The Dry Underground

“Get me a virgin!”

“Sir?”

“I want a virgin in my hand immediately!”

“Sorry, sir. Can you be a little more specific.”

“How’s this for you? I want a sweet tasting virgin wetting my lips like cactus juice to a thirsty desert dweller - salting my tongue with the perspiration that only hard, solid rocks can create around the rim of tender delight.”

“Ah, I understand you now, sir. One Mocktail Margarita with ice coming up.”

Jordi Waxer sat himself down on a stool, as he sidled up to the long bar on a late weekday evening. Situated in the trendy Soho speakeasy at the edge of London’s West End, it was noticeably void of any other customers - due to the government’s latest attempt at curbing public alcohol abuse. The declaration of a new law designated the whole month of January to be a dry month - in which no alcohol could be purchased or consumed in public places. On the final day of what so far the government had deemed a success; a certain edginess had creeped into the public psyche, causing an unanticipated side-effect of cynicism, verbal protest, and absence from all forms of physical social intercourse.

“Got anything I can get into my mouth?” Jordi suggestively asked.

“Will some nuts do?” The bartender asked – playing along.

“As long as they don’t trigger my allergy, I’ll take some.”

“You have a nut allergy, sir?”

“Only to ones that choke me,” Jordi continued his juvenile double entendre method of conversation. “Hey, listen,” he added more soberly. “Any chance of some real booze in my drink? After all, there’s no-one else in here to see.”

“Sorry, sir,” the bartender apologised. “When the law says Dry, it comes with legal trouble, if breached. Unfortunately, we’ve had to lock all alcohol away until the first of next month.”

“What is this?” protested Jordi. “Chicago in the 1920s? Do those nabobs in parliament realise the duress they’ve put us all under?”

“Well, as a bar owner, sir. I can only tell you that their edict has most definitely had a knock-on effect to our business. I’m running on a skeleton crew.”

Leaning across the bar, the bartender briefly glanced past Jordi’s shoulders. Feeling secure that no-one was sitting in any of the wall booth tables, he loudly whispered a small confession.

“Between you and me, I’ve had to resort to the Dry Underground to bring revenue in.”

“What’s that? Some type of transport job?”

Pouring some cocktail mix, ice, and lime juice into a shaker, the bartender closed the lid on the mixer, then dramatically – as if pre-rehearsed; shook it first over his left shoulder, then quickly switched to his right shoulder, before randomly shaking the ingredients, while answering Jordi’s question.

“The Dry Underground, sir, is a network of buyers and sellers of beer, wine, and spirits; helping to stock up people’s drinks cabinets in their homes. A bit like Uber Drinks instead of Uber Eats but ordered secretly on a phone App. It seems that overnight, the non-teetotalism sector of this country’s population has seemingly become closet drinkers to avoid public shaming.”

“That’s a bit cancel culture, isn’t it?”

“How so, sir?”

“Suddenly, drinking alcohol is not socially acceptable, and those caught imbibing get lambasted to the point of prosecution.”

“That’s today’s society, sir. New generations of influencers are raising the levels of social acceptance.”

“And lowering the levels of common sense,” added Jordi.

“Indeed, sir.”

Watching the bartender dip a clean margarita glass into a lime juice-filled rimming tray, Jordi continued airing his personal views.

“And what happens when the government decides that the population has gotten too fat? Are they going to re-introduce food rationing?”

“Who knows, sir,” the bartender distractedly replied, as he dipped the wet rim of the glass into a separate shallow tray – this one filled with salt.

“Perhaps, we’ll all be ordering from Uber Diets, instead,” he added. “It’s a young world, now. Full of young people with young ambitions, but an uncertain future.”

“Did you know,” Jordi changed topics. “Throughout history, the people that ran our government were always older. Do you know why?”

“Why, sir?”

“Because, they had gotten to an age where common sense overruled youthful ideology. A practical sense and sensibility empowered to make reasonable decisions, and the fortitude to keep the left in check, over there.”

“Over where, sir?”

“Over the English Channel.”

“Are you referring to Leftists, sir?”

“Yes, those that spread conspiracy theories and flat-Earth gobbledygook. The fascists.”

