What does having a few drinks mean to you?  Does it mean a brief getaway from the stress of the work week and the real world? Does it mean a chance to get with friends and let loose with a couple cold ones and some chatter? Does it mean that after a few cocktails the weight of the world tends to fall from your shoulders and everything, and I mean everything, seems to be okay!?

Oh, it's funny! As the guy who pours all these drinks for all these drinkers, you might think that I would have all these answers. And as a writer, you might think I've written about all these scenarios. I mean, who else would be more qualified?  One might think that I could tell the hard core drinkers from the more social drinkers. One might think that I was the expert on determining when enough was enough. One might think up any number of strange happenings, but the truth of the matter is that I don't have the faintest clue what a few drinks mean to you.

Everyone drinks for their own reasons and sometimes those reasons don't seem to make any sense whatsoever.  Sometimes people look at me and say, "You have the best job in the world!"  And sometimes I do have the best job in the world, but sometimes I don't.  Sometimes I meet amazingly-creative-awesome-witty-people; other times people truly suck. For the most part people simply amaze me.

You know why I'm amazed? It's because a person's insides hardly ever match their outsides.  And I mean it!  Physically, I've seen the 5 foot 1 inch brunette weighing 105 pounds drink the 300 pound big man under the table.  Mentally, I've heard the sweet, innocent, little Southern belle open her mouth and talk more trash than any hard-nosed city boy from Detroit could even think of.  Sexually, I've been hit on by every kind of guy and women in every way imaginable, and sometimes it scares me. Like the time when the 75 year old grandmother of 8 decided to come back at closing time to see if the 34 year old bar keep (me) had any interest in "rocking her world!"  Or the time when three gay men from San Francisco, in town for the weekend, offered to fly me to and from the Vineyard for the night. "...with maybe a stop off in P-town for breakfast," they considered.

Back to my original point of what a drink means to you... Well, that drink could mean any number of things to any number of people, but there's one tendency that I see in too many drinkers and I wish it would change. And that tendency is this: When you come into my bar, bummed out or depressed or sad, and say that, 'everything is great', when you're asked how you're doing!  The fact of the matter is that things suck for you at that moment and yet you can't say things suck until you've had a few pops to loosen up. Oh well! So it goes. I guess it's better being lied to then having a grandmother of 8 wanting to rock your world. 

By Jay Cole

Jay Cole is the owner of Riva restaurant in Scituate harbor and has an M.A. in creative writing. As Wink's Male Muse, he entertains us with stories about the women and men who enter his bar.