingly, she was a New England–reared pescetarian. She accelerated my sea change—with mockery. “I can’t believe you never ate seafood,” she said, shaking her head slow and steady, in that special way that women reduce men to sniveling, insecure hairballs. “You need more.”

Over the coming months we traveled to New England, dining on gritty clam bellies at Kittery, Maine’s Bob’s Clam Hut. At Old Saybrook, Connecticut’s Johnny Ad’s Drive-In, I gobbled scallops topped with thick tartar sauce. Rochester, New Hampshire’s Windjammers saw me clean my plate of crunchy haddock and a side of clam strips.

“Good job,” my girlfriend said, like I was a canine that finally stopped wetting the carpet and peed outside. I beamed. Mommy, I’m a big boy! Red Hook soccer-field ceviche, Kefi calamari and that Geido sushi loomed, raw and wondrously weird, just like my other idiosyncrasies.

“Now that seafood’s conquered,” my girlfriend said, “perhaps we can do something about the oral sex.”

Drunk of the Day: Here, Kitty Kitty

Luckily, he made it to the kitty litter before disaster struck.