Blue Bar (Creative writing 2010, UK)

I was 21 when I started working at The Blue Bar. I had had dropped out of college after going through an abortion in my home town, and after that, I sat of on a Greyhound heading south. It was in the end of the 90's and I came to live in a small town in Arizona. My first weeks I went on living in a typical cliché of a young woman running away from home. I rented a one bedroom in a local motel, I watched TV only for company and once a day I went out for a few groceries and a stroll around. Looking for anything. As I walked around those first weeks in a town like any town, with Wal Marts and McDonald's, I couldn't help but feeling strangely satisfied with it all. This was a new place. A different state, a changed context.  I was my own man. It wasn't a lot of research or planning that was behind me coming here of all places. Nothing was behind. I merely went on that bus and here I was. As simple as that. People often seem like that is the kind of thing they'd like to do. But that's not true. They all give you a confused look when you tell them your non existent reasons for being here. I was a loner, a runway.

After three weeks I found an ad for a spare room to rent in the local paper. It was 15 square meters big and costed me 300 dollars a month. The guy renting it out also lived in the flat. His signature in the paper was simply “Jair -” followed by his telephone number. I called from a phone kiosk and arranged to view it the same day at 2 o'clock. The air was so dry that day, the whole town was under a cloak of dead heat. I found the right address. It was a three floor house, each with a small balcony. Jair let me in. I found out he was half Brazilian, his mum came to Arizona in the the late 60's, married an American and had Jair. “You can't be old!” was the first thing he said to me, smiling friendly. I rolled my eyes, bored of that constant comment from men and walked past him into the flat, trying not to be aware of him looking at me, at the same time thinking I should have put something else on than the khaki coloured shorts and washed out shirt that I constantly wore. The apartment was quite big with a kitchen, a living room and two bedrooms. One for Jair and one for me. He said he had just broke up with someone, an old girlfriend, and needed someone else to move in. “Did you not sleep in the same bedroom? Has the other bedroom not always been empty?” I asked. He just laughed, as if what I had said was funny and didn't reply to my question. He was tall, I reached only to his chest and he had brown eyes and a big quite crooked nose, as if he had been punched in the face several times. I tried my best to seem nonchalant and sophisticated, thinking thoroughly about whether the apartment was good enough for me or not. Truth was I didn't have a lot of options and I somehow found it very exciting to be living with an older, half Brazilian man.

I signed a contract 10 minutes later and started packing my few belongings at the motel.

My new room was a bit mouldy in the roof, creating a dense smell, but I loved it. Jair said he owned a bar, The Blue Bar, in the town centre. Just a short walk from the apartment. He took me there on my first night. It was a tuesday and there for not very busy. The bar was in a white brick bungalow, inside it consisted of only a long large bar desk, with stools standing close to each other. I immediately loved the place. The walls were dark red and the only lights in there was a long mini-light strand winding all through the room.

The Blue Bar was a bit odd, the regulars were a bunch of local men and all of them seemed to sit alone drinking, even though they must have known each other in such a small town, most of them had come there for years. They hardly gave each other any notice, all of them carrying their own problems that they didn't seem to get closer to solve as they were downing drink after drink. At first I went down at irregular times together with Jair, reading one of the many news papers lying around at the bar desk or chatting a bit with one of the bar maids, but after a while Jair offered me to work there and I couldn't see a reason not to – I felt attached to the place and I wasn't educated enough to do anything else. At least not yet.

It was the perfect place. I was a quick worker and I liked having things to do – but I've always dreaded the ideal shit chat. Not necessarily because I wasn't good at it, but because I didn't want to let people to close. Believe it or not – that wasn't because I felt I had something to hide – but mainly cause I was none of their business. It never ceased to amaze me how interested people was in general gossip, even about people they didn't personally know. This bar's regulars were the opposite to that. They were quiet and easy to deal with, they drank in silence, or if they had company – they talked quietly, sitting at the far end of the bar desk.