“Never really followed the trends out of Paris, sir.”

“I’m referring to fascism, not fashion.”

The wide grin on the bar owner’s face shook Jordi out of his rant.

“Oh,” Jordi acknowledged. “Got it! Let’s keep politics outside of your doors.”

“Quite frankly,” the bar owner offered up his viewpoint. “I never was one for politics.”

“Well, you should be,” Jordi insisted. “It is the duty of every one of the king’s subjects to challenge the system. I’ve been doing it since the Seventies of my youth.”

“Is that right, sir? You wear it well.”

“Thank you. I’m told that I was bred from a youthful gene pool.”

“No, sir. I meant the song title, You wear it well, by Rod Stewart. That was during your youth, was it not?”

“Yes. It came out at the tail end of the Skinhead movement, I recall. When being a Skinhead was a mere fashion statement – long before it was embraced by neo-Nazis, whose continuing dark association with fascism has completely ruined the innocence of the Fred Perry brand.”

“Were you a skinhead, sir?”

“Heavens, no! Public school banned us from even wearing a Ben Sherman shirt. To our educative overseers, the clothing represented something more militant.”

“Like the Boy Scouts, sir?”

“Ha! Very clever. You have the perfect wit for your vocation.”

“Thank you, sir. I try my best.”  

Without missing a beat, Jordi continued with his schoolboy recollections.

“However, the masters – in their self-centred wisdom, allowed us to have short, cropped hairstyles. I think it reminded most of them of their years in the king’s service killing foreigners. When they decided cropped hair was essential for attending lessons, we obdurately stopped going to the barber and grew our hair out. In protest, some of us even started wearing the iconic Levi 502 jeans, Doc Maarten boots, and Crombie coats; while others at the time, adopted a more hippie look with false wigs, bead bracelets, fur-lined coats, and ban-the-bomb necklaces.”

“Sounds like you’re not one for following rules, sir.”

“Not when they contravene freedom of expression. You know, the funny thing was that long hair, short hair, even no hair; we all got along with each other. If there is one thing education can teach, it’s respect. Unlike the secondary school educated youth who always seemed to have a problem with each other, even though you couldn’t really tell them apart – dressed as they were.”

“Familiarity breeds content - they say, sir.”

“It does indeed. However, their uneducated divisions appeared more tribal in demonstration.”

“Tribal, sir?”

“At the Church of Fanaticism – every Saturday afternoon.”

“You mean football, sir?”

“We had Ruggers, you see. They had football - the gentleman’s sport played by thugs, apparently. Whereas there are those that say rugby is a thug’s game played by gentlemen. If you think into that too deeply, one might say that broken-nose and cauliflower-eared gentlemen are just thugs in disguise. We appreciated the sporting gestures, of course; and the friendly rivalries between schools and teams. That should be what competition is all about. But all those cloned youths – dressed alike, hanging out below lampposts in the parking lots of council estates; were seemingly divided just by the colour of their football scarves. It’s amazing how two groups of like-minded people can be separated by a simple colour. Furthermore, it was surprising to me then; how I got caught up in the lower social ethics of that gentlemen’s game.”

“Red or blue, sir?”

“Well, I was a blue.”

“No, I meant the straw. What colour would you like?”

“…Blue, of course. Once blue, always blue – don’t you know. Due to that partisan sense of loyalty; to this day, I still can’t wear anything red. Lucky I’m conversative, wot?”

The bar owner hesitated, as he took in Jordi’s political declaration. Like his father before him and his father before him, the Labor party had been, and was the only voting choice in his family. Not wanting to be sucked into a pointless debate, the bar owner kept his focus primarily on football.

“Divisions have always run deep in the gentlemen’s game,” he offered up for conversation.

“Indeed, they do,” Jordi agreed, taking the bait. “Bit like world conflicts based on religion and geographic location. Everyone thinks they follow the righteous path, giving them a sense of superiority over the other.”

“Religion and politics, sir.”

“I do beg your pardon. Consider them parked outside your door. Not to be discussed within the confines of your handsome establishment.”

“No harm done.”

