Rivington Was Ours

by Brendan Jay Sullivan

  Rachel stood behind the empty bar, also working on her inventory. “Covering shifts already?”

  “Katy had a thing at her gallery. I’m just doing her happy hour.” Katy was one of us, bartending part-time. Her uncle was Thurston Moore, the guitarist for the band Sonic Youth, and had drawn her into some part-time work at a gallery.

  “You getting any action?”

  I told her the truth. A bunch of dudes came in from the afternoon hardcore show at the squat house across the street, ABC No Rio. They came in with their dad. “They’re all pumping their fists to punk rock and not tipping.”

  “At least you have customers.”

  “I’d rather just not deal with it. They leave their money on the bar—which I hate—because I don’t know what’s a tip and what’s them being morons and leaving money around. Their dad ordered a round of beers and when I told him it was nine dollars he pulled twelve dollars out and I was like, ‘Sweet, a tip.’ Then dad goes, ‘Uhm, hello. Where’s my change?’”

  “And you were like, ‘Sorry, did you give me a twelve-dollar bill?’”

  I smiled. Just us two colleagues taking five to talk shop.

  I WALKED BACK IN AND decided to get tough like Guy. When people left their inch-to-empty beers on the bar unattended, I tossed ’em. Take control of your bar. Field complaints with the kind of tough-shit attitude that you feared in bartenders. I politely mentioned that they should be more careful in New York City. If you haven’t seen their money it was because you gave them their change ten minutes ago and money on the bar was your money.

  Something about this crew bothered me. I see it in other guys—always guys—when they walk into a place and spread their arms and squat over a barstool like children screaming, “Mine!” Even their dad spread his fists wide like a placemat to carve out his own space in the world. I wasn’t having it.

  One of the kids complained, “Every other bar in New York City lets us leave our money on the bar.”

  “This,” and I could feel Guy smiling through me when I said it, “is not every other bar in New York City.”

  Dad stepped in: “We tip you at the end.”

  “This is a bar. This is not a table where you go to get served and then leave your money when you’re done. I’m not your fucking waitress.”

  Out of the eight of them, only one guy looked clean-cut. He decided the best way to placate the group was to start a tab on his Amex, which he would pay with and tip me on at the end. When I checked his ID and realized that I grew up about ten minutes from him, I cut the music, stood on the bar, and shouted over to the DJ—who grew up about fifteen minutes from them—to play some of our music from home.

  Kyle played an old record that those fuckos just ate up. One of them told us with great pride that he not only knew that band, but he was a groomsman in the singer’s wedding. Music: it binds us. Even their white-trash dad got into it.

  At nine thirty I wondered what I was still doing there. My shift ended at nine and someone else should have come in. Anybody. My door guy should have been there. The phone behind the register rang. “I didn’t know you were covering and I can’t get through.” It’s a bartender I’ve never met. She asks, “Can you stay for a while? I’m getting my hair done and it’s taking longer than it should have.”

  I hung up the phone and when I turned around I found an empty bar. The assholes fled, taking the last bus back to whatever parking lot they left from. Perfect.

  A couple of half-empty bottles sat on soggy beer mats. The bar emptied out except for Kyle the DJ and Sandy, a lone patron who asked, “You wanna do a shot of Patrón?”

  I smiled. I liked Sandy.

  Sandy was the new girl on the block. She came to town on a modeling contract and already everybody hated her. For the first week I saw her around, she made friends with everybody. Then everyone turned on her. There were rumors about her, but I try not to believe rumors.

  I raised a glass to my first shift at St. Jerome’s in the Lower East Side. I tossed out drinks and found a small pile of dollar bills and picked it up with my left hand, wiping the counter down with my right.

  A straggler emerged from the bathroom and scowled at me, “You stealing my dad’s money?”

  “What? No. Everybody left and I told you before not to leave your money on the bar.”

  “We said we’d tip you at the end.”

  “When you leave, it is the end. And I told you I’m not your fucking waitress.”

  With this he snarled, grabbed the money pile (including my tips from other customers), and ran out the door. And you know what? Good riddance.

  ONLY THAT WASN’T THE END. I don’t know what he said to his elder on the outside. My guess is that he ran out screaming to a pack of drunk morons all hopped up on two-dollar beer and testosterone screaming, “Dad, the bartender just stole all your money and then he called you his ‘fucking waitress’!”

  The door burst open and Dad, acting on insider information, led the charge with the moronathon in tow, picking up lit candles off the tables and shattering them on my face. The hot wax and glass shards stuck to my skin. “You steal my money? You steal my fucking money?”

  “Whoa. Hey. I didn’t—”

  I ducked the next candle, and the whiskey glass votive splintered on the mirror behind me, coating my face in hot wax. Still, I kept to my thesis: “I told you from the start. Money on the bar is my money.” Because obviously this was a man to reason with.

  He threw a punch across the bar. He had quite a reach for an old man but he missed. Dad grabbed a Corona from someone’s table and chucked it right at me. I deflected it with my forearm, which only made him angrier. I pointed to the door: “Get the fuck out of here!”

