EPISODE #1: Drinkers In Disguise.

He talked with a fake British accent. Lots of people do nowadays. Experimenting with the Queen’s English can be popular with chicks and it leaves an impression of sophistication and intelligence that would be an unlikely impression otherwise. To his credit, this dude did have an ever-so-slight resemblance to the Roger Moore 007. One popular stunt perpetrated by all fake Brits is the guess-the-origin-of-my-phony-accent game. Here’s a handy tip: you’ll never, EVER, guess where his accent is from. “Hey, is that a British accent?” “Nope, Australian.” In the fake accent community, they’re big on mystery, so no matter what you say they will always move the target. You say British they say Aussie, guess Australian they’ll say they’re from South Africa. Ireland? Nah, Wales. Scottish? Northern Ireland actually.

In real life, I’m pretty sure he’s some sort of criminal. If we lived during Prohibition he would have been a bootlegger, the glorified term for a mobster that’s always drunk. He runs this big warehouse with only a little trickle of activity. Like I said if this was 100 years ago you could have imagined he was just waiting for a big shipment of whiskey from Canada … That the place could be empty for weeks but every once in a while the place would become an anthill of activity, booze and trucks and trucks and booze and guys named Clem walking around with fedoras and sawed-off shotguns.

So here’s the guy with the fake accent, the big empty warehouse partitioned off to look like a dozen separate businesses and there are no customers. It reeks of illicit drugs and shady dealings and 100-dollar handshakes and strange men coming in for a “tune-up” but instead delivering a trunkful of semi-automatic weapons.

You can observe a lot by just watching.

♦

He has a girlfriend. She might be a redhead and she might be cute but then again there appears to be a lot of aftermarket physical enhancement. How poetic, fake-accent guy paling around with fake-face-and-body girl. Anyway, she drinks white wine which is a bit of a stretch because we’re literally in the most ghetto bar in south Orange County. The wine comes out of a faucet and it would be much safer to throw down a beer and a shot like all the other professionals in the bar … but we must keep up appearances now mustn’t we?

On any given night, the disguised couple are the Barbie & Ken of the establishment which isn’t saying much, still, royalty of a broken-down beer bar is royalty nonetheless. She drinks murky white wine and he calls the other patrons “mate.” There are seventeen tired Naugahyde chairs (think Red Onion 1978) around a grimy wooden bar and behind those chairs, our two little fakers drink into the night.

When the tab comes she pays it because, 1. she has plenty of spending money on account of her first husband’s trust fund and 2. she would willingly pay to be in the company of such a suave European even if she knows deep down he’s probably an actor from Visalia. At the end of the night, he loads her into a little sports car that looks pretty nice but barely starts and they usually head to his hideout, err, place of employment. He pulls in through one of the numerous garage doors, the one made up like a service station and if she’s drunk enough, he gets her to stand on one of the auto lifts and raises it just high enough so that he can look up under her skirt … most things can be disguised but not the perverted mind of a drunk.

♦

Many people ask me how I come by this knowledge? The truth is I’m a Beer Detective, kinda like a barroom savant. I observe barflies for a minute or two and their soiled, pathetic lives of booze and deception speak to me. At times it’s a burden, but ultimately I accept my lot and the fact that I’m always on the case.

Photo credit: allenhimself on Visual hunt / CC BY