“…Rollerball had the right idea,” Jordi offered up his own conversational bait.

“Rollerball, sir?”

“Oh, forgive me. Another seventies thing. A movie starring James Caan.”

“Not seen it, sir.”

“It was set in the future where corporations ruled without challenge. Corporate teams of roller skaters dressed like American football players competed for dominance over each other. In the story, there are no wars, no sickness, no poverty, just Rollerball. But, with every game, the level of violence ramps up, until death becomes integral to the sport.”

“Fascinating, sir. And distinctly American.”

“Yes, indeed. Additionally, the film depicted that all books had been digitized and edited to suit corporations – stored on a supercomputer, called Zero. Then, when the protagonist queried Zero on who made corporate decisions, it refused to freely disseminate any of its information.”

“Intuitive concept for so long ago. I mean, the seventies still had reel-to-reel storage tapes in computers, and took up large spaces.”

“Quite perceptive of the writer - who must have been inspired by your forbidden bar topics.”

Dragging his thumb and forefinger across his lips, Jordi motioned his resolve to keep politics out in the cold, before continuing.

“In the film, James Caan’s character, Jonathan; becomes a cult hero, worrying the corporations, who subsequently plot to get rid of him. You see, his popularity threatened the essence of Rollerball – it’s underlying agenda, which was to instil into the public, the futility of individualism. Yet, there he was – innocently challenging corporate dominance, creating a schism in the fabric of corporate power.”

After several final shakes of the drinks shaker, the bartender scooped some ice into the margarita glass, then proceeded to pour the concoction into it.

“There you go. Voila! One Virgin Margarita on the rocks with salted glass rim.”

“I’ve just realised,” Jordi pointed out. “Our conversation has included a curious number of isms.”

“Isms, sir?”

“Systems of belief. Varying degrees of ideological philosophies. Take your Dry Underground, for instance. Your philosophy is to obey the rules and at the same time, to bend them. That’s another ism. A question of moralism.”

“Ah, sir. That’s a very debatable subject and a favourite of mine. You see, I’ve always been a believer that rules can’t be bent. Certainly, they can be stretched outside of their definition or intended meaning, or even broken. Bending implies that there is a place in the rule where you can not follow it, but still not have not followed it… How’s your drink?”

“Hmm? Oh, sorry.”

Using his straw, Jordi swilled his mocktail, then sipped some of it through the tube.

“Surprisingly good. But I can tell there’s no alcohol in it. What was all that about not have not followed?”

“It’s all about circumvention, sir. Ethics, in fact. Breaching the rules was not something we of the Dry Underground took lightly without careful consideration of the consequences, if discovered; and the potential propagation of the sickness that Dry January has attempted to tackle. The Dry Underground – in its stripped-down state, is like an antonym, an adversary of Dry January.”

“Hmm. A rival of equal measure.”

“A drinks joke. Very good, sir. Glad to see you’ve moved on from the innuendos.”

“Sorry. Innuendos and suggestive conversation are a lingering unappreciated product of my youth. Back then, the media saturated us with constant intimations in television programs from Benny Hill to Are you being served.”

“Before my time, sir. However, I have heard of Benny Hill. He is what the younger gen call, a perv.”

“It’s all a matter of perspective through time, I suppose. Old Benny was harmless, really. He just acted out the perceived archaic male intellect toward the fairer sex. But let’s focus on the alcohol industry, shall we? That is far from being an innocent bystander.”

“Sir?”

“Creating cocktails with names like A Slow comfortable screw against the wall, Sex on the beach, Blowjob. All breaking the Monty Python, nudge-nudge playful overtones of my generation. Full-on drink promotions and enticements that associate alcohol with fornication.”

“Yes, sir. A regrettable combination for some – come morning time.”

“Indeed. Guilty as charged at times. I used to joke that I never went to bed with an ugly woman, but most definitely woke up with a few. Of course, that was an insecure thing to say – simply borne out of narcissistic vanity.”

“You’ve left out a few drinks there, sir. There’s Slippery Nipple, Between the sheets, Screaming orgasm, The leg spreader, Bend over Shirley – to name some.”

