Doctorgrosz

Tonight, we shutter the doors at Moe’s.  We’ll try to drink everything that isn’t nailed down and there will probably be a crowbar on-hand just in case the need to drink more arises.  I’m sure tears will be shed and the Clean Air Act will float away on an April breeze when the first cigarette is lit up indoors some time around midnight.  Photographs will be snapped and queries about the future of that famous velvet painting will number in the triple digits (personally, I think it should be burned ceremoniously in the street - if WE can’t have it, no one should).

I’ve met a treasure trove of wonderful people in that bar - people who saw past race, age and sexual orientation for the love of a fine drink and even finer company - people with whom I now take vacations and celebrate holidays because they have truly become my Family.  People whom I love for their beauty and accept for their flaws, because that’s what Family does.

Someone once told me that they didn’t like Moe’s because it was too “cliquey” and I suppose it could appear that way, but it’s just because we’re protective of our kith and kin.  A man who I now consider to be one of my closest friends spent over a month of happy hours staring at me sideways.  When we were finally introduced to one another by Butch the bartender, we spent the next three hours discussing everything from theoretical physics to fine art.  Years later, I proudly stood beside him at his wedding.  In fact, not only did Butch introduce several couples who later got married - he even performed a wedding for two of his loyal customers.

That’s Family.

You could leave a spare set of your house keys there or have UPS deliver to their address.  Moe’s was the perfect place for a pair of pints (two-for-one from 3-8pm) while you waited for your dryer cycle to finish up at the laundromat across the street.  It was the foyer where I would welcome out-of-town guests and it was the first place they wanted to go on their next visit.  Whenever my friend Vito would give me a ride after band practice he’d always ask, “Are you going Home or to your apartment?”  It was only half a joke.

Of course, as with any family gathering, there’s always a couple of assholes who you’re just related to by marriage instead of by blood.  There’s the guy I call “B-Cat” who always wears sunglasses at night and screams into his cell phone “I’M A PRODUCER, YO, AND I WANT THAT MONEY YOU OWE ME!”  (It wasn’t hard to tell that the phone’s batteries were dead).  I remember nearly taking a left hook to the face because a coked-up thug didn’t like the fact that I was talking to a couple of black women.  And the list of people who aren’t very good at picking up the social clues that I don’t want to be spoken to after a hard day is a few pages long - but I know that they mean well.  After all, you can’t choose your Family, now can you?  Even Drunk Old Mel - the closest thing we had to a Bukowski protagonist - could be pretty amusing when he wasn’t wetting his pants or falling off of his barstool.  I’ve carried that old drunkard home on more than one occasion.  That’s what Family does.

“What are you going to do when Moe’s closes?”  

I’ve been asked that question time and time again and I don’t have too many concrete answers.  “Drink less and save money” seems like an attractive if mildly unrealistic proposition.  “Find a new place for us to meet” seems even less likely, if just for reasons of strategy and geography.  I guess I’ll find out the answer tomorrow, provided that my hangover won’t have stripped away all of my mental faculties.  After all, there’s no way I could have told you that I’d be inheriting a Family when I walked into that bar eight years ago, so the future is still unwritten.

So, tonight I raise my glass to my Family and to the unbreakable ties that Family creates… whether you like being related to me or not.