002: The Point Tavern

Location: 302 Wickenden St #4469, Providence, RI. Hours: Sunday: 12pm to 12am | Monday, Tuesday Wednesday: 4pm to 12am | Thursday: 4pm to 1am | Friday: 3pm to 1am | Saturday: 12pm to 1am Date of Visit: Every Wednesday, beginning January 10, 2024.

This is the Point Tavern.

The first first time you came here was years and years earlier, and you only vaguely piece together that it's the same place as the second first time. Your then-fiancée, Ophelia, had befriended a Portuguese woman studying at Brown for an advanced degree, and this was the bar that the Brown grad students went to, apparently, so she and her girlfriend (now wife, at last hearing) invited the two of you to join them and your friends. You were, as you recall, deep into your social anxiety and depression, which you let rule you, though you told yourself at the time it was just that you had a shorter social battery than most, pretending it was your normal. You were quiet, and you weren't sure how to order from the bar and get a beer out back to the patio where the grad students were. It was too hot. You seem to recall that you and Ophelia left early because of you.

The second first time you came here, you were still reeling from Viola breaking your heart days earlier. She hadn't left you just because you were depressed, of course. But it had been a large part of it. And you realized that if you stayed in your apartment, trapped with yourself, you'd never get out. Quince, your friend from your early childhood, who lives less than 400 feet from where you live, is the trivia host on Wednesdays, so he drags you along, and introduces you to his friends from college who live just blocks away from you in Federal Hill, and then their friends. 

You sat shell shocked, there, with a thousand yard stare, listening to the six previously strangers dissect each trivia question. You didn't participate, even though knowing strange esoterica is your strong suit. There are only six people allowed on a team, and theirs was full, although one volunteered to sit out to make room for you, but you weren't feeling up to it.

What you were feeling up to, though, was food, which was new that week. Every meal up to that point had been a chore, one you'd abandoned halfway through like dirty dishes in the sink when the dishwasher gets full up. But there, just being with people, your appetite returns with a vengeance and you were able to eat polenta fries. You've always liked the concept of polenta more than you've liked polenta itself, and fries seemed like a good way to solve that, but it turns out that adding a crust to polenta just makes it crusty polenta. You end up ordering the polenta fries for several weeks out of tradition, until you notice they have stuffies on the menu.

There is something quintessential about the Rhode Island stuffie. It is like pizza. Or sex. Even when it’s bad, it’s still good. That’s not to say you’d devour a stuffie even if the clams smelled off, but even if you buy one frozen and heat it back up, it makes you feel pleased with yourself, the ritual of scraping fried cornmeal out of a shell.

Eventually, the polenta fries and the stuffies come off the menu.

You will have your last drink in this bar. Three weeks after you start going, you are waiting for your friend to pack up since he's your ride, and you plop down at the bar and the bartender goes, "what can I get you?" and you order a 'Gansett Lager, without even thinking about it. You didn't want a drink, you don't have time for a drink. You've already had two drinks with your dinner during trivia. You drink half of it, and leave the other. You realize you could've just said, "oh, I'm leaving soon." But you didn't. 

Viola noticed your drinking. She came to you, once, several months in, and said that, except for your first date, you'd never not had a drink on a day you'd been with her. She was so nervous about bringing it to you, and you tried to make the space for her to feel comfortable having a tough talk. You were aware of your drinking, but had never felt it was a problem. And she couldn't articulate clearly what troubled her about you when you had had one drink, except that she didn't feel like she was getting all of you. You told her you'd not drink in her presence unless she was also drinking. But, you told her, this was a habit, you might slip up, and you'd need her to call you out when you did.

You can't recall, now, if she agreed to do so.

When you’re picking over your memories of her, there are lots of moments where you can’t remember her actually agreeing to something you thought was agreed upon. You can recall she didn't tell you she wouldn't. You stopped drinking the entire next week after, just to test yourself, and congratulated yourself when it wasn't hard. Then over the winter break, when she practically moved into your apartment, she brought so much beer from her friend's brewery, and one night you asked if she wanted to have one. And she said didn’t want to take something you loved from you, she just wanted you to be mindful of your drinking.

So you had a beer. Or a glass of bourbon. Every night. And often during the day. She didn't say anything about it until she left you.

You can’t recall, now, if it was fair to ask her to.

It would've been fair, you think, to ask her to tell you if it wasn't, to ask her to tell you that she couldn't. But you didn't think to ask. You didn't think it had be asked.

If you'd known it was your last drink ever, you might have ordered something better than a 'Gansett, but the act of ordering it, the feeling like you weren't even making a decision, is what led to it being your last drink. 

On a week you don't know anyone, Quince places you on a random trivia team of women who are about five to ten years older than you, all married with children. They adopt you as their team member, your team wins fairly regularly. When the bar's cook leaves to do other things, he comes back for trivia and joins your team. They all become your friends. When Quince goes away on vacation, you fill in for him as trivia host. You have fun with it. You realize now that your battery, such as it is, needs people. When your weeks get empty of friends, you feel worse.

You feel like you've been drinking again.

They offer mocktails on the menu at the Point, and the first week into not drinking, you order the "New Old Fashioned," since, after all, whiskey was your preferred poison. You regret it. It's a perfectly fine drink, but it is not an Old Fashioned, and just offering the comparison makes it into a disappointment. They attempt to recreate the burn by adding a little bit of cayenne in there, and it does nothing of value except alert you to the artifice of the whole thing, like a boom mic dropping into frame in a cheap movie. You end up ordering ginger ale from that point on, because it looks something like an ale, which you suppose was its Prohibition-origin point. You end up ordering pretzels every night, which are a bar staple, you know, because salty that induces more beer sales. These are thick, soft logs served with an excellent mustard and an unfortunate beer cheese you just can't abide. You get two ginger ales.

One night you are hosting and your team, playing without you, but playing with one of your knitting friends who has come along, wins the Shots question, which entitles them to free shots. The loudest of your team, the one who got you laughing first when things felt dark, says that you need a shot as well, and you remind her that you don't drink. The waiter brings you out a shot of ginger ale. You were so worried, when you started, nearly six months ago at that point, that people would be hostile to you quitting. You think of the irony of being a sober man returning to a bar week-in, week-out, surrounded by people who are drinking. This is unequivocally a bar—it wins Best Neighborhood Bar (Providence) in Rhode Island Monthly for 2024—and you wonder if you are tempting fate. On the hottest days, when trivia is on the patio out back, you get that nostalgia for a cool IPA or a crisp Kolsch, and you ask yourself if one drink would really hurt.

And then you ask yourself if one drink would help. 

You down the shot of ginger ale, regret it instantly with that much carbonation, and ask for the pretzels.

This is the Point.