Writing Exercise 6 - Kyle

They went to Union Pool. They went to Daddy’s. They went to Rosemary’s and Warsaw and they went to Capone’s, too. They drank contraband flasks in the back room of the Alligator Lounge. In the rear garden of Maracuja beneath the neon blue Christmas lights strung through the dead rhododendron they lit joints and passed them. There was The Million Dollar Ace and R Bar and Bushwick Country Club and Kevin’s VFW and a million other bars where they drank and danced and let the glasses pile up.

Stack the glasses. Don’t mind the spill.

The bars were always multiplying. New bars opened daily, often on the same block. The lights were always dim and placed against walls of cream, burgundy, black. On those opening nights drinks were shuffled across the now-gleaming bartops, money was handed over – repeat, again. The young things pushed out the front doors onto the sidewalks smoking cigarettes. They stood under the overhanging branches and assumed affected slouches and postures. No matter the weather.

Inside music was being played. Volumes turned up. You had to shout to be heard. And this was the way they liked it, all this shouting and smoking and drinking. The immediate tangibles. Within the walls of the bars they had attained something, a feeling of security. Here, for a certain moment, they were immortal. The rugs were secure to the floor; they hadn’t yet been pulled out.

In the older bars, the dives like Rosemary’s or The Million Dollar Ace, the first thing they noticed was the smell. Beer sour and spilled across the faded wood tabletops and the beams underfoot, the pungent odor of woodchips and liquor. Beneath that the stink of years, lives played out. This, however, remained out of reach and therefore unnoticed. And so we handed over our money to Rick or Ainsley or Lilly and we were served our drinks and we went to the back booth or whatever booth we could find and we sat and drank our drinks as fast as we could so we might order another one, before we all noticed that without these drinks the conversation was oh so much duller, plain and executed again and again throughout the weeks, months, years.

The bars were dressed in darkness, cracked vinyl cushions, grunge. Ashtrays pushed into the corners. The tables were forever leaning, spilling drinks. Rings left on the wood. The newer bars – the fresh openings – were glossed and appealing, at least at first. We always settled back at the old haunts, though, the dirty dark bars where the springs of the seats gouged your ass and back and where you could always find a shot-and-a-can deal. The new bars were occasions only. They had their place. Some even adopted them as their new haunts, but you laughed and said it was the yuppies moving in from Manhattan, the joyless bourgeois fools. The dives were where you felt most comfortable, where you’d continue to drink and smoke and laugh even after the springs and the uncomfortable vinyl and the rusted garden patio had all lost their conscious appeal. You’d still go there because you’d been going there and there was something to be said for that, something important in the upkeep of traditions. Like the conversations that kept circling back and repeating, the bars were a routine you couldn’t escape, because you couldn’t conceive of wanting to escape.

You poured shots with Polly at Daddy’s, smoked on the back Pabst-can-golf course at Bushwick Country Club, fed the juke quarters at Subway Bar, cupped joints at Maracuja, sniffed lines off the backs of toilets at Kogey’s. And at Kevin’s VFW you fucked Deidre that time in the bathroom, from behind, her legs straddling the toilet and her hands against the yellow tile smearing sad graffiti. Deidre with her dress lifted and bunched at her waist to expose a white moon. Forced upward at an angle, like a pout. You soft from all those shots Enrique poured from the unmarked bottle of whiskey, the label ripped off and poured into a plastic shot glass. You could barely do it. But Deidre reached behind her and said fuck me. She said please. Please, Walt. She took hold of you and tried to strangle the life into your limp and fragile dick. It was in the bathroom at Kevin’s VFW that you licked your fingers and tried to get Deidre wet, your fingers spreading her open. And it was there in the bathroom of Kevin’s VFW that you finally just collapsed against the wall after a few minutes of pointless grinding that chafed and frustrated. Deidre gone. Alone then you sniffed key after key and then lit a cigarette, sitting on the dirty toilet wiping your nose and grinding your teeth.

Except in truth you couldn’t remember if that was Deidre at Kevin’s VFW or if it was Ellie at The Million Dollar Ace, in the back room by the stacked kegs. And this was because the bars were all the same. They were all dark and they all resembled one another so closely that you couldn’t keep the details straight. One night was the same as any other. The dates changed. The girls changed. (The boys changed, too.) The bars were the constants, rooms to remain immortal for an evening, till four in the morning, till last call. Places in which to pretend and ignore.

Each bar a memory, a series of memories, a loop forever repeating.