Breakfast of Champions

by Alan Catlin

You have anything resembling coffee in this place? Good, put it in the biggest glass you got. Wait, what are you in such a hurry for? Don't you want to hear what else I want in it?
You a baseball fan?
Well, this is the drink that the Mick used to drink, every day of his adult life, now listen careful: throw in about three ounces of Cognac, any kind will do, and, about three ounces of Kahlua and then add the coffee. OK, now you can hurry off for the coffee.
Man, that's great. There's a spot for you in the bartenders Hall of Fame, if you keep up the good work. Actually, Billy Martin was the one who invented this drink, called it the Breakfast of Champions. Hell, if he'd have had a couple of more of those the day he ran that truck off the road, he probably wouldn't have killed his ass. Knowing how those guys drank, it would take, at least, three breakfast shakes before the reflexes even approached normal.
Here's to the Mick.
Man, I needed that. Go down pretty good after a night like I had last night. Shit, yeah. Make me another one, same way, and I'll tell you the whole story best as I can remember it.
I'd been out partying and drinking and God knows what else. Yeah, it was one of those nights that your lawyer goes hoarse listing out all those felonies you've committed, in the car alone, and, all you can think of is pleading No Contest, so you can attack the nearest water fountain and suck the life out of the pipes.
Even a warm beer will do when you're in an extreme emergency situation like this one. I mean when this was one of those days when the hair of the dog meant fighting the Hound of Baskervilles for the water dish. And wasn't it one of those days when Everything in the fridge is like Absolutely empty, even the freaking cough syrup is gone and you haven't the nerve to drag yourself out to order an ice Robitussin.
Besides, who would serve someone with bleeding eyeballs anyway? It was just going to have to be one of those pot luck jobs, reaching into the cabinet blind, pouring whatever happens to be hidden there, I mean stuff no one in their right, or wrong mind for that matter, would be caught drinking, all goes into that huge ceramic coffee mug and a beaker full of molten black coffee to top it off.
Those are the kind of days when prayer helps. Remember when they said, "There are no atheists in foxholes?" Well, sure as shit, that applies with the morning after prayer, "Lord, let this, whatever it is, stay down." After a few swallows, without fatal repercussions, faith is reaffirmed. I tell you, a drink like that is the real Breakfast of Champions. If nothing else, it separates the amateur drinkers from the professionals. In fact, some of my most interesting days have begun that way.

Alan Catlin recently finished a novel about a doomed bartender called From The Waters Of Oblivion. "Breakfast of Champions," while not exactly an homage to childhood hero Mickey Mantle, is definitely part of a long series of short shorts entitled How they Live On The Moon.

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