Eric Alperin - Unvarnished: A Gimlet-eyed Look at Life Behind the Bar

They say I have talent.

Four years as a theater major at Mason Gross School of the Arts, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the world of professional acting awaits! But without a planor an agent, or any money at allI find myself moving back into my parents house in Westchester, New York, living in the very room Id spent years excited to get the fuck out of.

My parents give me three months. After four, they fork over first, last, and security for a 187-square-foot apartment on Avenue D for $1,200 a month.

I promise to pay them back.

I register at a temp agency that places me in positions worthy of a college grad and spend my days sitting at ugly desks in ugly offices in ugly Midtown trying not to die of boredom. There is nothing for me to do in these jobs. I answer the phone once in a while. Copy some stuff. My job is just a placebo to make people feel like somethings getting done when exactly nothings getting done. I do my best to stop nodding out from monotony. Everyone thinks Im a junkie, but I just need stimulation.

The same day the temp manager hands me a paycheck tucked inside a Betty Ford brochure, I spot an advertisement for a bartending school on the subway. I cant afford it, but my mothers sympathetic (more so than my father) and ponies up the deposit.

I promise to pay her back.

The two Italian brothers from New Jersey running the school teach me every drink in the lexicon of the National Bartenders School compendium: sticky, Technicolor eighties highballs and forgotten classics. They stress the dirty martini, the fuzzy navel, the grasshopper, Cape Cods, 7&7s, Jack & Cokes. I make notecards and study them with my mom. I pass. Place my National Bartenders School diploma on my wall next to my university BFA diploma.

Im a double threat!

The brothers get me a catering job and I quit temping to spend my summer afternoons poured into overstarched white button-down shirts, highly flammable black Dickies pants, sometimes a clip-on bow tie, always a three-pocketed black apron. I stand behind makeshift tables draped in black tablecloths too low for any person over five feet to effectively work behind and make drinks for coked-up financiers throwing themselves parties. Pass hors doeuvres to eccentric art doyennes in SoHo galleries filled with immersive art. Clean up after drunk wedding party guests floating up the Hudson. One night, bartending the after-party for Henry IV at Lincoln Center, Im surprised and ashamed to run into a college classmate understudying the lead.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I hate cater bartending.

I lie my way into a gig at a club called Cream, on the Upper West Side, where I start off barbacking on the floor. Move up to barbacking behind the bar. Finally Im in my own well pouring drinks and realize I have every applicable neurosis for working in a bar: Im really good at keeping credit cards organized. I can track who just walked in, whos been waiting forever, who cut the line, and who needs a fresh drink. Im also super at keeping my tools organized, which helps me work fast, which impresses people, which makes them throw money at me, which is awesome.

I land an agent and get cast in a play off-off-off-off-etc.-Broadway. My GM, a former dancer, covers my shifts in exchange for working Sunday and Monday nights, which means less money, but this is my career were talking about! I have to suffer for my art, so yes!

I take the shifts and the play is a hit and gets extended and my GM isnt so cool about it anymore.

Im fired.

Making a total of $200 a week on an Equity contract for seven shows a week means I can no longer afford my apartment on Avenue D.

Shit. Fuck. Shit.

I call my parents, and they tell me to call my godparents, who tell me about a room to let on the second floor of their building on Washington Square Park. I move in with Milt Machlina septuagenarian who guzzles Gato Negro wine and eats chicken livers. The rent is cheap, but I still need a job, so I pad my rsum and get hired at the Screening Room, in Tribecaa revolutionary movie theater/restaurant/bar concept. I feel totally at home behind the forty-foot bar slinging cosmopolitans, which are on every cocktail menu south of Canal. The place isnt disco busy like Cream, but even when its slow, its interestingI talk to the old man about his days as a Beat poet in San Francisco in the fifties; the single girl about her job as an alligator wrestler in Jupiter, Florida; the firemen from FDNY Ladder 8 about their closest calls. And guess what? They respond when I ask them questions! It makes them feel important that Ive singled them out and makes me feel purposeful, and before I know it everyone is talking to everyone else and Im the star of the show.

One night, that classmate of mine from Henry IV comes in to meet a date and is pumped to see me slinging at this fancy joint. I buy them a round and feel like the leading man.

New York is a different city now that I know every bartender/barback/waiter/waitress south of Fourteenth Streetseafood towers at Blue Ribbon, cocaine and fortune-tellers at Raouls, Sunday dance parties at Body & Soulmy new crew work at places Id previously only read about and they usher me in, ply me with free drinks and drugs, and let me stay well past close.

I leave the Screening Room when Im ready for something more serious and land at Lupa Osteria Romana, on Thompson Street. Its my first time working in fine dining, and my mind is blown. I love the pre-service staff lineup, where we taste the dishes, recite their ingredients, and learn how to describe them to guests. I start mixing drinks with all the weird stuff behind the bargrappa, amaro, kumquat cordials, and fresh citrus squeezed la minute. But the wine flows heavier than the cocktails, and when I do get calls, theyre usually for shaken-extra dirty Ketel martinis. Even when those calls come from Kathleen Turners graveled alto, I know this isnt it for me. The problem is, I dont know what it is. Until the night I stumble into Sasha Petraskes Milk & Honey bar, on Eldridge Street. You know all those times you go out hoping to fall in love and dont fall in love because life doesnt work like that? I wasnt walking into M&H thinking of anything other than getting lit and getting loud, because it was supposed to be the bomb and it was my birthday. I didnt know M&H was a classic cocktail bar. Shit, I didnt even know there was such a thing as a classic cocktail bar.

But once I knew, I couldnt unknow. And when I fell, I fell hard.

Six months later, I wrangle myself a position at Little BranchSasha Petraskes new spot. I make enough my first month to pay my parents back. At home, I clock the diplomas on my bedroom wall. Realize my National Bartenders School diploma is worth way more than my university BFA. But thats just temporary, and right now Im feeling pretty good. Im working in one of the coolest spots in the city, my agent hasnt dropped me, and, to top it off, I have a date Friday night with a narcoleptic stuntwoman named Courtney.