out in my headstraights by appointment only

I can’t quite decide what’s worse – the lighting or the pungent smell of tobacco that hangs in the air, even though no one near me is smoking. I stare down uninterestingly at my drink – there certainly aren’t very imaginative ways to serve Coke, but the bartender has taken it upon himself to include a lemon wedge and two cherries in mine. I successfully stab one of the cherries with my straw and pop it into my mouth, gazing around at the people tricking in for a post-dinner drink or two. I catch a woman at the other end of the bar with a bored expression on her face – we lock gazes and she straightens up a little, but I break eye contact and viciously murder the leftover cherry. She orders another drink and looks at the men in the room, sizing each one up before she slides off the bar stool and makes a catwalk-like trot to the restrooms.

It’s not at all like I remember it, but then I again I chose to not keep many memories of this place. The bar is fancier now, with rows of bottles standing at attention behind the counter, not haphazardly hidden underneath amongst dishes and jars of olives. The band is different. The floor looks cleaner. People are actually sitting down and having conversations. It’s a world away from the place I knew, yet underneath the somewhat glimmering makeover, pockets of old memories still seem to linger.

The music is deafening and the band is enjoying every second of the crowd tonight. The weekend brings many strangers here, and tonight is of course no exception. I find my seat at the bar and he smiles as I sit down. “I’ve ordered you another drink!” he confesses, and I smile in appreciation as we clink glasses. I sip the drink through the straw, but in my mouth I block the straw with my tongue,  so it appears that I’m drinking but a drop never enters my mouth. I put the glass back down on the bar, which is littered with empty glasses and cigarette stubs. He picks up right where he left off, droning on about his work and how important he is in the company. I give him my full attention, but my mind completely shuts out his rambling for my own good. I ponder if I should actually drink whatever he’s ordered me, no matter how foul it smells, just to make him a little more bearable. But as if on cue, ___________ bounds towards me with a man in tow, nearly tripping a waiter over. He lights up when he spots me, and in one swift move he wraps his arms around me and slurs a hello to us. For a split second I wonder if he actually is drunk, but I smell nothing on his breath and his eyes are as bright as ever. All an act then, of course. Some men have a penchant for being with someone only when they’re intoxicated, and it seems like _________’s companion is having more than enough for the both of them. He thrusts a fresh drink into ____________’s hand, a mixture of blue and red hues with a mountain of ice. ____________ flashes his biggest grin and grabs the drink, moving closer to his companion. “I want to DAAAAANCE!” he exclaims, wrapping one arm around the man and dancing vigorously on the spot, despite the pressing crowds. I chuckle quietly to myself as I spot __________ making sure to slosh as much of his drink as possible, so that most of it is on the floor by the time he’s done with his little distraction. Not a very nice time for whoever had to clean up the puddle that had formed around my bar stool, but it was an excellent tactic for fooling people into thinking we were actually drunk. We knew better than to have anything that was offered to us, be it food or drink, and that wasn’t going to start changing tonight.