It always bugs me to see someone at a proper bar who lacks for manners. It's one thing to act the ass at some horrible after-work bar that lives and dies by its jalapeno poppers, but if you're anywhere that traffics in decent-to-great cocktails, wine or even craft beer, there's definitely a code of etiquette. Follow these simple examples to make sure you're earning the adult privilege of alcohol.
Being a lush is, like writing, a fundamentally solitary activity. Perhaps that's why so many writers have had famous drinking habits. Most people feel uncomfortable going to bars alone for a variety of reasons. Women don't like to go alone when they don't feel like being hit on, and even then it's far less troubling to invite advances with a friend at one's side. Others simply don't enjoy alcohol enough on its own merits to seek it out, in public, on their own. Bars are strange places. Like hotels, they're deeply social places wrapped in a conceit of privacy everyone knows is mostly imaginary. The lush is, among other things, a person who has come to terms with the concept of drinking alone in a public place. The lush likes alcohol for what it is and not necessarily as a social lubricant or cure-all for emotional despair. And so, the lush, finding a way to remain calm and dignified while getting high in public, finds himself often surrounded by those who are at the bar for different reasons. In this scenario, the lush is a drunk's best friend, whether the lush likes it or not.