  “Don’t fucking tell me what to do.” He picked up a bar stool and chucked it at me. Only, he picked it up by the leg and hit me with the soft leather cushion. In deflecting that I ended up bouncing it back at him. So now we’re having a pillow fight.

  I looked around for help. Kyle stood in the DJ booth, cranking his tunes in his headphones like an extra playing a DJ in a music video, oblivious to the room. The rest of the crew decided to get involved, throwing full glasses at my face.

  Dad grabbed the stool off the bar—by the seat this time—and stabbed at me. Somehow I took two of the pipe legs and leveraged them to twist out of his hands. This pushed him back, which he didn’t like. He ran to the end of the L-shaped bar and charged at me, pushing the open cash drawer aside as he lunged for me. I flipped over the opposite end, kicking over drinks and purses. He tried to punch me over the bar once again but couldn’t connect. I realized I had now done the stupidest thing you could do in a bar fight—I got out from behind the bar.

  Dad then ran all the way around the bar and came after me.

  The eight of them rushed over. When he stepped out from behind the bar one of them took a swing at me. Before he could connect I threw my head straight back and kicked my legs out, falling back behind the bar. The small of my back landed on the sharp metal sink and I kicked my legs up to get me all the way over. My foot landed on somebody’s chin.

  Sandy started whipping her purse at them. “Get the fuck away from him! Are you fucking crazy?!”

  When Kyle pulled off his headphones, he heard me getting beat by eight guys and cut the music. He leapt out of the DJ booth, pulled a buck knife out of his pocket, grabbed Dad’s son from behind, and held the blade to him. “If you even fucking touch my friend again I will fucking cut you. You got that?”

  I turned to the clean-cut kid with the Amex. “Get him the fuck out of here.” And I dialed 911.

  “Put the fucking phone down and I will.”

  “Fuck you. All I fucking have is the phone. What am I gonna do, hit him with it?”

  “Hang up the phone.”

  “Hello? Yes, officer. That’s the address. The suspect is still here. He’s about five foot five, gray-haired, wearing a blue plaid shirt. I have his friend’s credit card and ID. Hurry.”

  “
Hang up that phone!”

  “What’s that? They’re already on their way?”

  The phone said, “Thank you for calling the city of New York. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line and . . .”

  I hung up the phone when they left.

  GUY ANSWERED HIS PHONE AFTER my fourth try. People stood in front of every bar on Rivington Street gawking at the eight cop cars. Detectives combed the empty booths and made notes about the damage. I had to tell them that none of it was new. I held the phone with my left hand as I pressed a paper towel into my bleeding shoulder. The rusty pipe leg of the barstool had cut a silver-dollar-sized hole in my back. Dad had left me a hickey.

  Earlier I couldn’t wait to leave; now I was scared to go.

  I went to call Guy so he could hear it straight from me. His phone played a tinny, bothersome version of KISS’s “Calling Dr. Love.”

  “What?” he finally answered.

  “It’s ten o’clock and Carla still isn’t here.”

  “I’ll call her.” He went to hang up.

  “One more thing. The cops are here.”

  “What the fuck happened? This is your first fucking day!”

  When I told what happened he said, “That’s the first rule of bartending: You never call the cops.” That cannot be the first rule. “Get rid of them.”

  “I can’t. Somebody else called when the fight broke out. I have to make a report and they need our liquor license and we don’t have one anywhere.”

  “Tell them you forgot what this guy looks like.”

  “And what am I supposed to do if they’re waiting for me around the corner in a van when I get out?”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “How would you know? This guy charged behind the bar. The register is busted and the drawer was wide open.”

  “That’s different. Did he steal money?”

  This guy and his fucking money.

  “No. But you’re telling me that if a guy robs the fuckin’ place you don’t want me to call the cops?”

  “Get rid of the cops. I’m serious.”

  HOW I WAS GREETED BY the staff that evening:

  Carla: “Why is it so dead in here?”

  Her barback: “If you’re going to stay for a drink, make sure you write it down on your sheet. Not ours.”

  The door guy: “Sorry I’m late. What’d I miss?”

  Carla never mentioned the fact that I was almost beaten to death because she was getting her weave done. She did, however, ask why I didn’t stock the hand towels in the bathroom. Sorry, I used them up when my wounds wouldn’t clot.

  Guy texted, “Don’t say shit to anybody. I don’t want to have to hear about this all week.”

  This fucking guy.

  An intense fear crept up my leg when I went to leave. My skin burned from the hot wax. What if they’re still here?

  “Can your DJ stay a little later? Ours was supposed to be here at ten and he’s not picking up his phone.”

  “Who was it supposed to be?”

  “Omri, from Beauty Bar.” That’s another person who should have been on my team in the rumble. Not a goddamn model and her purse.

  I don’t ever want to step foot outside of this bar forever. So I said, “I’ll do it.”

  IT WASN’T UNTIL ELEVEN THIRTY that I got my relief.

