A Gay Bar Disappears in the Rain

by Justin Karcher

Nicolas Caetano

After the cast party, I’m walking with James and he points to the old house at the end of the block.

“That’s a widow’s walk,” he tells me. “Sailors built them so their wives could watch for the return of their ships. The wives would watch and wait.”

There isn’t a body of water nearby, but I don’t bring it up. Maybe there used to be. Maybe there was this terrifyingly large rain puddle that refused to evaporate. Maybe it took years for the sun to shine hard enough to make it all go away.

I don’t say anything and can feel James getting agitated, because he’s the kind of alcoholic that needs another mouth to be a podcast that never ends. So I have to say something or this whole shithouse goes up in flames.

“Can you imagine having that much patience that you just sit and wait for the darkness to spit out your one true love? Is the darkness ever that kind?”

But James doesn’t want to talk about the darkness as we make our way to the last gay bar in town. And when we get there, out front is like a carnival. Retired queens bashing diamonds into the wet ground. Some of them appear to be dressed up like sailors. The rest are clad in black and I assume they are widows.

Overlooking us is the shiny new medical campus. The University is buying up every building in our proud neighborhood and tearing them down. All the gay bars except for this one are gone. And every night we end up here and every night it feels like we’re playing army dodgeball with stethoscope teeth and learning about pre-existing conditions.

James bums a cigarette from the bouncer. After taking his first drag, he begins coughing uncontrollably. But then he starts laughing.

“This cigarette tastes like the extra-creamy ice cream you find at the bottom of the dumpster behind Dairy Queen,” James declares.

I hate when he brings up that summer.

We eventually head inside and I notice these med students coming out of the bathroom with coke in their gums. They’re holding colorful piñatas. I think it’s somebody’s birthday. They convince me and James to smash the colorful animals with prosthetic pool cues while the entire bar cheers us on. James refuses to pick up the candy that’s on the floor, but I do. And it feels like I’m drowning on the inside.

***

When I come to, I’m on the couch near the dartboard. The med students are gone and so is James. I check my phone, but it’s dead. I assume that some time has passed. I probably drank too much again. I can hear rain on the roof as I go up to the bar to see what I owe. It’s not too bad. Half a paycheck.

The bartender tells me that everybody left when it started raining. That it’s a cold rain. That I should have a coat or at the very least a hoodie. I tell them I need the rain. That I need to catch a cold. I’m ready to explain myself when they suddenly remember they have to do something in the back. I can take the hint.

I need to catch a cold, because I have a funeral later this week. And I’m known around town as a great mourner. But I’m not really. I always get deliberately sick a couple days before the big shindig. Sometimes I sleep outside without a blanket. Or sometimes I take cold shower after cold shower until I’m all shivers and wrinkles. Runny eyes, sniffles and suddenly I’m like the patron saint of disappearing things.

There have been a lot of funerals lately. But none for neighborhoods that have died.

On the walk home, I run into this old man with his therapy dog. He stops me so he can tell me how crazy we are for walking in the rain.

“But we got to be better than crazy. That’s what my son would’ve wanted,” he tells me.

The old man’s name is Will. The dog’s name is Moxie. Will lost his son in Baghdad and his wife not long after. Moxie is all he has. He tells me how tonight he woke up in the park and Moxie was on top of him. Covering him up like a blanket and trying to keep him dry from the rain.

“It’s better than waking up to a cup of coffee or someone who loves you,” Will declares.

We hug it out and I’m crying. But Will and Moxie aren’t able to tell, because it’s raining. Rain’s underrated like that, how it camouflages our depression.

Watching Will and Moxie shrink down the street but unfazed by the rain makes me think of love. How it’s an umbrella bus. How it collects people like raindrops running from the slaughter. Running from rock bottom. It drives through our bodies. It never stops. No one gets off. The heart is good at being clogged. And that’s actually better than it sounds. What I mean is there’s no one left behind.

That’s what I like telling myself, anyway.

In front of my house is a busted-up dryer. It’s bulk garbage day. So the rain keeps falling and I contemplate crawling into the dryer until the sun comes up. Or maybe I’ll take it around this amnesiac city like a sideshow. The mythical machine that can dry how you feel on the inside. Step right in. Nothing fades away here.

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Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Instagram: the.man.about.town) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, NY. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). He is also the editor of Ghost City Review and co-editor of the anthology My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX , 2017).