The Virginia

Cats Dig Me, over at Hollander Space , has a posting concerning the Virginia Cafe, right here in downtown P-Diddy. His is a story about being a real live a-dult, and mine concerns my twenty-first birthday.
It should be noted that I was in a miserable mood that evening. Dead end job, working to support both girlfriend and daughter on same, and furthermore had sworn off the drinking of alcohol and the smoking of cigarettes three years previous. So what, exactly was there for me to celebrate, except another year of survival?
However, kinda like your bachelor party, this is for your friends, not you. So off we go.
First stop was The American Cafe and Bar (currently known as the side of The Rialto where there are no pool tables), where I was alone for a moment, afore the resta the folks showed up. I knew nothing of mixed drinks, and decided to order something that at least I knew tasted good: a Singapore Sling.
Yeah, I know. I hear ya' laughin' out there. What happened next I kind of deserved, but...Well anyway, I order the damn thing, and barely looking up, the barman says, "We don't serve them fuckin' frou-frou drinks in here, man."
But it's my birthday, and...What I then said was, "How 'bout a bourbon n' Seven? Is that a manly enough drink for you?"
He actually thought about it for a minute before mutely nodding his head. Funny thing is, he didn't seem to have a problem with it later on when my friend came in and ordered me a Flaming Orgasm, which I didn't want.
Somewhere in here, Lady Miss Kitty Love sweeps on in, skirts trailing in her wake, and plunks down at the table with a pronounced list to starboard. The man asks what she'll be having, perhaps not noticing that her lids are at half-mast, and she chuckles a bit beofre looking at him and saying, "Water." So she'd already been out hittin' it, and the guy who ordered me the Flaming Orgasm, Bear, had just turned 21 himself not all that long before. He had terrified his mother on that occasion by saying that he planned to spend the evening going around town colecting free drinks until he fell down. He did it, too.
From that place, we then moved on to Mary's Spot. It was a lesbian bar, and we all knew it. In those days, there was a lot more segregation between the Orientations, and our arrival, being largely male, was not viewed in a good light.
I handed my identification to the lady at the bar, and she said, "You've only been twenty-one for an hour or two."
Trying to make light, I said, "Well, it's kinda like being 'a little pregnant', right? I mean, I'm twenty-one," with a little laugh. And not gettin' any younger, I was thinking.
Instead of just doing the right thing, our lady looks over at the bouncer-this e-n-o-r-m-o-u-s woman-and says, "Should we serve 'im?"
Lady at the door just shakes her head no, without a single word.
Bear starts to argue, as if that's gonna help, and I dissuade him by saying, "Nope. Nope. Let's go. Why would we wanna drink with a buncha assssholes like this anyway?" We left, and wandered over to The Virginia.
From way back in my club days, I had noticed that joint. It always looked so classy, and is yet another one of the I-swear-twelve bars in Portland that claim to be The Oldest. It isn't, but that didn't matter. It had that look of cocktail society, grownups dressed all nice and acting silly, with a slight tinge of The Past in there, which I loved. None of this changed the fact that the place is still a college bar, and gets packed as hell with screaming meemees of every sort, most nights. This was the case on my birthday, as well.
I mean, the joint was five deep at least around the bar (there wasn't any room for the thirteen or so that Cats spoke of), and even though I was a neophyte when it came to bars, I knew that there was just no way we were gonna get served.
Bear again does his number in which he angers a bar server, in some vain attempt to get served, leading to the man, busy as he was, to follow our asses into the street, where I already was, and then mediated the situation by telling Bear to calm the fuck down, and the barman that maybe he should go back inside and start selling alcohol to his customers.
What can I tell you? Three bars, and I'd only had two drinks. I needed to get up and go to work in the morning, so I walked home, pausing briefly to masturbate in a pile of pallets.
I don't know what that was about either. When it's my birthday, I usually make it a point to say out loud, at the beginning of the day, "It's my birthday, and I can do whatever I want!", so I guess that's it.