The Bar

I consistently hated being alone at night. I would create ridiculous scenarios in my head and invent ’ secret escape plans’ just in case those scenarios did actually happen. I would get myself into a frenzy about the glitches in my plans and sleep with a light on, if I even dared to go to bed. This Friday night was the worst, there was an almost sinister feeling in the atmosphere. I glanced out of the window at the empty fog filled street and was overcome with a sense of dread, I just shook it off and closed the drapes. Slumping down on the settee with a half empty bottle of port I flicked through the channels until I came to a documentary about Jack The Ripper. I was always fascinated by Jack The Ripper. As a child I’d read a book about infamous murders and The Ripper came in third favourite after The Black Dahlia Murder and Death Through The Porthole. The documentary ended and up next was some sort of game show where men would compete to date the latest clone of a super-starved wannabe model or something or other. I decided to give that a miss and go for a walk into town, it was before ten on a Friday night, after all. I squeezed myself into some skinny jeans, pulled on a tight pink top that gave me a killer cleavage, fluffed my hair, slicked on some red lipstick and eight inch heels, dosed myself in cheap perfume and downed the rest of the port.


My heels click clacked on the pavement. I could barley walk in them sober, I was failing even more then usual being half-cut off a bottle of vintage port. I stumbled into the nearest bar. It was a dingy, seedy little bar, downtown on the corner of Baker Street. Some people would say it was the worst part of town, I didn’t agree. Like any other bar in town it had its regulars. Mostly low class hookers and their clients, broke art students who felt out of place in the trendy cocktail bars uptown, depressed wannabe musicians drowning their sorrows with a scotch on the rocks behind a cloud of cigar smoke and old drunks who had been kicked out of everywhere else, including their homes. The place wasn’t very welcoming; mismatched bar stools covered with tatty tartan fabric, off-white walls yellowed by cigarette smoke, aging movie posters tried and failed to add colour to the walls. The atmosphere hardly added a hospitable affect, a miserable looking old guy with a handlebar mustache sits reading The Mirror and ignoring your order, the jukebox spits out songs about depression and heartbreak, above the shelf full of dusty bottles and antique teapots hung Guernica, a painting by Pablo Picasso. If this place were a song I’m sure it would be a Billie Holiday classic.

The people sitting in the place looked like they shared the pain of the Picasso masterpiece. A woman dressed in all black sits alone by the door twirling her fingers around the top of the wine glass on the table in front of her. Her eyes distantly looking out of the window, a look of mixed lost and melancholy on her face. Her painted cupid bow lips clutched an unlit cigarette. She places the cigarette in the ashtray, takes a small sip of her wine and returns to her routine of twirling and staring. A trampy looking man is asleep in a drunken state, his head propped up by the bar, clutching an empty glass, having wiped his memory with liquid morphine. No one will bother him here, no one will look at him like he’s a disgrace to the nation. He’ll stay in this position until closing hours, before he finds a park bench or something to sleep on. A bleach blond haired girl falling out of her blue sparkly top twirls her hair and giggles loudly and annoyingly while flirting with a handsome guy at the bar, he’s swarthy and full of charm and wit. He’s a regular, I see him in here every Friday night, different girl hanging off his arm each time. I once fell for his good looks and sweet talk. We had a few drunken nights together, the fucking was fun, and he was pretty good at it, but he wasn’t as amazing as these girls made him out to be, ‘I’ve had better’ I told myself. He winks at me and I give a little smirk back.

Two old men sit at a round table in the center of the room chatting about the latest flush they have had on the horses. The old men were once heart breakers, in their dandy hats and smart jackets, they flirt with the barmaid who doesn’t look the slightest bit impressed, they think they can still charm the ladies. Their conversation moves on to the latest episode of Eastenders their wives made them watch, while they sip their gin one says ‘that Stacey is such a nice girl’ while still claiming he doesn’t watch the program. A gay couple is entwined in the dark corner of the room. Hiding from the cruel, discarding world they live in. To me the bar is just a place, to them it’s an escape. A place where they can be themselves without being ostracized. They look around shiftily before kissing each other quickly, never being a hundred percent comfortable with themselves.

The door bursts open and the room is suddenly full of energetic chatter and lively laughs. A group of indie looking teenagers walks in. They order foreign beers and chat about the latest Radiohead and Muse albums. They sit here because they want to be different; they want to say that they drank in a place no one else knows about. Some people have a thirst to be accepted, others not. One male in a pinstripe suit and stripy scarf orders a martini, the waitress sulkily slams the glass down on the bar with a thud. He politely says thank you before joining in the chatter about this years Glastonbury festival. Amongst the large group of friends sit a couple, clutching each others hands and staring at each others eyes intently. Almost as if a bubble surrounded them. They order one cocktail, two straws.

The only source of artificial light, an art deco lampshade hanging from the ceiling, starts to flicker and dims, putting the bar into a dark, mystical shadow. “Just like making out in the wardrobe for seventh heaven,’’ one girl says, her friends giggle and roll their eyes at her. Two perfectly polished girls with knock off designer handbags open the door, take one look around and leave. I guess it wasn’t their kind of place. Later a group of teenage boys enters with their hoods up and their jeans dangerously low. They ask if there are any cash machines, the barmaid answers with a blunt ‘no’ before giving them death stares for even trying to talk to her.

As for me, you may ask why I choose to come and sit alone in a seedy bar on a Friday night? Well, I guess I’m just lonely and where else could I find the most interesting people to watch and write about? Here they don’t need to put on facades and pretend to go along with the trends or like the latest pop song, they don’t need to pretend they’re over that man or that they live perfectly happy lives. Here they let it all out, warts and all.

I found this place eight months ago after a nice spelt of early twenties angst, entranced by the gloomy atmosphere; I spent hours pouring over details of my life and love before noticing that the other people in here shared my pain. Ever since then I sit here and people watch. Everyone has a story to tell; happy, tragic, sad, heart breaking, interesting, odd, fucked up. I look up at Guernica, maybe the scene isn’t so far off. I can stumble my way back home now. I’ve drank and wrote and took comfort in the bar, in the people in the bar. I suppose it’s a kind of escape to all of its regulars, including me.