“He staggered into my bar and struggled to climb atop the bar stool. He ordered a cranberry/vodka and I sized him up pretty quickly; I pushed a glass of straight cranberry juice towards him, thinking that if he couldn’t tell I had left the vodka out of his drink, it would be all the better given the condition he was in. He paid me, took a sip and had a look around. Soon, he was attempting to infiltrate different groups of people, none of whom wished to be bothered by this drunken butterfly. While I was deciding whether he’d had enough (to say nothing of the people he was bothering), he found his way over to the pool table where a tall, good-looking gay man and his friends were enjoying a game of billiards. I served another couple of drinks and when I looked back over, the tall man had the troublesome little drunk hoisted above his head and was shouting, ‘Are you going to behave yourself?’ The tall man then lowered him gently to the ground and handed him a pool cue. For the rest of the night he played pool with his new keepers and, yes, he did behave himself. The gay men even paid for the little drunk’s virgin cocktails.”

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