Where everybody knows your name
“Got any smokes behind the bar?” I'd ask Pete in between the time I quit buying cigarettes and when I quit smoking them. Pete would toss a pack up on the bar and strike a match. We'd grin. He'd go back to drying beer glasses. Pete was a bartender at the Zoo Bar in Lincoln, Neb., the hottest spot for blues between Kansas City and Chicago, and a lair for people hiding out from the world. Folks at the Zoo, they never got too personal. They didn't pry, or wonder what brought someone into a bar to watch the news on a weeknight while the majority of middle Americans ate dinner with their families. I was fresh off a divorce and not at all sure how to go about being alone. Same with Sid. He was real skinny with bad teeth, but you could tell he was a lady-killer before gin had its way with him. Sid was a hometown boy who nearly made it big as Little Jimmy Valentine of the Heart Murmers, but he lost his will to care when Mrs. Little Jimmy had all she could stand. Sid came home to nurse his hurt and play piano with the house band on weekends. He still wore tuxedo jackets with bow ties and he still put Jerry Lee Lewis to shame. We'd sit and drink and watch TV, and occasionally speak. Sid spent a lot of time mooning over a nine-year-old redhead he forgot to remember often enough when they lived in the same house. I spent a lot of time too scared to think about my own life, so I'd listen to Sid, let him light my cigarettes, and lose myself in the cheesy B-movie scenes we played out when he took the stage and put our disaffected lives to music. It's funny how divorce can shock even when it's obvious from a mile away. I knew on my wedding day I wouldn't stay married, but I shoved that little voice right out of hearing distance. Sid, he surely realized that any woman, no matter how powerfully in love, could only take so much of him reaking of cigarettes and gin. Yet there we were, scared to death that what we left behind was all there was to love, that we'd never again find anything close and we'd spend the rest of our lives feeling like our insides were about to shake loose. Sitting on that barstool next to Sid, it was easy understand why people stayed in bad marriages. It was easy to see why they tolerated unbearable relationships. It was real clear back then why the choice between a violent spouse and none at all was a toss-up. A violent marriage fills life with evasion tactics, defensive maneuvers and psychological artillery fire. Divorce leaves nothing but a big, quiet empty space. I spent the first year after my divorce feeling as if my molecules would just let go of each other at any moment. I wondered if I'd ever stop shaking inside. Folks at the Zoo were like family. They didn't indulge you forever. I gave up smoking for good not long after the night I asked Pete for cigarettes and he wanted to know if I left mine in the machine. I showed up less and less as I learned how to be alone, and Sid eventually remarried after he learned how to be with someone. The Zoo Bar remains the same. Only the names have been changed, to protect the people hiding out from the world. Monday, January 26, 1998 |