DRINKING AT SULLIVAN'S GRILL
CHAPTER ONE
Hoping to conserve some body heat by pulling my jacket a bit tighter around my body, I walked quickly through the cold night air to the door of my favorite bar. I was a bit hesitant about going inside after looking around the empty parking lot, but the lack of cars was certainly what I expected. At Christmas time, all roads lead away from a college town, and a quick look at the empty, dimly-lit interior confirmed my suspicions. It was going to be a slow night at Sullivan's Grill.
Lately, it seemed that every night at Sullivan's was slow. Most of the people who cared about finals and grades had stayed at home to study over the last several weeks, and most of the people who didn't care about grades didn't come to this bar, anyway. Either way, only the diehard regulars had been in evidence around the bar lately, and tonight, two days before Christmas, even they were gone.
At least, this way, I could have my pick of bar stools. Coming here a lot -- say three to four times a week -- one would think I'd have my favorites. On the contrary, though, I'd never really picked one side of the bar over the other, and usually tried to position myself where I'd have the least distracting view of the ever-present televisions. This town didn't sport a wide collection of bars, and the ones we have did double duty between serving as a restaurant, a sports bar, and a tavern. Sometimes I didn't mind the TV all that much -- on nights like this, at least it was something to watch. Tonight, I sat down right in front of the big screen.
That choice made, I shrugged off my jacket and wondered at the empty bar in front of me. It wasn't unusual for bartenders to go off somewhere in the back out of sight, especially when there were so few customers. A waitress that I knew had seen me come in, so I guessed a bartender would be out eventually. Being a regular at a neighborhood bar was a bizarre mix of receiving remarkably good service, while simultaneously being treated with a familiarity almost like being back in your parent's house. Nobody was going to drop what they were doing to rush out and pour me a beer, but on the other hand, I probably wouldn't have to pay for half of what I drank, either. In the end, most nights, it all worked out.
I did wonder, however, who was serving behind the bar tonight. Unlike stools, I did have my favorite bartenders. Sullivan's, for some strange and serendipitous reason, only had one female bartender. All the rest were attractive, young, reasonably-personable guys drawn from the local college crowd. A few of them could even make drinks. Over the last two years that I'd lived near here, I'd grown accustomed to all of them, and even attached to a few of them. One or two served regular duty as convenient fodder for some of my periodic fantasies, of course. So far, though, my fantasies had far outpaced reality in terms of what I really knew about their personal lives. As far as I knew, everyone who worked here was completely straight, although I had to doubt that on a purely statistical basis. And for all I've heard and read about this mystical 'gaydar', in my experience, it is notoriously inaccurate on waiters and bartenders -- or, I guess, on anybody in a service profession who realizes the connection between tips and friendliness.
Tonight, like most nights, I was hoping Glenn was serving bar. A clean-cut, all-American type who had just finished his degree in Finance at the university, Glenn was, without a doubt, my favorite. Its not just that he had the kind of looks I favored, although he certainly did. It was more his personality: outgoing, friendly, and easy to talk to in a guy-next-door sort of fashion. Glenn had been out of school for a semester or so now, and had entertained notions of leaving the small town for the big city. In fact, three months or so ago, he had loaded up his car with all his possessions and headed for Los Angeles, to try his hand -- or rather, his face -- in modeling. From what I understand from what little he talked about it, though, the big city really wasn't for him, and after three days of being homesick, he headed back home. He lived nearby on some type of farm or orchard, where he had grown up with his extended family; I'm guessing being near home gave him a certain amount of security and comfort. Anyway, Sullivan's gave him his old job back, and it was almost as if he'd never left. Now, a couple of months later, he had decided to look for a full-time job in town, in a bank or a real estate firm or something. Until then, though, he was still bartending, mostly, I think, to keep himself in beer money. If the things I'd heard about his grandfather were true, neither Glenn nor his various cousins would ever have to worry too much about money. I guess getting a Finance degree made sense when it seemed likely he'd have to someday manage a substantial inheritance.
"Hey, Alan, you doing alright?"
I looked up from my musings and saw, Danielle, my least favorite bartender and the only female bartender on the payroll, standing in front of me. "Oh. Hey. I'm doing ok. Is this it for tonight, you think, or was it busy earlier?" I asked in what was probably a disappointed-sounding voice, as I looked at the deserted tables and chairs.
"There was a small dinner crowd, but that was it. What do ya' want to drink tonight?"