  Until then, I had contracted into a ball of anxiety, nervously looking out the window to see if they would come back for me. I shivered every time someone pushed in the door. Suddenly I couldn’t remember what any of them looked like. They all morphed into a drunken, trashy Captain Planet. One of them could be in here right now, keeping an eye out for when I stepped out or left for the night.

  Just then the door burst open. My heart skipped a beat. And I couldn’t believe it when I saw her.

  The little angel I walked away from at Hotel Rivington was at the gym when she heard the news.

  She leaped into the booth and grabbed me like I was her only son stepping out of a car wreck. And she asked the one question that no one else bothered to ask that night. She looked up at me, tears dancing on the edge of her eyelashes, and asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Somehow.”

  “Did they get them?”

  I told her how Guy told me to get rid of the cops and not file a report. “If they file a report he’ll get in trouble with the boss. And I guess if they shut down the bar all of my friends would be out of a job.”

  She called me by my first name, which no one does. “Brendan, all the shitty bars in the world are not worth your life.” She hugged me again and it wasn’t until I forgot to switch the song and the whole room went silent that I realized I was crying.

  Once I had a love and it was a gas

  The next time I saw Gaga she walked up to me silent, sheepish, and biting her lower lip. She pointed her toes in and looked up at me. Her shoulders sloped down and so did her gaze. Her thick, dark, raven Italian mane had been fried on her head. All that was left behind were the broken strands of a much-loved doll. What normally swung free and full of life now clumped together, strings of mismatched lengths like a toupee. “What do you think?”

  “You’re blonde.”

  “They wanted to go with a new look.”

  I wanted to ask her if this had anything to do with the Amy Winehouse story from Lollapalooza. But we would find time for that later. “You’ll look great.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t lie. Technically. I was sure that she would look great. Right now she had the day-of haircut and bleach job. Her hair had broken off in some places, mangling her haircut.

  After what happened at Lollapalooza (“Amy! Amy I love you!”) and other problems, her management at Coalition Media thought she needed a “fresh start.” They would later describe her as needing to be “blonde with olive skin.” Earlier that day you would have described her as “pale with thick, dark hair.” Rivington Street was aghast at the change. Already people talked about her “selling out,” which is also known as “doing her job” or “having a job.” Alien concepts around here. One thing you can’t ignore is that Gaga came to the scene with a major record deal. She started so young and worked so diligently that she could have skipped making flyers, mass texting, and the basic hucksterism that most bands go through. And she didn’t.

  The first application of blonde didn’t take too well. Ashy and a little brassy. Like the LES. She looked like one of the Golden Girls. “They’re going to have to redo it,” she said as she spread her frozen bangs with her fingers. Before, she had this thick, lustrous Italian hair that hung down, accentuating any of her sharper features. Now she had the kind of dead, gassed-out, NutraSweet-and-iced-tea blonde you see in truck stops. Her hands fussed with it, pumping it up, trying to make up for the blankness it left.

  Guy looked happy for once. “How does he like it?” I asked.

  Gaga rolled her eyes, and smiled to herself. “He likes fucking a blonde.”

  MORE THAN ANYTHING I’VE HEARD so far, blonde is a vote of confidence in Gaga. After being dropped from Island, her management team forged a new development deal with Interscope. When people asked how her deal with Island was coming along, she corrected them as if they’d misheard her before. Interscope. It was all about Interscope. But it looked like they would never focus on Gaga as a solo artist. They liked her music. But record company stooges didn’t see her as a pop star.

  One Monday morning I had to wait around St. J’s while Guy fixed the bathroom door hinge.

  “Fuck,” he said. The former drummer cracked a hollow wood door.

  “You need a washer.”

  “I got it.” Guy cursed in a dad voice and didn’t look me in the eye. For all of his bellowing and stern, managerial speech, he never looked anyone in the eye for more than five seconds. He cranked away at the nut on the door hinge with his hair covering his eyes and his frustration. The wood cracked again (“Fffuck!”) and the bolt sunk into the hollow door.

&n
bsp; I dug into the toolbox. These tools wouldn’t fix a thing. Vice grips, and no wrenches; Allen keys, and only one kind of screwdriver. This bar—however charming and wonderful and inviting—had the insufficiencies of a college kid’s first ramshackle apartment. It was new and exciting, but if you slammed the door too hard the picture frames would come crashing down from the wall.

  “Here.” I handed him a bottle cap that I punched a hole in with a nail (because they didn’t have a punch).

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s the dirty rock ’n’ roll bar version of a washer.”

  He smiled. He finished the door with the Budweiser cap. The overwhelming shittiness of it revived his spirits. In a very technical sense, I used my abilities to impress my new boss in my first week. Dad would be proud.

  We spent the rest of the day fixing up the place.

  “Where’d you learn how to do this stuff?”

  “My brother’s a mechanic. When he found out I was going away to school he was worried I would grow up to be a pussy, so he made sure I knew how to do these things. I could take a look at your El Camino too, if you want.”

  “Did you tell your brother you pussed out with those guys the other day?”

  “There were eight of them, asshole. If I could fight two of them I’d still have six guys to go. Do you really want your bartenders fighting customers?”

  “You lost control of the bar.”