It was a quiet place, on the edge of the college campus, in an old building that had seen better days, with slightly slanted floors and an inevitable draft that seemed to disappear only on the hottest of summer days. It had been a speakeasy during Prohibition and the first owner made the not-so-successful transition to neighborhood bar, but through the years the locals had drifted out to the suburbs.
The college kids, for the most part, found more attraction in the lights and excitement on campus or downtown, to the east. The old wooden bar itself was an old relic, polished by elbows and bar rags and bearing a scar or two in tribute to more colorful times. The lighting during the day was soft, sunlight fighting its way through old scratched windows with once-fashionable signage and during bad weather or at night by flickering fluorescents on the high ceiling. The floor was an easy-to-maintain institutional tile of a dark red color, never looking clean when polished nor exceptionally dirty when not. The barstools were a mix of the old shiny red leather with brass tacks and a few more recent replacements in black and chrome.
A succession of owners, bartenders, and customers had changed things little in the appearance of the place, as it never generated enough income to warrant renovation nor deteriorated enough to warrant closure. It was a “shot and a beer joint” in the local parlance, with no blenders or fancy equipment, and except for the owner’s penchant for making his special Bloody Mary (with beer chaser, of course), the most complicated drink was a martini or maybe a Manhattan, a request for either still being met with some annoyance.
It had avoided the fern craze of the eighties and, with its small bathrooms and inadequate ventilation, the crack cocaine epidemic that began in the nineties. An occasional hooker or two would stop in, but always on break, as they were welcome to drink (usually Crown Royal) but not to work. There wasn’t much hope, given the sparse clientele, of making much money anyway.
Mike was the latest owner, a former bartender at the place who’d developed an affection for the atmosphere and people of the neighborhood, and quite frankly found it cheaper and easier to drink from behind the bar than in front of it. Mike was a former seminarian, and his training and skills came in handy, both for hearing confessions and dispensing advice. He was a genuinely nice guy who had a repertoire of genuinely bad jokes. He’d be behind the bar all the time if he could have subsisted on the diet of stale chips, peanuts, and beef jerky that graced the back bar. But he was a man who loved his food, and that’s where I came in.
I’d been stopping on occasion each night after my classes, dropping in for a beer, which often led to another, then someone would buy a round, then Mike would return the favor. As a college student on very limited income, I was always a bit embarrassed that I couldn’t quite keep up, but nobody seemed to mind. One night, Mike mentioned that he was looking for a bartender to cover for him at dinner time, and well, what the heck, it didn’t look like a very challenging job and fit nicely with my schedule. The semester would be ending in a couple of weeks anyway and I’d go back to my day classes. So I went downtown, paid for my bartender’s license, and showed up at 3:00 PM the next day in the mandatory white shirt and tie to begin my apprenticeship.
Mike showed me how to work the cash register, pointed out an ancient book of Angostura Bitters drink recipes (which coincidentally called for a dash of Angostura in almost every recipe), watched me pour a few drinks and then headed out. He returned in about an hour and relieved me, pointing out a few things I’d screwed up (who came up with the idea that all the singles had to be George up and facing to the right?) and paying me, in cash, a total of five dollars. “Small bar, small wages!” he said with a smile. I wasn’t sure why but… well, nice guy, easy job, five bucks was okay.
Had we a few more customers, I might have had a few tips, but the regulars (all three of them) seemed unwilling to part with their cash unless it was going directly into the till. Initially hard on me, asking for exotic drinks and laughing as I looked them up, they eventually began including me in their drink rounds – a compliment that I declined only once and for which I suffered significant verbal abuse.
We continued like this for a few weeks, and Mike’s dinners became longer and longer, until eventually he was showing me how to close the bar and gave me a key. I found the work easy and enjoyable, learning the names and drinks of the regulars, improving greatly on Mike’s jokes, and starting to gain some confidence.
Now I was a part-time student, working my way through college on the nine year plan, and I was taking a lot of interesting courses, including philosophy, theology, and political sociology. Discussions in the classroom invariable carried over to the bar, where Mike and I would share our views and attempt to enlighten each other, neither significantly changed by our arguments. True, I usually thought up great responses to Mike’s platforms long after the bar had closed but I’d return to the classroom familiar with the opposition views and prepared to argue a bit more effectively.
Between work and my studies, I’d little time for a social life, and my girlfriend of four years had gone to Boston for college, from where she’d send me first weekly, then monthly letters, the details unfamiliar to me and the affectionate words lessening with time. We’d dated throughout much of high school, both from strict old world families, and despite raging hormones we’d kept pretty much within the bounds set forth by our church and parents on acceptable premarital behavior.
Though I had my first apartment, it was a small place sparsely furnished, with a sofa bed, a desk, and a small table and chair – the sum of my worldly possessions – and small stove and refrigerator that came with the place. It was cluttered often with books, papers, and piles of laundry in the corner, and was certainly not the place to entertain anyone.
This was not to imply that I didn’t have my share of impure thoughts, however. A neighbor woman, Marie, was constantly teasing me, winking at me and asking if I’d like to come over and spend a little time with her. I’d blush and stutter and she’d laugh as I politely declined and rushed into my apartment. What I assume she didn’t know is that I’d run inside to hide the rapid response that always sprang forward in my pants and wouldn’t subside until an appropriate amount of attention was paid to it.
At nineteen, well over six-foot four and a then trim two hundred pounds, my blond hair, blue eyes and slight freckles might have been attractive to her, but I was plagued by all the self-consciousness of adolescence.
I was also unable to resolve the conflicts between my idealistic respect for women and the sanctity of sex versus my vivid fantasies and raging sexual hunger. Some days I’d give in to my desires, usually after Marie’s teasing, and spend hours touching, stroking, and erupting again and again, falling asleep beside a cum-covered towel and awakening with a hard-on only to begin again, leaving for school with a sore arm, tired legs, and underlying exhaustion. Other days my guilt would lead to a resolve of abstinence and I’d sometimes last a week or more before waking erect from a vivid dream and falling back into my self-abusive ways. I must have spilled enough seed to populate a small country back then, and in my fantasies and dreams I was an accomplished lover, but in reality I’d never really seen, touched, or tasted the delights that I imagined.
One day, stopping home between class and work, I had stripped down to a pair of sweatpants and was cleaning my refrigerator, discarding a few items that seemed ready to mold and carrying the garbage out to the back before the smells could permeate my apartment. As I tossed the bag in the trash, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and saw Marie looking at me through her open window on the second floor. Her facial expression suggested that she was in some pain, but as I waved to her, she smiled.
“Tony!” she called, waving back. “I was just going to empty my garbage, too – would you mind taking mine out for me?”
