Free Reinventing Mike Lake by R.W. Jones Page A

tossing the glass to the side while frantically running into the street, hoping the sun would dry his page before he lost a passage he may not be able to remember depending on how much he drank.
                  I knew that many drinks are associated with Hemingway, mainly because he enjoyed many drinks.  While in Cuba he preferred a mojito, but 90 miles away in Key West, he enjoyed a daiquiri or martini.  He has also been associated with the on and off again legalized absinthe.  It’s funny, Hemingway is arguably known more for his renowned drinking than his writing, so it’s no big surprise that a debate on exactly which drinks he drank and when he drank them is easy to come across, specifically online.  I know drinking stories can be legendary, but I can’t imagine a more legendary drinker than Hemingway.
                  Despite being around noon, I could see by my fellow passersby that this was plenty late to start drinking.  I wasn’t, nor am I now, a big drinker, but being that I think Hemingway had a large part of me finding my way down here, I thought I’d have a “when in Key West” experience.  Why not follow in the footsteps of the most popular resident ever?  I wasn’t planning on discriminating on which Hemingway drinks I would ingest, thinking that the fairest way to get the most out of my experience.  I mentally retraced my steps back to the house, because in a few hours I figured those steps would be hazy.
                  A short walk up Duval I found Sloppy Joe’s, and I entered as the morning turned to afternoon.  I’m guessing I wasn’t the first want-to-be writer attempting to follow in Hemingway’s footsteps the employees had ever seen come through their doors, but I was very excited to be in a place of history.
                  After bellying up to the bar, I ordered a daiquiri, which prompted the young male bartender to ask, “Do you want a straight or a Hemingway daiquiri?”
                  “Hemingway daiquiri?  I didn’t know there was such a thing.”  Thinking it was just a tourist-trap type drink, probably a few more dollars than a regular.
                  The bartender sat a glass and towel down and assumed the position of someone who was about to give a lecture.  “You see, Hemingway was a diabetic.”
                  “He was?  I had no idea.”
                  “Yes,” he answered quickly, returning to his lecture.  “He would sometimes order a regular daiquiri, but most of the time he replaced the sugar with grapefruit juice.  He’d also add a hint of maraschino liquor – the actual liquor, not just the juice that comes with the cherries.
                  “Oh, well thanks for educating me, I’ll take a Hemingway then,” I said.
                  “Great,” he said, pleased that he got to educate a tourist today.
                  As he walked away, a gentleman to my left with a deep tan, wearing a Panama Jack hat, buttoned-up flowery shirt, khakis, flip flops, and a beer in front of him – a local I presumed – began talking to me.
                  “If he was really interested in educating you, he’d tell you that Hemingway never actually stepped foot in this bar.”
                  “What?”  I laughed uncomfortably, thinking this was a joke or a riddle of some kind going over my head. 
                  “Sure, he drank quite a bit of the drink you just ordered, but he did it around the corner there on Greene.”
                  Over the course of my first daiquiri, and second, the man wearing the khaki shorts who never revealed his name, not that I would have remembered anyway, gave me a history lesson about two popular bars in Key West. 
                  For a large portion of the 1930’s, the bar known as Sloppy Joe’s was in an establishment around the