Schmucks Guide to Society: The Manhattan

My name is Connor and together we're gonna live the high life on a low budget. Welcome to the Schmucks Guide to Society.

Da da da da da. Start spreading the news, it’s Manhattan night over at the house enterprise school house of increased drinking stamina. I got my whiskey, I got my vermouth, I got my bitters, I got my maraschino cherries, but what I don’t have... is a friend.

Drinking alone is a sad and depressing activity I try not to partake in more than three times a week. Now that Christmas is coming up I’ve lost all yearning for solitudic drunkenness.

We are communal creatures, and we must be plastered together!

I pour my Manhattan into a coffee cup and hit the streets in search of compassion.

I go to the local bars, but they all turn me away, hurling obscenities at me. Obscenities like “It’s eleven am” and “It’s Tuesday”.

Do these people not get lonely? Have they no heart? Have they lost the spirit of Christmas? Do they want a sip of my Manhattan?

I roam the streets looking for a glimmer of camradery when I see a group of children playing on a swing set. I think how lovely and inspiring it must be to watch them, how it must fill me with inspiration and memories of forgotten youth.

Then I think about how I am a fully grown man and the parents at the park would think I’m a pedophile, so I keep walking.

Along the streets I roam, rambling by my lonesome, no home or woman to hold me down (except of course the room where I live in my mothers’ house).

I see a postman making his daily rounds.

“Hello mister postman” I say as a casual greeting I read in a book years ago called ‘How to Talk to Postmen’.

The postman waves back.

“Would you like to try a sip of my manhattan?” I offer the coffee cup.

The postman fake laughs and keeps walking. I chase after him.

“Hey, mister postman! Mister postman!!”

The postman breaks into a sprint, rushing away from me. His postman legs move quite swiftly, which is impressive for his age. He flees, leaving me in the dust still without a friend.

Last time I read a book.

Back to square one, just me and my Manhattan in a coffee cup. I guess now is a good time to recount my Manhattan recipe:

2 Counts Whiskey

1 count sweet vermouth

2 dashes bitters

Stir it up

Punch yourself in the schpfantz

Take a sip.

Ah, the liquid equivalent of being surrounded by 9 million people and not talking to anyone.

So delightful and so lonely all at once.