Tim

The Bar

I could feel the muscles in my arm stretch to their limit as my hand was roughly yanked behind my back. I bared my teeth as a shot of pain traveled from my index finger to my shoulder and up my neck. In that moment, the only thing I could think of was: "Hasn't this guy ever heard of a tap on the shoulder." only the biggest problem with that thought was that it wasn't just a thought. No, I thought it and then, I said it. Huge mistake. Following those 11 words, I was answered with a sharp nailed finger indenting my skin as it "tapped" me. To the owner of the sharp nailed finger, it might have been just a tap, but to the owner of the body being "tapped", I could have sworn they were trying to pierce my skin.

"Ow!" I made a point of saying it with irritation, just so they could know how inappropriate it was for them to be doing that.

"Oh boohoo, grow a pair."

I'm not sure if the person meant for that to be an insult or not but I, on the other hand, found it hilarious. Maybe it was the ice tea my friends swore they hadn't replaced with some alcoholic beverage while I was in the bathroom but somehow managed to taste bitter when I had returned. Maybe it was the fact that I didn't even have a pair to grow, or maybe it was that Isabelle had told me that morning that soon enough everyone would think I was a boy and for that second, when the sharp nailed being told me to grow a pair, that I felt a slight euphoria from the fact that they actually thought I had a pair to grow.

I laughed right in their face and not surprisingly they didn't smile back, in fact, their face seemed to twist in the opposite direction, into a scowl. A nasty, disgusted scowl that told me they saw me as nothing more than a filthy sewer rat that had come crawling through the drainage pipes and into their polished bar with not a single drop of beer on the floor nor over-the-top drunk customer that had to be kicked out every now and then. In their eyes, I was a scrawny boy who didn't even look old enough to be within ten feet of the bar.

"What's so funny, the fact that you can't grow a pair, or that you're about to be kicked out, scumbag?"

"The first one. Oh and there's no way you're kicking me out of this bar."

They let out a raspy laugh, "Really now? And why is that."

"Because I own it and I'm here to make a few changes."

"Oomph" I gasped as I was pushed onto the floor, face down.

"Now what the hell are you talking about, boy?"

"Would you rather have me blurt out all the details right here on the floor in front of everyone or do you want to take this to your office?"

"Fine, let's go."

"Take him to the back." A man twice as wide as me and two heads taller than me suddenly appeared as I was roughly pulled up. I don't think any of these people knew what the words gentle, careful or even nice meant. Soon enough I was looking up at a beady-eyed, bald-headed, dark-skinned man, and he was looking right back at me. As a drawer, I've learnt that every living thing has a light in their eyes, that's how you know they are alive, but that man? Staring into his eyes was looking at death himself. It was darkness, on darkness, on darkness. Not a trace of anything else, except maybe danger, yes, definitely danger, I think he would have killed me right there and then if I said a single thing about the long strands of hair sticking out of his ears, and I could think of a hundred different things to say about his ears, like: "I think you would get along with a friend of mine, his name is tweeze and he has a thing for ears like yours." Okay, so maybe not my best line, but when those black, beady eyes are looking right at you, you're too scared to think of anything reasonable to say.

They led me through a door next to the toilets. The sign read storage and storage there was. The walls were lined with barrel on barrel, box on box, and crate on crate of different bathroom supplies. It was as if they stored for 5 years at a time, but the further we went in, the stronger the smell of alcohol became and soon enough more barrels and boxes and crates of toilet supplies were replaced with alcohol. I wrinkled my nose at the acrid stench and covered it with my sleeve. I wasn't sure if alcohol could be smelled when it was all in bottles and even if it was, I wasn't sure it was supposed to smell that strong either, before that day, I had never set foot in a bar and had continuously avoided alcohol as best I could. I'm not a saint but I wasn't a devil either.

"Bee, check that box. Anything spilled?" The tall, bald man with the outrageously long ear hair let go of my arm and started surveying the boxes.

"Yeah, boss. A whole bottle whiskey leaked everywhere."

"Jersey, go clean it out."

I watched silently as a short, bulky man crawled out of the shadows beside the door that stood right in front of us that I hadn't seen till then.

"You been here all day, Jersey, couldn't you smell that?"

"I'm in this room all day, Bee, everything smells the same to me. It would help if I got some time off." He looked suggestively at his boss but they just looked at him as if he had something to do that he should have already been doing, which, in that case, was the cleaning up the spilled whiskey.

The door swung open the moment we reached it and my lungs filled with clean air. Or maybe I should say cleaner air. The stench of alcohol was significantly less to my virgin nose than in the other room but there air was still tinted with that bitter smell.

"So, tell me, what makes you think you own this place and why on earth should I believe you?"

"You don't have to believe me, you just have to know, and get comfortable, and this is going to be a long story.

A few years back-"

"Wait, Jersey? Out" Jersey looked startled at the sound of his name, and after a moment or two, the word "out" finally registered in his brain and he politely nodded and made his way out. Bee, for some unknown reason, followed suit. I mean if they wanted him out, they would have said "Jersey, Bee? Out" but they didn't, and I feel they had the same thought because the next words said were:

"Bee, sit down. I didn't tell you to go anywhere. I'm going to need someone to back me up in case I need to retell this young man's lies." and so Bee sat down and witnessed the telling of my story.

"It's a bit of a long story and it starts with a break up."