"Foster's, I guess," I said, obviously without enthusiasm. Lately, I couldn't find anything to drink that really interested me. I had mostly been sticking with beers of the non-lawnmower-variety, with the occasional forays into gin-and- tonics. Foster's was my old standby, and if Danielle had been the type to watch the regulars like the rest of the staff, she would have known it. I guess I couldn't blame her though, since I had switched off my regular fare lately, looking for something to strike my fancy. And, I knew, I was more than slightly peeved that of all the people to be bartending tonight, it had to be Danielle. Some of the other regulars liked her, simply because she was the only woman on the staff. To me, though, she was just annoying. She had this habit of serving beer accompanied with these bizarre little side-to-side movements of her breasts. I've never figured out if, in my case, she's thinking the maneuver will encourage me to drink more, or if she's trying to freak me out enough so that I'll leave her bar for patrons who more deeply appreciate her ample bosom.
"Here you go," Danielle said with a characteristic breast shake. "Would you like a menu?"
"No, that's ok. Thanks, though....", I said, making myself put some extra enthusiasm into my voice at the end. If I was going to sit here all night, I was going to need the beer to come fast and quick, and unfortunately, I was going to need Danielle to get them for me. I had a feeling that making her mad early in the evening would probably not bode well for my service throughout the rest of the night.
"Do you want to run a tab?"
"Yep," I said, in a resigned voice. Everybody working in the entire bar runs tabs for me automatically, but not Danielle. She always asks, each time, even when the answer is patently obvious. In fact, now that I thought about it, it was very likely that Danielle liked me about as much or perhaps less than I liked her. I began to think that perhaps this was not going to be a fun night at Sullivan's Grill.
Actually, it had been some time since the last fun night here. Lately, I had been coming here to cap off mediocre days with copious quantities of mediocre beer. Perhaps it was just a normal case of the wintertime blues, but for the last two months or so, I'd been severely depressed. And, I'd been having a hard time putting my finger directly on the cause. It wasn't really boyfriend trouble, unless you counted the fact that I didn't have a boyfriend. It wasn't really job related, although I was certainly having trouble working up any enthusiasm for my job in the networks division of the university. It wasn't money problems I didn't make a tremendous salary, but I was comfortable enough living on my income in this town. No, it was more of an overall sense of dissatisfaction with my life. And most of that, I had no trouble admitting to myself, was due to the damn letter I'd gotten in the mail a couple of months back.
When I was in the fifth grade, I had been one of the first participants of an accelerated learning program for gifted students in my elementary school. That was in 1978, and back then, there wasn't a lot of guidance on how gifted programs were to be conducted. As best I remember, we played a lot of chess, and did a lot of word puzzles, and went on a lot of field trips to the nearby community college. But one thing that we did, that I had forgotten until recently, was write a 'time- capsule' letter to our future selves, to be opened in the Year 2000. So, two months ago, my old teacher had apparently researched addresses and then mailed out these old letters to me and my fellow classmates, unopened, and excepting a bit of wear and tear here and there, exactly as we had left them 22 years earlier.
Mine had started off with 'Dear Me,' and had ended with a 'Sincerely, Yourself.' In between, there was a lot of stuff that the 'past' me expected of the 'future' me, including, in no particular order, a successful writing career, a doctorate, a wife and kids, a big bank account, a certain amount of fame, a big sheep dog, and, for some reason, a Mercury Cougar. (My older brother had one about that time, and although I don't recall this, apparently my younger self was rather taken with it.)
Anyway, now just days away from the Year 2000, I had...well...none of those things. And although there were at least two -- possibly three, depending on which way I'm leaning on the sheep dog -- items in the list that now fail to interest me at all, the entire episode had succeeded in throwing me into a fit of intense introspection.
So, introspection being best cured by alcohol and crowds, I had been frequenting Sullivan's rather more of late than normal. Tonight, however, with no crowds and without my favorite bartender, I began to suspect the alcohol might prove to be more of a problem than a solution.
"Alan. Hey, man, what's up?"
I looked up from where I had been staring at the head of my beer, right into the eyes of Glenn, standing, for once, on my side of the bar. His blue button-down shirt caused me to squint at his neck for a moment, until I realized that I'd never seen him wearing anything other than a regulation bar tee-shirt. Now, I'd only had about a third of my Foster's at this point, so I can't blame my sudden lack of conversational abilities on alcohol. No, it was merely a cruel twist of fate and circumstance that caused me to be completely stricken mute.
"You all right?" Glenn repeated, this time with a quizzical smile crossing his face.
I nodded, hit the bar with my right hand for emphasis and nodded again.
"You sure?" he said, tilting his head in the other direction.
"Yeah. Uh. I mean. Yeah, I'm fine. I was just thinking and...," my voice trailed off as I finally convinced my mouth to work.
