Lipez - 131 Different Things

ten
places
we had
a drink
together

1 New York 2004
23 berlin 2003
4 New York 1999
58 New York 2001
9 tokyo 2013
10 charleston, sc 1999

seven bars
one nightclub
one loft
& a diner

At 12:03 Saturday afternoon the phone in my pocket started vibrating. I didnt need to pull it out to know it was the regulars calling because the gates to Pyms Cup were still down. I was a block away. That was fine. They wouldnt call the owner till twelve fifteen. They didnt want to snitch on someone who had control of their noontime drink unless it was absolutely necessary.

When he saw me coming, Caldwell Teenager put down the receiver on the last working pay phone in the tristate area. He pulled a loosie out of the change dispenser and relit it. His hands trembled, but only a little.

I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Are you okay?

Im fine, Caldwell. Thank you.

I undid the padlocks at each side of the gate, throwing them one by one in front of the entrance. Even though I didnt need it, Caldwell helped me lift the gates.

The art on the wall was renewed on a regular basis. Wed had a dinosaur giving a cop the finger, a riot cop eating a cartoonish still-squealing BLT, I Miss Giuliani in sharp angular letters, and, of course, RIP... whatever. NYC, LES, Democracy. The current mural was Uncle Sam felating a skeletal camel with dollar signs dripping from his chin.

I put the book of skateboarding photography Id been making a show of looking at on the train behind the register, cover peeking out. I glanced at my phone as I ran the dishwater to clean the glasses that the nighttime bartender had left. My phone, habitually dropped, was on its last legs, with nothing on the inside screen but Sanskrit, though the outer notifications told me that there were six missed calls that Id failed to notice as I ran from the J/M/Z station. Caldwell Teenager (from the sidewalk pay phone, twice), Steve, Young Steve, Terry the Faggot, and Whitey. The other four must have gone to get coffee for their beers. They arrived en masse as I came out from the quixotic task of sort of cleaning the bathrooms.

Any bodies in there? Young Steve called out from the doorway.

Everyone laughed like it was the first time theyd heard that joke.

The regulars all drink beer at first, so I gave them all beer. I wiped down the bar with a damp rag. Someone put on the Monkees Stepping Stone three times in a row when I had my back turned. The regulars yelled at each other and no one fessed up and we all sang along for the third run.

There was change on the bar for my tips. I didnt fling change off the bar till the evening.

Steve sat with Young Stevewho was a few years older than Steve but had been hanging out at Pyms for a shorter timein the corner by the lone large multipaned window. The panes were all different colors, replaced on the cheap as they got punched in. The sun managed to get through the cracks and graffiti and the Steves were convinced it made day drinking tropical. Whitey, a black Dominican born and bred on Avenue D, sat underneath the Absolutely No Card Playing sign that he, through bad luck and worse temper, had been the cause of. Caldwell Teenager, in his thirties looking fifty, stood next to him, leaning on the Addams Family pinball machine. Its top glass was cracked but it still worked, emitting the theme song every few minutes. In several hours these guys would sing along to that too. Terry the Faggot, not gay just not great at sticking up for himself, sat a little farther away, hunched in his trenchcoat, unsure if everyone was his friend today or not. I put half a shot of vodka in front of him. Hed been hassled pretty bad on my last shift. Everyone had taken ice cubes out of his rum and Coke to throw at him because he didnt really care much for Die Hard. It was hard to defend. He always said shit like that. Just thinking about it, I wanted to take the vodka back.

At one thirty, my former wife came in. She was dragging some twentysomething coke vulture with her. She looked okay, half-Cuban/half-Irish and all that went with that (strikingly good looks till death, counterintuitively racist parents), but the dude with her was wearing a black leather jacket with, god help us all, no shirt underneath. It was thirty degrees outside. I poured myself a half pint.

Good morning, Sam.

Aviva hoisted an oversized black purse, fringed with silver studs and something clanging inside, onto the bar. She pushed it toward me. I put it behind the bar.

Ill have a margarita, no salt, extra ice, its early, and my boo here will have a beer. Do you care what kind, boo?

Whatevers clever.

I gave Aviva a look. She arched an eyebrow. I made her margarita weak.

Aviva managed the art factory for one of those ceramic monstrosity pop artists who didnt disappear after the eighties, making sure the thirty passive-aggressive dudes she outranked painted enough silver circles and oversized ceramic doll parts to make the artist another twenty million.

When wed gotten married, I still had a camera and was still nave enough to think I had the talent to become the next Spike Jonze if Spike Jonze had quit or died before he made movies. Back then, Aviva was wild all the time and that was what I liked; she gave me action to document. But truth was, I was only dinking around; after some early success with my skateboarding shots, I never found another subject I could sink my teeth into, and when Aviva got bored of partying and focused on work, she turned out to have a lot of talent. Shed made a solid career, while I had given up trying. By the end, I was borrowing money from her all the time and resenting her for it. And when we broke up things only got worse. I didnt even have a darkroom anymore and was too much of a curmudgeon to switch to digital. My only goal for my bartending career was to be like the ones in books or After Hours; the sort who didnt hand out wisdom, didnt flirt, but who grizzled regulars called nurse.

I gave her datewho looked like both the singer of the Dead Boys and a literal dead boya Bud Light. Fuck that guy.

Sam, this margarita is not your best. Im not mad, as Im not paying for it, but I think you should know.