It’s Back to Work I Go … Diary of a Male Bartender Prostitute…

Bartender? … Prostitute?

… synonyms really …

You didn’t know that?

Well, I didn’t either until …

Hold on, I don’t want to confuse you, so let me retreat a bit here.

A few weeks back, for some fun and variety, I spent 4 hours each day, Monday to Friday, at Bartending School in Kelowna. Plunk down $400 tuition and a week later you finish with an official Bartender’s Diploma.

Hour after hour, I mixed and poured about 5 billion drinks of coloured water that looked like fancy cocktails into chilled martini glasses and shooter glasses and highball glasses. “Would you like that as a double?”

Then, the following week, with my official Bartender’s Certificate in hand, I went to a few local Penticton restaurants and dropped off my resume asking for a day or two a week of bartending work.

Within hours of leaving my resume behind, one of my very favourite restaurants, a local Greek culinary landmark, interviewed me and, in a moment of obvious weakness – or perhaps heat stroke – they offered me a shot at being one of their bartenders.

“Hell yeah”, I said.

And now, looking like Sam Malone in Cheers, I’ve run and sweated and poured and mixed my way through 3 bartending shifts.

And despite feeling exhausted at the end of each stint, I kinda like this stuff.

Especially the Prostitution part. Yeah yeah, I’ll explain that in just a minute.

It’s a hot summer here in the Okanagan Valley, so I’ve dished up a ton of chilly Pinot Gris wine and foamy Cannery Brewery draft beers and spicy Caesars and even a few Mojitos and GreyHounds and Gin and Tonics.

I’m still waiting for my first requests for the candy-coloured fluffy drinks – a Red-Headed Slut or a Cosmopolitan or a Singapore Sling, but I can be patient. Manhattans weren’t built in a day.

OK… now let’s go back to the beginning of this story where I told you that bartenders and male prostitutes are kinda the same thing.

Prostitutes offer a desired service that makes their customer feel warm and fuzzy and light-headed, maybe even a bit flushed and elated (I won’t go into detail of the services offered right here if that’s alright, you can paint that libidinous picture according to your own desires and carnal proclivities).

And then the client hands them cash in appreciation for the service. Right? Am I right?

Well, I’ve just discovered, bartenders do the same thing.

I stand behind the bar, wiping the counter with a bar rag, looking so understanding and approachable. My warm eyes tell you that you could rip your heart out, hot blood pulsing onto the bar top, and hand it to me and I’d just nod in empathy, all ears for you.

Then I pour my client a shot of Ouzo or Baileys on the Rocks. I know I’m helping to make that individual feel warm and fuzzy and light-headed, maybe even a bit flushed and elated.

When they’ve finished their meal and drinks and reached their happy place, they slip a few appreciative dollars to the gaggle of (mostly) female servers (pimpettes).

At the close of the evening when it’s dark and the humid night air begins to cool – after the satisfied customers have all departed with a spent sense of inner serenity, the (mostly) female servers come to me one by one.

Quietly, they each slip me a few $5 or $10 bills in appreciation for the “happy” services I’ve rendered their clients throughout the evening.

I smile at them and flush a tiny bit as I accept the cash they call “tips”.

I feel a tiny bit dirty accepting payment this way, but I manage to quash my moral “inner voice”, rationalizing – perhaps fooling myself – that no one is actually being hurt because of the services I offer.

In my head I whisper soothing things like what I do is keeping the economy humming along.

It’s always said that Prostitution is the oldest profession.

I beg to differ.

Alcohol and bartending surely must have been precursors to sales of the flesh.

Who believes that alcohol wasn’t served as a soothing prequel to the idea of paid passionate pairing?

Just watch any movie about bawdy houses, brothels, whore houses… they all begin with “appetizer” drinks served liberally around before couples slip away to private quarters for the “main entree”.

Yes, bartenders have been prostituting themselves ever since Jurassic beasts abandoned our neighbourhoods and we humans rose up on our feet and discovered fermentation.

Today, I’m proud to go to work in what truly is the world’s oldest profession…

And you can take those $$ to the bank.