She walked into the bar not really sure what to expect. Having driven by it to her hotel she had brushed it off as just a dive bar, but then was told it was the most hopping place in this little town. Granted that may not amount to much, but at least it was something other than the 4 walls of her small little motel room which didn’t even have a privacy wall for the toilet.
Showing her ID at the door she walked by the bouncer who gave her only the cursory look to make sure she was the woman on the ID she had presented. He seemed to do the bare minimum of his job, but, then again, was it really worth trying to pull something over his eyes if he probably knew everyone in the town? She walked through the single metal door and walked into a bar she would have never imagined in her life.
There wasn’t an apparent theme, but then again, there was. It was not something you could describe but it was something you could feel as the theme. Making her way to the bar she ordered a basic beer on tap and was surprised at the bite she got from a drink she was pretty sure she had drunk a hundred times.
It was early in the evening and only a few people were currently in the bar. They all seemed to be regulars as they sat with their drinks and ignored most everyone around them. They did not even look at the newcomer, that she was, which really threw her. She was used to being gawked at and being harassed by men of all ages. She was used to it and not to have it done here was actually throwing her off. She felt out of place in a place where there did not seem to be an out of place. Finishing the beer she had, she ordered a simple cocktail and found a seat towards the back of the room where she could watch people arrive.
It took a bit of time for a crowd to start trickling in, but when it did, it came in a rush. The bar had been mostly quiet up until this point. The music had been on low with nothing really being chosen on the box, but it just running on auto. Now there was hard and loud music playing and there was a disco ball which had been turned on. The lights were on low and the flashing of the lights on the disco ball made it hard to pinpoint any single individual.
At any other bar, she would have been approached no more than half a dozen times by this point. But here, she still had yet to even be noticed except by the bartender who sent a waitress to her every so often to make sure she was still okay with her drink. She was sipping it slowly, not quite sure what to make of this situation she was finding herself in.
She had expected a country vibe to the place, but instead, it was more rock and heavy alternative music being played. Songs which you either could not understand the lyrics or, if you could, you were most likely singing along to the song since it was so well known. The people dancing and drinking ranged from their 21st birthday up to their 90th and there was no rhyme nor reason as to what each person was interested in. It seemed everyone was interested in their own thing and screw what age group it would have been assigned to.
It was actually quite freeing and as she had, probably, her third drink she was beginning to loosen up to this strange array of a crowd. She let her hair down and joined in on the music and dance floor. The people around her finally noticed her and welcomed her onto the dance floor. And that is where she stayed for the rest of the night until the bar closed, and she dragged her tired, dehydrated behind down the block to her motel room.
The alarm sounded like an irritating bug which would not shut up and she whacked at the clock with a hand which might as well have been a wet rolled up wad of newspaper. She finally knocked it off the small table and it was again quiet. The windows were letting the sunshine in and she realized she probably should be getting ready to leave.
As she checked out, with a complimentary cup of coffee in hand, the front desk attendant asked if she had enjoyed her stay. When she told the attendant about the bar down the road she had been the night previous, the look she received was that of confusion.
“Ma’am, there is no bar there… well there was… but there isn’t anymore. It burned down about a year ago after the disco ball short-circuited and fell. The majority of the town was injured in the fire.”
Thinking her leg was being pulled she just nodded and said her good-bye. She drove back down the way she had come the night before and past the bar she had enjoyed herself at and sure enough, while there was still a front to the building, the rest of the building had fallen and crumbled along time ago. She wasn’t sure who this could be, but as she drove on, she thought she heard a distant sound of rock and hard alternative play as she drove out of town.
Chelsea Haller 