The Choklit Shoppe started as a post office before the Civil War. It was right along the railroad track, just outside of town; the train would slow down and toss a bag of mail and the postmaster would toss a bag onto the train, and that was how our town communicated with the outside world, back in the day. Of course the area has grown up, all the little towns around here have merged into one megalopolis, but the Choklit Shoppe is still kind of alone out there, surrounded by woods in a neighborhood of old Victorian houses, what they call "the historic district." It sits along the track with houses only a few hundred yards away, but out of sight behind clumps of trees.
After the post office moved, the building was put to various uses, and in the Leave It To Beaver Days it was a drug store with a soda fountain, which sold candy bars behind the counter. It was called Max's Rexall back then. The candy sales started picking up, and they added boxes of nicer candies for Valentine's Day and then Christmas, and after awhile that was their main money-maker, and they changed the name to The Choklit Shoppe. It was a popular, respectable business, a kind of picturesque place to buy good European chocolate and also some nicer gifts.
The counter was still there, and the owner, Mr. Pavlovich, a refugee from the USSR who everyone called "Mister Pavlovich," and nobody even knew if he had a first name, was able to get a wine permit, so he could treat his better customers to a friendly glass of nice French or Italian wine and some conversation, to loosen them up to spend more money. He added American vintages, and started selling wine by the glass to shoppers for a price. People could sit at the old soda counter and have a nice relaxing glass of wine while they shopped, it seemed very luxurious at the time. Then the times changed and he added some German beers to his menu and put in a television, first for the World Series and then for any big-league game in any sport. Then he added American beers, and some customers wanted to dance so he bought a nice Wurlitzer jukebox and stocked it with Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, Ellington and Brubeck. After a couple of years though the customers wanted something a little more modern, and he started keeping the record collection up to date.
The Choklit Shoppe had been open nine to five, like other places in town, but customers liked to shop there in the evening, and so Mr. Pavlovich extended the hours to eight, then nine, o'clock. People -- women, mostly -- would come in the evenings to shop and have a beer or glass of wine, and then they would dance to the jukebox, and pretty soon Mr. Pavlovich was keeping the place open till one in the morning. He hired a bartender and a cocktail waitress, and made a better living than he had ever dreamed of. He stopped selling chocolate. He retired, so-called, but still ran things behind the scenes, with a couple of managers handling the daily routine.
As the Choklit Shoppe changed to suit its customers, the customers changed to adapt to this new kind of place, a place where people would congregate at night to have fun and socialize. Working people would come in after work, or after dinner, sometimes husbands and wives together, and sometimes one or the other. Wives tended to like the place better than their husbands did, even then. Sometimes somebody's husband and somebody else's wife would stop in. If this happened you did not talk about it. You especially did not tell your spouse -- gossip was an important part of the daily news in those times, and you didn't want to start any talk. The Choklit Shoppe had some secrets but it maintained the wholesome reputation it had earned over the years, and people thought of it as a nice place to go to unwind and visit with friends.
As the place had grown over time, most of the customers were getting into their thirties and a few in their forties. Maybe it was some of the decor from the chocolate days, but women felt more comfortable than their husbands in the Choklit Shoppe. Just as it is conventional now for women to joke about "a glass of Chardonnay." women would say in the evening, "Whew, that was a tough day. I'm heading over to the Choklit Shoppe." There they would run into other wives escaping the drudgery of housekeeping and the dull expectations of unimaginative husbands.
Sometime along the way, the young men at Griswold College discovered the Choklit Shoppe. It had a good selection of craft beers, good music on the Internet jukebox, sports on the many televisions behind the bar, and, of course, lots of women. True, the women were older, and at first this was a kind of joke on campus, guys would tease each other about going there, but pretty soon it was widely understood that these women were not so bad, actually.
In my freshman year at the dorm I heard the guys talking about the Choklit Shoppe but I had not figured out the way to get an ID. Plus, I was a geek, skinny, I was eighteen but young for my age, if you know what I mean. They called me Greenbean.
