Barb got involved in a party girl scene. We were all real shocked. At 70-something, we thought maybe she had gotten some kind of dementia, but Kyle, a doctor we knew, ran some tests and said she was fine. The tests were performed at the bar.
“Maybe she just likes to have fun,” he said. “This bar’s real sad.” He looked at Mickey when he said that. Mickey sat at the end of the bar, had a ridiculous haircut, and was drinking himself through his second liver.
“Yeah,” Mickey said. “I know I ain’t much of a party guy no more.”
Later, Barb came in with her crew, two school age grandchildren, and her new boyfriend, a rocker hunk named Deen.
Barb promptly sent the kids out to the alley to play with Slurf. We were never sure if Slurf was a human or some kind of large dog.
Barb made an announcement. She said, “Me and Deen think this should be a party bar now. A real club.”
The music changed like that. It was stuff most of us had never heard and weren’t sure we liked. After only a few minutes, the place was packed. Barb pulled her tits out. We’d never seen her look so ecstatic.
We watched as Mickey pounded the rest of his drink, looked around at the festivities, and shook his head before leaving. Every time he left, we were never sure if we’d see him again.
We bought cocaine from a sweaty guy who’d shown up with Barb’s crew and took it to the bathroom so we could clear our heads and try to figure out if we should stay. We left the bathroom energized and with a renewed sense of focus and purpose. We decided to stay until close.
Even though none of us had previously been interested, we each took our shot with Barb. She turned each of us down. Now that the bar was packed, there should have been other people we were interested in, but something seemed magnetic about Barb. Super charismatic.
When the bar or club or whatever it was now closed, we followed Barb and her crew to an afterparty spot in the city. We had to ride bikes because we’d all lost our licenses so many times they refused to ever give them back.
The afterparty got really dark for a while and we all declined eye contact once it started breaking up. We told ourselves we should go get tested for everything and then laughed. There was no way we could afford to do that.
Barb’s crew left to get food and we followed them. We sat as close to them as we could but there was no getting Barb’s attention. She went to the parking lot several times with several suspicious looking people.
Just before dawn, she announced that she had to go retrieve her grandkids and take them to school. We knew the night was over. We got on our bikes and went home to our studio apartments, parents’ basements, and subsidized housing.
We knew Barb had single-handedly made our lives more interesting, more glamorous, and we all looked forward to doing it again tomorrow.
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