One of my favourite regulars was a young girl, she was not older than 22 and she came in to the bar about three days a week, sitting alone drinking wine. She did not speak with an American accent, but she was fluent in the language. She was pretty, yet quite ordinary looking. This was the kind of bar where she would not get hit on. The customers merely did not act that way – after all it was quite rude just walking up to strangers, assuming it was what they wanted only based on the fact that they were sitting alone. This girl looked so clean and new, she was blank from expressions and it didn't seem to cross her mind that most young girls wouldn't think of sitting in a bar alone, drinking alcohol in the middle of the week. Or at all, for that matter. As if life had not had that impact on her, people hadn't thrown their simple rules and empty do's and dont's on her, she was just pure. I admired her and wanted to know more about her – although not completely convinced I should. Would it ruin the mystery of her? Or did I analyse her too much? I liked the fact that she didn't hide behind a magazine or a book, she didn't play with her phone or pretended she was waiting for someone. Sometimes she would play around with a napkin, but apart from that she just rested her eyes on whatever was in front of her, looking proud and neutral.

The other girls working behind the bar bored me – they seemed to take the job very seriously and didn't waste any time correcting me when I did something wrong. To them I was just a strange, mysterious girl who ran away from a town they've never heard of. I also lived with Jair, which made them think I was only working at his bar cause we were lovers – something that was not true. Jair soon started to bore me with his stereotypical way of treating us all – flirting by blinking with one eye and calling us in one by one to his office, giving some tips on how to look more feminine. It didn't really bother me, other than that I felt a bit embarrassed for his sake. I didn't mind living with him either – men always felt so easy to figure out and in many situations even quite harmless. Like dogs.
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It took me 10 days from when I last saw her – to make me realise she was gone. My favourite customer, the young girl. She never had any set days when she would visit the bar, but it was always weekdays. It could be Mondays, sometimes Wednesday and quite often a Thursday. The last day I saw her was a Thursday, quite a nice day to visit the bar. She'd never come too late, around 5 in the afternoon, just like this Thursday. She wore a black hooded jumper and jeans and she had a glass of red wine. She was always very polite and friendly, saying “thank you” and giving a brief smile at the right time, but not even once did she give me a recognizing look or mentioning the change of weather or something pointless like that, as we humans so often do. This Thursday she looked more distant than ever, she looked restless the way she scratched her cheek and she drank fast without ordering another glass. I didn't notice her leave. I went in to the kitchen to fetch some snacks and when I got back, she was gone. 10 days after that, on the Sunday night it dawned on me she hadn't been in all last week. I felt utterly sad and annoyed by it, almost furious. The customers became my friends in a very unusual way – in difference to real friends I didn't know these people and they didn't know me. I knew I would never see her again and it made me feel deeply sad and melancholic. I couldn't talk to anyone about it – I wasn't even sure anyone else had noticed her. She fitted right in with the others. In the silence at this bar.

I lay awake wondering where she had gone. Was she like me – did she just leave a place behind and went somewhere else? The world suddenly felt massive, endless. For some reason I liked thinking about the fact that if I would go find her – crazy thought – she might not recognize me. She might just stare at me, thinking I vaguely reminded her of someone. I had to realise I did not miss her – I missed whatever fantasies her silence had awoken in me. Everything she could have meant to me, all different personalities she could have had, all the things she could have taught me, all questions she could have answered. I felt as if I was going insane. I went to work as usual and it seemed more and more pointless for every day. In some weird, twisted way I did not mind that. I had always wondered if all these well paid “important” jobs made anyone happier. Life is routine, I thought, life is doing the same things over and over again. Just like this job. Repeating, that is what life is about. Repeating stuff over and over and over and over again. I didn't mind not having a high status. I felt free doing this – being able to just walk away whenever I wanted to.

We entered September month and I had been in Arizona for a year. I thought about summing it all up, just write something down. Pro's and cons, a list? What had been good and what had been bad? What did I achieve by being here? Why should I stay? Why did I even come here in the first place? Why here of all places? “Why not here?” I asked my inner voices, the voices I couldn't help but think belonged to millions of people asking each other that same questions all over the world, every day. The need of summaries, the need of having reasons and motives for everything. Being able to seek out answers where none could be found, blaming childhood, blaming parents, blaming school, blaming society, blaming surroundings, blaming god knows what. A year had flown by and I didn't really care nor felt any different from before.

In October I left the bar. I moved out from the flat and Jair hired another girl. My age, my height, my hair colour. I did not know what to do. I could always go somewhere else. Or I could just stay here and get another, similar job – paying me the same wages, getting new co-workers, slightly different from the ones I had before – but also quite the same.

I did not have any answers to life – but I still, sometimes I thought of my favourite customer.

The young girl in the bar.