BarTender

(TW: Implicit mention of violence, some very very mild sexual acts)

You never know a good thing until it’s gone. Well, you don’t, I do. I’m reminded of it every night as I shake drinks and get soaked in sticky sodas and liquors. I hear the phrase spoken on repeat like mantra. Usually, it’s coming from a friend patting another’s back as they’re choking back sobs made of the alcohol they just got drunk off.

Guys leave girls, girls leave guys, and somehow, they all find themselves at my bar, asking for the hardest liquor I own. (Well, at least heartbreak is good for business, I guess.)

I watch people cry, lamenting their lost love. I watch them dance and grind on strangers, drowning their feelings in alcohol and lust. I sling drinks and collect tips from souls who seem to have gotten a hint too attached to me. 

But I also watch the same grief stricken souls return two months later to sit in the same seat at which they once wept. They’ll order a martini, or a gin, or a beer and sit and strike up a conversation with the person next to them. Two hours later, I’ll have one closed tab, two empty seats, and a desire to bleach my eyes.

Once in a while, when the bar is quieter and the couples settle, I wonder what it’s like to be a player. To have a love, to lose a love, to lament a love, to find a new love. There’s got to be something appealing about the game if everyone’s so crazed about it, right? Then I’m reminded as I scrub barf out of the bathroom floors: I don’t need alcohol poisoning.

Not everyday is the same dance though. There’ll be the occasional spice of a story. A person will come in ranting about getting cheated on or having a toxic partner or finding out their partner was a murderer. But the joy of something other than tears is gone before they’re even halfway through their story, and all I’m left with is frustration. Honestly, how blind could these souls get. The only thing they seem to use their eyes for seducing or crying. Can’t tell that someone’s good before their gone, and can’t tell that someone’s bad until they’ve killed you.

Every three months, almost like clockwork, some couple will come in to celebrate some anniversary or another. They’d walk in with linked arms and laugh and tell me the story. They’d comment on how I had been working that night and if I remembered them. And I did everytime.

This month it was the girl who was crying into her drink death in the afternoon, which she had indeed been drinking since early afternoon. I recognized her by her signature red hairtie and braid. On her arm was the boy who threw up all over his lucky cravat after he came in for a drink ranting about how his girlfriend cheated on him with his brother. If memory serves, they met three months after I met the girl and two months after I met the boy. The two sat at the far right end, a martini in the girl’s hand, a beer in the boy’s. They stayed in my bar all of twenty minutes that night. Short compared to the hour the girl spent with her last boyfriend when they met, and long compared to the ten minutes the guy spent. Funny enough, the girl got a martini back then too, albeit today she decided to switch from a cucumber martini to a lychee one.

My day would end at 5 am, when the sun was just peeking through the miserable looking cement buildings that housed equally miserable looking people. I’d walk out the door of the bar to be met with one of the desperate souls I had served last night. Usually, it was one who left a tip that would make my landlord smile or one who left no tip at all.

It was always the same line: ‘why’d you take so long, I was waiting for you’; ‘there’s my beauty’; or worst of all, ‘surprised to see me?’. Blegh. You would think they would stop trying. After all, rumors go around and it always ends the same way: with them unconscious on the ground (and that’s if they got lucky). After the first few times, the same police cruiser would just come in at 5:30 am to assess the damage; although by then, I was long gone (a bartender needs to sleep after all).

Home sweet, stale home. With the air being so dry, you’d think I’d buy a humidifier, but I don’t. By the time I’m done scrubbing all the icky gunk off my body, taking a generous layer of skin with it, the steam from my shower already fixed the problem, free of charge. Stepping out, I immediately collapse onto my bed – no stupid skincare routine, no body lotion, and I don’t even own a hair dryer.

Since living alone, I had decided to even forgo pajamas. They were too much work. Instead, I opted to buy the fluffiest blanket of all (and yes, that is very much the most expensive thing in my apartment).

At least that’s what I did until a month ago. To my misfortune, a particularly sneaky soul had followed me home, leaving another suffering soul to wake up in a dumpster full of their own throw up. (I’m not kidding, most of that night’s closing work composed of me scraping this idiot’s dry throw up off the floor and walls). Anyway, this soul decided it would be a good idea to – after witnessing their friend’s demise – stepped into my apartment with their hands in their pocket liked they owned the world. They walked in right foot after the left. They did not walk back out. 

That very day, I bought myself three sets of pajamas after that: all black, fleeced-lined silk sets with crysanthemums stitched around all the edges. It’s not that I felt unsafe at home, I simply did not enjoy the feeling of my calf on velcro when I kicked the sap where their jacket pocket was.

After a good seven hour sleep day, I would get myself up at 5 pm, make myself a cup of coffee, order some sushi, change into jeans and a long sleeve shirt, both fleece-lined no matter the season. I’d take the trash out on my way out.

Opening a bar isn’t as hard as closing, thankfully. All I have to do is set down all the chairs, turn on the speakers, set the radio to whatever EDM station was playing, refill the napkins, put away any dishes I had left to dry overnight, unlock the door, and wait.

Ah, here enters the first customer of the day. The blue-tipped mullet boy, red hairtie martini girl’s ex-boyfriend. At his arm is thick-rimmed glasses red-head girl, whose ex came in last week with cravat boy’s ex.