My great-grandmother spent a lot of time in bars, earning her the moniker of barfly. I don’t know when or how this began in her life, but I do know:
1) She and her second husband had their own illegal distillery during Prohibition;
2) In the mid-1930s she and her brother frequented a local joint called the Flat Iron;
3) During World War II, she, her daughter-my grandmother and her then husband took my dad (about age 3 and 4) to a local bar every Friday night; and
4) When she met her daughter’s fiancé (my grandfather), she was drunk.
Although “Webster’s New World Dictionary” unpoetically defines a barfly as “a person who spends much time drinking in barrooms,” this definition is less pejorative than what thesaurus.com shared. In thesaurus.com, barfly is synonymous to “problem drinker,” “alcoholic,” “chronic alcoholic, chronic drunk, dipsomaniac, drunkard, hard drinker, heavy drinker, hooch hound, lush, pathological drinker, soak,” “drunkard,” “one who drinks too much,” “ alcoholic, bacchanal, bacchanalian, barfly, bibber, boozer, carouser, debauchee, dipsomaniac, drinker, inebriate, lush, soak, sot, souse, sponge, stiff, tippler, toper, tosspot, wine-bibber, wino.”
It is impossible for me to think of my alert, well-dressed and comported great-grandmother as a wino.
The contributors to urbandictionary.com present an entirely different perspective. Definition the first is: “a female (usually white trash) who acts slutty at a bar looking for attention.” Definition the second is even more vicious: “an annoying slutty hick/redneck bitch that lives in bars, the barfly is usually 35-40 years old and looks like a complete shitsack, usually because of her ugly spagetti [sic] hair and smeared make up.” Definition the third is “dem nasty, rowdy lookin', featherd [sic] wordwolf hair/wolf hair middle-aged females that ’fly’ from bar to bar lookin' for dick an' such from just about anyone.” There is another definition that focuses on a male of the type, but the language was coarse and nearly illiterate, so I’m not repeating. But I think you get the gist.
A barfly is a person, generally female, who drinks too much in a liquor establishment while in pursuit of sexual activity. (Of course, there is very little to no connection to men who do the same. American, if not international, misogyny is very much at play here.)
According to Wikipedia, the term barfly likely comes from a vinegar fly that is commonly attracted to alcohol and a regular visitor to bars and pubs and the like. At the same time, it could possibly allude to the observation that most flies are strongly attracted to something, hence the expression “like flies on shit.” A barfly is attracted to drinking in a bar.
I am not denying that obvious, that barflies are not the most respectable of people, however, I do think that such persons either have a story to tell or really do enjoy the bar atmosphere and company of other imbibers.
Of course, the most famous reference to the barfly is the 1987 movie directed by Barbet Schroeder and starring Faye Dunaway, Mickey Rourke and Alice Krige about, well, alcoholics—destructive alcoholics. But again I disagree that while this may be the common understanding, it is not the only one.
A further Internet search revealed that:
1) “Bar Fly” is an online bar directory for Portland, Oregon. (www.barfly.com);
2) There is a Minneapolis-based rock band called Barfly (www.barfly.net).
3) Bar Fly and/or Barfly is also a regular name of bars or music/dance clubs all around the country.
4) And Portland, Oregon has a barfly bus (www.barflybus.com) that takes its customers on a mystery barhopping tour to eight to ten different establishments.
Yes, alcohol is involved, but in these instances, there is a sense of fun and camaraderie, like in an Irish, English or Canadian pub—friends having a few social drinks and enjoying each other’s company.
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