“Poor Shirley. Forever labelled a loose drink… What’s in it, exactly?”

“Raspberry vodka, lemon-lime soda, and grenadine.”

“Why Shirley and not Emma or say, Gertrude?”

“Because it’s a modified Shirley Temple drink.”

“Isn’t that just ginger ale and grenadine with a maraschino cherry on top?”

“You know your drinks, sir! Yes, it is. But add vodka behind her with lemon-lime soda, and it’s supposed to make her a very naughty girl.”

“Rather sexist and disrespectful to Shirley, and all women – for that matter. In my day, the female persuasion was treated with a lot more respect.”

“Innuendos aside?”

“The sexual revolution was supposed to bring to light the argument that women also enjoyed sex.”

“Heaven forbid, sir!”

“Quite. Erm, sorry. Are you being facetious?”

“A little barroom banter, sir.”

“Ah, indeed. Fast forward fifty years and the new Ladette culture has them all behaving like men – getting drunk, freely fornicating, etcetera, etcetera.”

“You mean, behaving like men have always done, sir.”

“Precisely! I would hazard a guess and say that, as a result of our promiscuous philandering, humankind will eventually arrive full circle, and we’ll all be related to each other one day.”

“Like a global proverbial Tennessee.”

“Or the Royal Family.”

“Would you like another virgin, sir?”

“What!? Oh, I see you’re not shy of an innuendo or two.”

“It comes with the territory, sir.”

“No, I should be getting on home. I can only take a certain amount of mocking-tail in one evening. The drink – although tasty – just lacks the buzz one is comfortably familiar with when spiked.”

“But there is one thing to be said for this evening, sir.”

“What’s that?”

“The conversation was still stimulating.”

“You know, that’s quite accurate. Perhaps, pubs and bars are really the gathering places for interactional opinions, and that alcohol is just the ice breaker of silence. Without it, this place is well… just like a church gathering.”

Jordi’s vocal observation caused the bar owner to break out in muted applause – as he chuckled to himself.

“I’ve never looked on it that way, sir. But I may just get that printed onto a T-Shirt. Alcohol, the only religion. Yes, I like that. Although, the Dry January committee may censure me for that.”

The bar owner’s quip alerted Jordi to pose a controversial enquiry.

“I say, how would one go about ordering from the Dry Underground?”

“You can order straight from me, sir. However, the government has assigned a Dry January auditor to inspect my end-of-month stock, and he’s due at any time tonight. Anything short of the stock take at the beginning of the month could result in my loss of licence to sell alcohol.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that.”

“Why is that?”

“…I am the government-assigned auditor.”

Several uncomfortable moments of silence caused the bar owner’s heart to palpitate to stress level. Sensing this, Jordi smiled a comforting expression, grabbed a loose pen from the bar, and started scribbling on a napkin; before sliding it across the countertop.

“All stock present and accounted for,” Jordi declared. “That’s my address. How soon can you have a bottle of tequila and some margarita mix delivered to my door?”

With a sense of overwhelming relief, the bar owner pulled out his phone, tapped a few things into it, directed Jordi to pay-wave his smartphone on the transaction terminal, then handed Jordi his receipt. Quickly filing the bar receipt into a hidden drawer under the counter, he flashed Jordi an appreciative look.

“It will be waiting for you when you arrive home, sir,” the bar owner proudly answered.

“Splendid!” Jordi exclaimed. “Thank you for being such a purveyor of hospitality, and absorbing my petty opinions like a sponge soaking up water.”

“Like a sponge, sir, opinions eventually dry up. And what kind of bartender would I be, if I couldn’t offer a friendly ear to all who need a moan?”

Waving, Jordi turned to leave. Then, while exiting the door; he shouted back, “I shall return for one of your delicious cocktails when this damned nonsense has finished. Toodeloo!”

Looking at his watch, the bar owner decided it was time to close. Locking the door behind Jordi, he turned to face the bar – as a smile stretched across his face. Briefly surveying his surroundings, he muttered a verbal reminder to himself in anticipation of the deluge of customers expected the next day.

“I’d better bring up the reserve stock because it’s going to be a wet February. A very wet February…”