I came out of the Bible Belt, where drinking, bars, and gays were things that only occurred in the back pages of pamphlets with titles like “Beware the Devil’s Handiwork” or “Don’t be Fooled by Satan.” My hometown claimed a “diverse religious community” because we had both Presbyterians and Baptists. A debate still raged whether or not full-water immersion during the baptismal rite was required for salvation. One sect promised hell for anybody who played musical instruments in church. We were a dry county until 2012, when after 150 years we went “moist” and you could get a glass of cheap table red at a restaurant. It typically stayed open for three days and was stored in the refrigerator. And there were two gay guys in town; they’d managed not only to find each other and start a beauty parlor, but also to end with a lover’s quarrel that put one of them in jail for assault with a deadly weapon. Yadda yadda yadda, Elaine says, and somehow one Tuesday night I found myself on my own stool at the Golden Lion Lounge. I then found myself there again a few times a week for nearly a year.
The first time I walked in, even before my eyes adjusted to the dark, the soundtrack to Cruising seemed to echo in my soul and I feared for my life. Sketchy lumberjack? This place was something from Silence of the Lambs. But I breathed, sat down, and ordered the finest craft beer on tap … Bud Light. As the bartender slid it across to me, I worked frantically on my cover story and a good excuse to run on home: I had narcoleptic children who were being left all alone at home with a box of matches. My baked Alaska needed to set. I was having an aneurysm.
It took me a while to get my sea legs and be able to discern the overall décor. The interior was dark; mahogany veneer on the walls and two fluorescent light bulbs somehow made it darker. The corners were invisible and the ceiling receded away into some sort of netherworld of grime and asbestos tiles. The floors were plastic linoleum that may once have been green, but now were brownish black and covered in mauve, teal, and puce rugs bought more or less new, but on sale as factory seconds in 1974. There was a pool table with threadbare felt, and a bar of black-painted plywood edged in cracked cushioned pleather. It was splitting in most places and covered in duct tape where the foam insulation wasn’t already poking out. The metal-framed bar stools matched, and on the far side was a small dance floor with spotty mirrors and a portable sound system purchased along with the rugs and at the same percentage discount. Nobody danced.
There was also a large rear-projection television, one that was very posh in 1983 but that since the mid-nineties had only a ten-inch-square area in the upper right corner still functioning. Over time, like a shrinking universe, it just got smaller and smaller. Later I learned that at some point it stopped working altogether and was positioned out in front of the bar on the sidewalk for months until the fire marshal threatened a violation.
III
I can’t say that I was ever a regular, but “semi-regular” just doesn’t have the same ring. I never could figure out why I went, and each time I said that trip would be my last. Back at home and scrubbing in the shower with steel wool, I’d lament life and wonder whether an itchy monk’s habit and a cloistered cell were in my future. Nights would be lonely, no doubt, but there would be gardening, calligraphy lessons, and barrels of craft beer. Invariably, though, a few days later I’d go back into the Lounge, sit down, and get a decent buzz and three hours’ entertainment that, including tip, finished out at about $10.50.
I also learned these things about the bar and about life in general:
Happy hour really neither stopped nor started. Well drinks seemed never to be more or less than $3 and pints of beer were always $2.50, the particular variety rotated by whatever was closest to the expiration date. Well drinks were almost all the same, differing only by color. Good tippers might actually get Coke in a Jack’n’Coke, but sometimes the glass came back just a touch yellower than the Schweppes tonic water.
Each night had a theme: Half-Price Monday, Go-Go Dancer Tuesday, DJ Flash Wednesday, College Night Thursday. Nothing really changed on these nights, though; I heard stories about and saw a picture of DJ Flash, but I never saw him in person. In the picture he was wearing hot pants, cheap shoes, and a three-day beard. College Night Thursday might promise something new, but I don’t know that I ever saw anybody under thirty who wasn’t being paid to be there or was only there long enough to deliver a crate of booze.
I got to know the regulars pretty well; they were typically the only other people in the place. There was a sixty-something white businessman who called himself Jim and had one whiskey sour before going home to his wife and children. There was a black guy who used to be in the military and rode a motorcycle; he had excellent taste in music, even though the jukebox in the corner didn’t work and so we could only hum or talk about our favorite cuts from Exile on Main Street. There was a haggard drag queen in a red wig and cotton skirt who never bothered to shave. And of course there was Gary every day after four. Together we solved many of the world’s problems, and let the others
