![]() It took a while-I had to work my way up the rotation, starting with a busboy gig on weekend nights known around McSorley’s as the “shithouse.” (In addition to clearing tables and delivering empty mugs to the bar, the shithouse man is expected to keep an eye on the restrooms. Once I hit my early twenties and began working part-time at the bar, I waited to get the call on a Sunday. I remember the first time I heard Enema Man’s voice. To hear my father tell it, Enema Man was proof of the bar’s essential New York appeal-where else in the city could some wack-job spend years calling the same number at the same time and always have a chance to speak to a new customer or a waiter ready for the next round of verbal sparring? Only at McSorley’s. “Hopefully nothing happened to him.” And although it might seem strange that the staff had grown to care for a prank caller who treated proctological taunts like Sunday mass, the guy’s dedication to his strange punch-line had earned him a spot in McSorley’s lore. When a couple months passed without any contact, I was surprised to hear concern creep into my father’s voice. Even though most of the NFL fans on the McSorley’s staff root for the Jets, it made us wonder: Was Enema Man from Philly? Or was he just making an educated guess that we’d be pulling for the New York team? Another time, a waiter challenged Enema Man to come to McSorley’s and tell him face-to-face what was ready, and Enema Man answered, “Just make sure the couple in the window table saves some of their cheese plate for me.” How was he able to describe them? Maybe the Philadelphia theory was wrong and he actually lived across the street, or someplace close enough to peer through binoculars and observe his victims. Enema Man said yes, he enjoyed seeing the Eagles ream our New York Giants. ![]() ![]() Asked if he had watched any football that Sunday. One Sunday, the waiter eschewed stock responses like telling Enema Man to go to hell or just hanging up on him. Subsequent calls over the following months revealed biographical details-or at least we imagined they did. “We let a customer pick up, just to see the look on his face. “Enema Man called again,” he’d say, his mustache twitching with delight. It didn’t take long for hints of admiration to creep into my dad’s voice when he’d return home and fill me in on the night’s action. Said the same thing three times before Mickey hung up.”īut as the calls kept coming my father and the rest of the McSorley’s staff developed a begrudging respect for Enema Man’s persistence. He dials the pay phone in Second Avenue (the name McSorley insiders use for the easternmost window booth at the front of the bar its twin on the opposite side is called Third) and as soon as the waiter picks up, the guy says, ‘Your enema is ready.’ Never seen Mickey look so confused-he asked this bunghead what he was talking about, and the guy just repeated the line. “Guy’s been calling for the last few Sundays. ![]() “You’re not gonna believe this scummer,” he’d say. At the beginning, he spoke of the Enema Man as a nuisance: I would have been a sophomore or junior in high school at the time, and even though I had to be on the subway before 7 am on Monday morning, I liked to wait up for my dad to get home, usually between 1:30 and 2 am, to hear what happened on his shift. I first heard about him from my father, Geoffrey “Bart” Bartholomew, who’s been tending bar there since 1972. The Enema Man started calling McSorley’s Old Ale House, the landmark pub in Manhattan’s East Village, some time in the late 90s. We’re positive what he said, because it’s been the same opening line now, week after week, for about twenty years: “Your enema is ready.” We’re pretty sure that the call would have come on a Sunday, because once we recognized the pattern, it seemed that he always rang at the end of the weekend. It could’ve been a customer seated at the window table beside the phone could’ve been the front-room waiter, hustling to reach the receiver and shout “McSorley’s!” to whomever was on the other end of the line. ![]() Nor are we sure who first answered the bar’s wall-mounted pay phone that day and heard his voice. ![]()
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