Reel-2-Real

Quiet street, vacant lobby, decorations have been taken down. The dark Mahogany bar empty, save for the couple examining their drinks and avoiding  eye contact. An older couple on the return - glassy-eyed man in his late seventies with his smart looking wife, bravely graying in a taupe turtle neck for all seasons. Clear bottles sit alone together on rows of glass shelves like giant perfume bottles lit from behind, each with their own singularity - ceramic, beveled, stout and slender. Inside the amber whiskey bottle was a drunken wedding party from last weekend - a clear schnapps bottle toasted a 48-year anniversary. Bourbon marked the beginning of another lost weekend for the local jewelry salesman, beginning and ending on the third stool from the garnish station.

They used to pipe in Chet Baker and Dionne Warwick, now they have a super-size reel to reel tape recorder smack in the middle of the bar. Spotify’s endless loop of sounds from a Quaalude-induced coma. Corporate’s nostalgic nod to the wrong era, like those fake Victrolas in Long Island living rooms. Another bit of Charcuterie to go with the reel to reel conversations and reticent bartenders, who are saving their better selves for their real lives – off-duty cabbies in search of the next airport run.

There will be no human theater tonight, the kind you trade in your Netflix fix to come out on a foggy drizzle of a night. Just a thumping wedding party in the adjacent room that’s winding down. I hear the muffled drunken sounds of Texas, or Tennessee or maybe the farmlands of Modesto.  I imagine jewel-colored taffeta bridesmaids spinning uncontrollably on the dance floor, and a stiffly sprayed Mother-of-the-bride skeptically eyeing her daughter’s future.  Imitation men waiting anxiously to emerge out of the pages of Connoisseur magazine, cigar in one hand Courvoisier in the other. Soon, they’ll be pouring into this bar looking to make up for what they feel gypped them in the last one - their phony laughter getting louder, in a relentless attempt to drown out all that is lacking. A red-hot alarm sounds from within -

no flailing arms or running for the hills - just a quick French exit, and then I’m gone…until next time.