463 North 3rd Street

There was this winter night where I got a phone call after I got off of work from a boy named James telling me to meet him on the corner of such and such streets. Where he kidnapped me and took me across town to what he referred to as “not his bar” but a good one. He held my hand while we trekked through stiff snow that bit at my ankles in a group of strangers with even stranger faces and even stranger laughs. These people were my age but I felt so young trying to step in the footprints they made in the snow.

Into this bar we filed in and dispersed and James began giving me an acrimonious tour of the place. He pointed out who, at the time, were regulars. Who he had fucked, who he had tried to fuck, who had fucked him. Who was good, who was real good, and who had bad jokes and bad taste in music. Who could hold their drink, who pretended, who dressed the part and who was the part.

He ordered me a seven and seven. I’ve never had another since.

That night James got smashed and showed me a tattoo he said he never shows anybody. And almost got his ass kicked by a guy who had less to drink and better tattoos.

That was the first time.

There was another winter night nearly a year later where a girl came to me and asked me to take her to a bar. I made plans on going to what was my favorite barroom, a hole in the wall. Small, dark, seedy but not desperate. You come or you don’t. And most don’t, which is why I love this bar. Across from a dollar theater and always has a parking space, this is where I would take her. But she was not impressed by the empty parking lot, or the size of my bar. She was looking for people, she was dressed for people. So I took her to the same place James took me.

And there we shook off passes made to us, and declined the free drinks. Which I guess is what she was looking for.

This was all before he was 21.

On his 21^st birthday, at midnight he wanted to buy liqueur because he could now. And so I drove him straight to this bar because it was the closest one to his apartment that was still open. He handed over his ID and while the man looked it over for the birth date this boy got cocky and said “Don’t worry, it works out”.

After that this boy started showing up at this bar more and more and I found myself not wanting to show up so much because I don’t care for the way he ignores me when there are people around us breathing.

This is not my bar anyway, I concluded.

And then, there was this summer night where I walked with under the table consorts and we shared our stories of heart wreckage. We stumbled and trotted, catching our own limbs from under us until we found a back door to the infamous bar I’ve been going on about. We snuck in our 20 year old friend and decided to drink until we forgot everyone else in the world but the three of us.

This plan of harmonized amnesia would have been the exact medicine I needed only that was a night the boy was there, and decided not to ignore me. He bought me a drink and I rode on the handlebars of his bicycle to his apartment.

So I began showing up more regularly because there was a chance that night could be reenacted, or at least mocked in some drunken joke. And the girl joined me because we were not real friends, but just convenient friends, which I didn’t know at the time.

Then there was this night where all of us were at this bar, and this was a night he wasn’t pretending I was wallpaper. But it didn’t matter because this was a night she got trashed and pulled him aside to talk to him. I lost precious time with this boy to her, this girl who wasn’t my friend. Although I didn’t fully know this yet.

That was also the first night I noticed the man in the black suit who leaned against the wall with me while I stared at them through the window as they laughed together in the smoking section. The smoking section I can’t spend too much time in because my throat starts to close and I panic.

He looked on with me and told me what I already knew. And when I found another wall to disappear into, another pattern to dim myself with he’d come over and just blend in with me. We were bar scene chameleon’s and we were Siamese twins, and I just wanted to be left alone tonight, but he was there telling me what I could see for myself.

So I wasn’t going back to this bar.

But that never happens. You never stay away from the place you swear off from because there’s still that chance where your night’s going to turn into something improbable and euphoric all because you changed your mind and decided to walk down to that bar. Which somehow has become the only bar in town you ever go to.

After the girl and I parted ways due to a number of things that were never really reasons but more of excuses of why we just couldn’t be in the same room anymore, excuses I won’t argue, we would find ourselves in the same room of that bar. And so I vowed again. And again. And again. But kept finding myself there on the 3 days a week I always find myself there.

There was this night I sat at the bar and concentrated fully on how the edge of it tilts down just slightly enough to where you don’t notice until you about tip your drink into your lap. And every time I sit down at this bar it’s like I’m rediscovering it for the first time.

And the girl’s there, she’s dancing. She loves to dance. I love to watch her but right now the tilt of the counter is engrossing me. That and the fact that she hates me. I guess that’s keeping me from watching also, but right now it’s not that important as the angle of the glossed wood plateau.

The man in the black suit is sitting only a stool away from me. He’s been here every night I’ve showed up. He’s drinking a seven and seven and telling me to get my face off the bar because it’s sticky and I don’t want to break out. I wave a hand at him, trying to tell him to mind his own business. There are fibers stuck under the varnish. Particles fixed here for eternity to watch girls like me eyeing them, and they wonder why I don’t get the fuck out of here. The man in the black suit agrees, why don’t I get the fuck out of here? I’m starting to wonder myself.

But I can’t move because I’m wasted off of root beer and sick from the candy cigarettes I couldn’t keep out of my mouth after the girl told me we were never really friends. Just two girls who annoyed each other.

While I’m mouthing to the dust stuck inside the enamel asylum “Don’t worry, I’m going to get you out of here” another regular sits in between me and the man in the black suit.

The man in the black suit tells me to get my head off the counter. Sit up straight. Only he’s more serious this time, and in fear he might make me drink his seven and seven I do as he says. The regular looks at me and I suddenly become very aware that half my face is probably red from the blood trapped under my cheek that I’ve been pressing into the sticky bar. The man in the black suit tells me not to worry about it, he’s drunker than I am and he doesn’t care because he thinks I’m pretty. The regular hasn’t said a word but I know the suit is telling the truth because the regular’s pulling my bangs apart Just. Like. So.

And the dance floor, the pool tables, the smoking section, they all just cave. People are probably screaming under the concrete and wood’s splintering like supernovas. Broken glass shards and ruptures through the red and gray brick dust that’s blooming up from the floor. I can see chalk, mirror pieces, and teeth flying past the three of us, the man in the black suit, the regular, and me. Yeah people are probably screaming.

I couldn’t hear anything though. Just felt the way he ran his fingers through my hair.

That was the night I claimed the bar as mine.