"You want me to leave you alone so you can think some more?" Glenn had always made a point to engage me in conversation when he was behind the bar, but I knew, from talking with him over the months, that although he wasn't dumb by any stretch of the imagination, there were a lot of intellectual pursuits that he hadn't engaged in. A couple of other regulars and I had ongoing discussions roughly centered in various areas in philosophy, and usually after more than several drinks apiece, we had fairly heated arguments about the relative merits of Jeremy Bentham's hedonic calculus or Jung's view of psycho-therapy. Sometimes we didn't know what we were talking about either, but we made a good college try of it, anyway. During these debates, Glenn had always been an avid listener. When we or at least I tried to draw him into the conversation, he always suddenly had something to clean or some glasses or plates carry to the back of the restaurant. Several times, though, when I'd been there myself, Glenn had asked me about some of the discussions, and had me define some of the terms my friends and I had bandied about. Being familiar with the business school at the university, I knew that only the most basic courses in liberal arts were required, so it didn't strike me as strange that he wasn't familiar with even the basics of philosophy or our other targets for drunken conversation.
"No, no. You're fine. Are you working? I mean, I guess you're not working with that shirt, huh?" There was still something bollixed up between my mouth and brain, apparently.
"No. I was on to be a bar-back tonight, but I don't think there'll be much of a reason for one," Glenn said, looking around the empty restaurant, "so I thought I'd just sit here and drink a few for a change. I haven't been on this side of the bar in a long time."
"That's cool. Have a seat....I mean, if you aren't meeting anybody up here or anything...," my voice trailed off again, as my brain, released from its stupor, realized that the night had begun to look more promising.
"No, there's nobody left in town really. Sure, I'll sit with you for a few drinks but we'll have to move somewhere else.....I mean, Andy will let us drink here when we're not working, but we can't sit at the bar...."
I thought about this for a minute, and probably said a bit too eagerly, "You pick a table....," already moving off the stool with Foster's in hand. I'd never had the opportunity to sit and drink with Glenn before, and I wasn't going to miss the opportunity, if I had to sit outside by the trash dumpsters to do it.
"How about here," Glenn said, picking a tall table near the entrance to the kitchen, "I think a few of the guys in the back are closing up the kitchen in a few minutes, and then they'll be out."
Damn. The last thing I wanted was a bunch of other folk horning in on my evening with Glenn. But, I really wasn't in a position to say much about it, and instead, I was willing to spend time with Glenn however I could manage it. And, I suppose, some of the people on the kitchen crew were pretty good looking, now that I thought about it.
I took a seat at the high table, with my back to the bar and facing Glenn's chair. He was drinking a Coors Light in a bottle, not my favorite beer by any stretch, but a lot of people who worked here seemed to drink it for some reason. Sullivan's routinely ran promotions for Coors every Tuesday night, so perhaps there was some sort of special 'Coor's-Light-for-Employee's' price that I didn't know about. In a college town, the lure of cheap beer should never be underestimated.
"So," I started, hoping to regain my conversational equilibrium, "what are your plans for the holidays?" It wasn't the most original conversation starter this time of year, but now that I was having a conversation with Glenn without a bar in between us, I was having trouble thinking of things to say.
"Just work and trying to get some sleep mainly. I'm at this place too much, you know? I've worked here twelve days of the last fifteen, since everybody's schedules has been screwed up because of finals. I'll probably be working everyday we're open between now and the start of next semester, too. All the people who don't live in town have gone home, I guess, so there are only a few of us left to keep the doors open." he said.
"You got a big Christmas planned with your family then? I know you're not open on Christmas day." I asked, taking a sip of my beer.
"Actually, my family is in Florida for the holiday. My Grandad has a house down in Destin and they all decided it would get them out of the cold to spend a week or two down there. I'd already said I would work by the time they made the plans, so I hated to back out of working since Andy's having such a hard time filling shifts. This will be my first Christmas by myself, I guess." Glenn said, with a somewhat sad tone in his voice. "What about you?" he continued.
"I'll probably just spend it in town, I guess."
"You're not going to visit your parents, then?"
I took a long swig of my beer as I thought about how to answer that one. "No, I've spent Christmas here for the last couple of years. I'm guessing that my parents are doing something or the other, but I don't exactly know what." I finally replied.
"How can you not know what your parents are doing?" Glenn asked, drinking his beer as he looked at me with a strange expression. I thought about all the things I'd heard him say about his family, and decided that he was honestly confused about how I could be uncertain of my family's holiday plans.
"Uh. Well, they're doing stuff for Christmas, I guess, and I do talk to them, and every now and then I go see them, but I usually don't go home for big events like Christmas and Thanksgiving. My parents are best taken in small doses, and besides, they've got their hands full with grandkids these days." I finally replied. Not quite the complete truth, but true enough.
