At 10pm on a Sunday, Boston feels very much like the puritan town it is. My friend and I were the last two customers in Cheers before it closed, a dubious honour that used to befall Norm Peterson, barfly-in-chief of the TV series.
Except of course that only the exterior of the actual pub was ever used in the famous show.
The televised interior was a sound stage in Hollywood, bearing no resemblance to the real thing.
Even so, like everyone else, I bought a monogrammed glass mug and quickly regretted it. When a local hipster later expressed sadness that I had fallen for such a monstrous tourist cliché, I pleaded feebly that I lived near Guinness’s Brewery, where all American tourists did the same, as if by law. And yet, in fairness to American tourists, at least Guinness is made on the premises in Dublin, not on a sound stage somewhere else.
House Conversion – Frank McNally on James Joyce and the Dublin Vigilance Committee
Bound for Glory – Frank McNally on the lost and re-found art of bookbinding
At Swim-two-bards – Frank McNally on a long literary week in Boston
Room to Disimprove – Frank McNally on the demise of the drawing room and other social tragedies
Anyway, after Cheers, to atone for our sins against coolness, we sought out a cocktail bar called Drink, a basement speakeasy-type place frequented by hip young Bostonians rather than hick out-of-towners.
The website said it was open till midnight, even Sundays. But when we got there, before 11pm, the doors had just closed.
Worse, we could see through the windows below that it was full and still serving. Taunted by this Paradise Lost, we hung around until some people left, then – hiding the mug of shame – opened negotiations with the doorman and manager, who eventually relented and let us in for one.
Among the bar’s services, supposedly, is that they create cocktails to suit your mood. I was going to ask them to prescribe something for the deflation felt after the end of another International Flann O’Brien Conference. Preferably, the ingredients would include humour.
But it was too late for such artistry, so I just asked for something with whiskey. The result was a "Boston Sour" and they weren't joking about the sour. As Myles said of an Abbey play once, it was all right but you couldn't get a laugh in it.
We were the last people there too – a pattern was now emerging. Crucially, however, we also received intelligence reports of a nearby Irish pub that, in the otherwise desolate financial district, was open till 2am.
There, we fell into conversation with a local couple, the male half of which was a mechanical engineer. That made him a problem solver. But this being Boston, the problem he seemed obsessed with was God, specifically the non-existence of same, which he spent the night attempting to prove.
I countered that he couldn’t prove it, that there would always be room for doubt. After that, one thing led to another. By the time the barman – Terry from Athlone – ushered us off the premises, I was quoting Spinoza.
The night, if not the argument, seemed to have reached a conclusion here. But no. Instead, it now emerged that our metaphysical engineer friend had his own offices above the pub.
Silicon Valley-type offices, with amenities including a fridge full of craft beer and a ping-pong table. So it was that at about 4am, as debate still raged, he challenged me to a grudge international table tennis match, on which issues greater that ping-pong seemed to rest.
I had not played the game this century and lost the first set badly. My host then interrupted the second to put on loud music – the devil’s, no doubt, although officially it was Led Zeppelin – which he declared the soundtrack of victory.
But suddenly it was as if a higher power had taken control my arm. With a mixture of spin and Spinoza, I won the second and third sets to clinch the series. “Don’t feel bad,” I said, shaking his hand and gesturing skywards: “I was obviously sent here on a mission to save you.”
Back on the deserted streets at 5am, a line from John Bunyan floated on the breeze: "He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day."
Whatever about God, we would have settled for finding a taxi-driver. But for a while it looked like we would have to wait until the clean-living Bostonians woke for another week and the trams started running again.
In the meantime, we walked in hope towards South Station where – Lo! – a solitary chariot appeared, coming for to carry us home.
Maybe the driver saw my tourist mug or perhaps it was a real road blockage that, as he claimed, made the straight and narrow route unavailable. Either way, I now know the wages of sin. As calculated by his meter, they were a whopping $40.