I realized that the same rule must apply when a man offered to buy me a drink. Uncle Charlie would charge the man a dollar as a token. Money wasn’t the issue. It was the gesture, the timeless gesture. Buying another man a drink. The whole barroom was an intricate system of such gestures and rituals. And habits. Cager explained it all. He told me, for instance, that Uncle Charlie always worked the west end of the bar, under the stained-glass penis, because Uncle Charlie didn’t like to deal with waitresses putting in drink orders from the dining room at the east end. Joey D liked the waitresses,
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