"Huh. That's weird. I wouldn't know what to do if my family wasn't around all the time. I can't imagine not knowing what they're doing. Hey, are you done with that?" he asked, pointing at my beer glass. "I've got to get me another one, and I'll get you one while I'm up there. I figure you'll get 'em faster if I get them than waiting for Danielle...." Not waiting for my answer, Glenn grabbed my empty glass and his bottle and headed off to the bar, leaving me alone to wonder just how apparent Danielle and I had been in our thinly-veiled dislike for one another.
After a few quick moments behind the bar, Glenn was back at the table with our beers. Handing mine to me, he took his seat, and started slapping a new pack of cigarettes against his forearm, methodically packing the tobacco. I watched the strong muscle in his left arm tense up as he popped the end of the pack against it with his right hand. I don't smoke, but oddly enough, I've always been entranced with these little cigarette-smoking rituals. And, of course, I only needed the smallest of excuses to watch Glenn.
I heard the door to the bar open and close behind me, and turned to see two couples one in their early twenties and another in their forties -- come into the bar, carrying what looked to be a very new baby in a carrier. The holidays were always a strange time in the bars and restaurants of this town, as the non-college crowd took the opportunity to eat out without the distraction of the wilder and louder student population. I've never figured out why parents bring small children to bars, but Sullivan's had good food in addition to the wide beer selection, so it wasn't all that unusual for families to be seen there having lunch or dinner.
"How many grandkids do your parents have?" I heard Glenn ask.
"Four," I replied, "at last count." Turning back around to face him, I watched as he calmly tapped ash into a tray from the end of his cigarette.
"Any of them yours?"
I thought about all the different ways that I could answer that question. Was he just making conversation, or did he have some other motive in mind for the question?
"Nope," I replied, keeping my voice very even. "Both my brothers have two apiece. I've never been married. Or even close. That's one of the things my parents get bent out of shape about, actually." I wondered if he'd follow up on this line of questioning.
"They're bent out of shape because you haven't gotten married yet? Or they're bent out of shape about why you haven't gotten married yet?" Glenn asked, putting his cigarette down for a moment.
I let my eyes follow his hand as it moved down to the ashtray and back up toward his chin, as he rested his elbows on the table and his head on his cradled hands, his eyes staring directly at me. I began to rethink my opinion of Glenn's grasp on the subtleties of language, as I thought about the way he'd turned those particular questions. He knew, I decided, exactly what he was asking.
"The latter," I said, taking another sip of my beer for extra courage. Staring directly at him, I continued, "I told them I was gay when I was around twenty-two, and I'm not sure they've ever quite recovered. These days, they just pretend I never mentioned it, and they work real hard to make sure the subject doesn't come up."
I knew I spoke with a certain degree of cynicism in my voice, but I couldn't help it.. Part of it was my annoyance with how my parents judiciously avoided any topic that could conceivably bring up the subject of my sexuality. Part of my cynicism, though, was my uncertainty about how this scene was playing out. I'm never made any real big secret of being gay, and at one point, I was the faculty advisor for the local gay support group on campus, until I got tired of refereeing fights between all of the small -- but vocal -- factions that plagued the organization. I'd decided years ago that if someone asked, I was going to tell them the truth, and regardless of how this might change things with Glenn, I wasn't going to change that policy now.
"I can understand how that's probably tough during the holidays, I guess," Glenn said, with a somewhat dubious expression on his face. I took that as a bad sign it seemed, at first blush at least, that he wasn't empathizing with my situation. At least, I told myself, he was still sitting with me.
"If you could do it again, knowing how things would turn out, would you still tell your parents? I mean, if you could change it back, would you?" Glenn asked in a quiet voice, staring down at his beer. My stomach flip-flopped again. Was he just curious about a situation that he couldn't imagine, or was he looking for information to deal with his own folks. After having decided moments before that Glenn was definitely straight, I was now beginning to wonder if I was right.
Finally, taking a deep breath, I decided to quit worrying about Glenn's sexuality and just go with the flow. At the very worst, I told myself, the night had become far more interesting than seemed initially possible, and on that score alone, I was ahead of the game. And, from the way that Glenn was watching condensation from his beer bottle soak into his drink napkin, there was more going on here than I initially thought.
"I'd do it again," I started, with only a little bit of hesitation. "I can't imagine things being much different at this point, honestly."
"So how did you tell them?"
I sat back and looked at Glenn. After a moment, he looked up at me. We looked at each other for a minute, and then he smiled. I smiled back, and he raised his left eyebrow in a sort of apologetic way.
"If you don't mind telling me about it, that is....," he said, somewhat shyly, I thought.
"I don't mind, but we're going to have to have more beer," I said. Glenn looked down at his empty bottle and then at my empty glass, looked back up at me, gave me a sort of decisive nod, and started off for the bar.
(Continued in chapter two)