When the winter finally comes, everything changes. I feel like I’ve been banging my head against a wall all Autumn and the wall is still there, but my damn head has split open and all the happiness and hope and pleasure and desire has fallen on the floor like a broken yolk. The wind comes through the studio windows and the mice chew through the sheet rock walls.
I go down to the bar and the beer helps as long as the money holds out and that’s not very long. I’m drinking Budweiser because it’s cheapest and the guy next to me is drinking Bud too.
“It’s beer at least,” I say to him.
“Right,” he says, uninterested.
“It’s the cheapest stuff here,” I say.
“I like Bud,” he says.
“Have you ever had the real stuff?” I ask.
“I’m having it now,” he says.
I start explaining how the real Budweiser is from a city in Czechoslovakia: Budweis … and is one of the oldest and best Lagers in European history… That’s why the American’s stole the name for this rice and corn beer shit… It’s nothing like the Czech beer which is lagered in enormous pitch lined barrels… full of flavor.
“I like Bud,” he says…. And besides we all rest on the shoulders of giants. A lot of great things were inspired by Europe. You seen that hotel in Las Vegas? Looks just like Venice, but clean and with gambling and strippers. Awesome.”
I start explaining how the name Budweiser has been used for hundreds of years to describe beers from Budwies, but only since Prohibition here. Nobody cared with all the troubles in Europe. It only became an issue since the Iron Curtain fell and the Czech republic looks to export the few things it has to export… which is more or less: beer, vodka, and guns. Anhauser Busch sued them to prevent them from selling their beer under it’s traditional name… “the name they stole. It’s one thing to rest on the shoulder’s of giants, but the reality is that Bud is now the giant and it won’t get off the shoulders of Budweiser… it’s trying to keep them down…. I’d like to live in a world where we all just rest on the shoulder’s of average sized men.”
“That sounds like Communism,” the guy says.
“No that sounds like democracy.”
“Tell the truth. Are you or have you ever been a Communist?”
“No. Just an average sized guy who likes decent beer, but can’t afford it.”
“I’ll buy you a Bud,” the guy says. “It’s decent beer.”
“Why not?” I say.
It’s cold and actally tastes delicious and we talk and drink and smile and later I stumble home half drunk in a whisper of snow. In the morning I’m miserably dry mouthed from the kicking steam heat and the anesthetic qualities of Budweiser.