One night that year, somebody had brought some beer into the dorm and we were sitting around drinking, and a sophomore named Marty started talking about a lady he had met in town. One time he referred to her as his "teacher," but then backtracked on that, he said he sees her a couple of times a week. Sometimes they meet and dance and drink at the Choklit Shoppe, he said, and then his voice trailed off and he did not want to talk about it any more. The conversation stuck in my memory.
The next year my parents sprang for an apartment off campus, plus I figured out the drivers-license thing. An engineering student had a whole setup, he took your photograph, gave you a random license number, printed it, laminated it, for thirty bucks. I had a refrigerator full of beer and a fake ID, what else does a guy need? Well, actually, there was something I needed to get rid of: my virginity.
In that first year of college I had grown up a little, filled out a little. I was an A student and I still didn't really have any close friends, and definitely no girlfriends. But I was not a scrawny kid any more. I just didn't know how to meet girls or what to do if I ever did meet one.
Friday night some guys were hanging around, mainly taking advantage of my refrigerator, and they decided to go to the Choklit Shoppe. They tossed their beer cans in the trash and were headed for the door when one of them turned back to me and said, "Hey Greenbean, you ever been to the Choklit Shoppe?" I shook my head no, and next thing you know I was swept up in the wave as we charged out my door and thundered down the stairs.
It was definitely not what I'd expected. When we got there the place was just starting to fill up, and it was mostly older ladies. I mean, not "old ladies," but like, Taylor Swift is thirty-four. You see my point? Way older than us. It was not all older ladies, but that was probably three-quarters of the crowd. They acted like they owned the place, taking up all the barstools, drinking white wine, jumping up to dance with each other in groups when something came on the jukebox that they liked.
One of the guys knew a lady there, and she came over to talk to him and sat on his lap, holding her wine glass hovering delicately above her shoulder. She looked him in the eye with a sweet smile and they chatted for quite a while, and then he got up and danced with her. It was a fast song but she came up to him and danced close. She was quite a few years older than him, slender and busty, with her blouse unbuttoned down to the point that you had to look. She danced with her legs wrapped around him, pressing her hips into his, while everybody else was jumping around on the floor.
I was sitting at a highboy with several guys, my head like it was on a swivel trying to figure out what the fuck goes on in this place. There were several other tables of guys our age, sometimes a lady would come over and talk to them. Some of them seemed to get quite friendly -- some of the guys and the women knew each other already.
"Are you just going to ignore me?" I heard a voice say. It was behind me somewhere and at first I didn't pay any attention, but for some reason I looked over my shoulder and a woman was standing there looking at me and smiling.
"I thought maybe you were ignoring me on purpose," she said.
"Oh no, no," I stammered. "I didn't know you were there. Here, would you like a seat?" I stood up and offered her my stool. She took it without a thank you.
"I'm Barb," she said.
I was standing there staring at her. I had mentioned Taylor Swift earlier. I am not a "Swifty" or whatever they call them, but you gotta agree she is nice to look at. I am bringing that up because it is a good starting-point for describing this woman who had just taken my seat. She was probably fifteen years older than me, nineteen versus probably thirty-four or so if we're using Taylor as our reference. Red lipstick like Taylor wears. She was wearing a kind of low-cut chiffon top with her bra straps slipping down her arms. And, man, there is something about that. She was not skinny like Taylor, but had nice impossible-to-not-notice knockers.
"And you are?" she prompted me.
"Oh, duh," I said. "Sorry. They call me Greenbean."
"Greenbean, you're kidding." She started laughing. "Why in the world do they call you that?"
"I don't know," I said. Of course I knew. It had started when they were making fun of my virginity. Somehow it had seemed funny in the dorm to say I had a green bean. You had to be there.
"Do you have a real name?"
"Sure, I have my baptism name, which they used to call me in high school, which is Brian."
"Brian, huh? I like that a lot better than Greenbean. You don't look like any greenbean to me."
"Oh, I am," I said. "I might not look like it but that name fits me pretty good."
"I'm going to call you Brian," she said. And I did like that better. "Would you like to dance with me, Brian?"
"Sure," I said. "But I'm not a very good dancer." She smiled at me.
It's true I don't know anything about dancing. I'd figured out something in front of the mirror once in high school, and it seemed to work, and that's what I do. I don't attract attention and I also don't fall on my ass.
