The Heathers.
Working there provides a very interesting and what I suppose some would consider a unique dynamic. By unique, i mean plain bazar. While the bar is in fact a business and like many businesses all over the world in other patriarchal societies, this place too is also run by men. The thing is, that working in a place made for, maintained and supported by gay men sometimes makes me feel like I’m in high school all over again. While the rest of the world seems to want to relive their youth, I never want to be a teenager again. I could barely stand teens when I was one, for this reason alone I know that I will never be that man with the little red porsche and tupe (at least as long as propecia is in existence). The bar is like every cliché after school special, Mean Girls, and some random episodes of Parker Louis Can’t Loose all mixed together. I know I seem to say that a lot in these stories, but it’s true. High school was nothing in comparison to my experience at the Labyrinth. In high school we at least know that we are young and stupid. Here, some people just stay young and stupid for life. It's something that happens when alcohol mixes with the bad Kylie Minogue remixes I suppose.
In high school I had no life, little drama, really it was depressing. For most of it I was pretty A-sexual and was okay with it. I assumed that eventually life would just fall into place within 30 minutes and eventually I would join a cool click and have burgers at the Max with Kelly and Lisa by sophomore year. Who was I kidding? I really just wanted to hang with Zack, by hang, I wanted to be his best friend and eventually have that awkward moment where we made out in Mr. Belding’s office which would make him have to leave Kelly for me. Instead, I watched others around me have a lot of drama, sex and lives and I was just there. I was the observer. My high school life was metaphorically speaking like I was that fat guy that just sat at home watching reality TV for years while getting fat, eating twinkles and living vicariously through those I watched. The guy who never got off of his lazy ass and let the years go by and others experience everything.
There are the popular ones here at the Labyrinth, much like those you see in high school based TV shows. We (by we, I mean I) will call them Heathers for the time being and novelty purposes. Instead the high school girls all named Heather, with their blond hair, big-tits and short skirts who are a dime a dozen and run the school and it’s a similar social hierarchy. Here, Heathers are men who have a specific mix of sass, sex appeal and often find their way to squish their fat asses into Diesel jeans 2 sizes smaller than they should just to keep up with the Joneses. Working here has a way of hypnotizing one into forgetting that there really is a whole world outside of this disco shimmering, limp-wristed maze of a Castro bubble. Like the Heathers of high school, they too can make or break someone in my shoes who has to deal with them 4-5 nights a week.
Within the 5 years that I have spent there, I have always noticed a clear clique that has remained constant during my time, the Heathers. They are Phil’s favorites. They often do not embody the specific, stereotypical image one may imagine a bartender to portray or look like physically. While being very different form one another, the quality that they all share is that they bloom in many ways via working at the bar. There are people who have worked there often for some time, some longer than others. Others have put it like this, “Phil likes to take wilting, unlikely flower buds and give them a chance to grow, just to eventually toss them to the curb or kick them out of his house.” It’s like this group represent the closest thing he will ever have to children that he can control. Often they go from quiet, mousy wallflowers to unlikely bartenders, who are cocky, sometimes money/and or coke hungry individuals (if not for a long period of time, at least for a small period of time most, but not all try the ski slope). While in my time there, I have seen many different Heathers groups manifested, they all have the same elements in common. Every 6 months or so this group changes reformulates, a new king emerges while another is dethroned or banished from the place all together. The Heathers are the ones who get the core best shifts at the bar and this is when they get sucked into the nexus that many bartenders fall into, somewhere between dawn and dusk, where your world is the bar. I just want to get one thing straight though, getting sucked into this world often has nothing to do with a lack of education, means failure at the “real world,” in my opinion it’s about comfort for most of us. The majority of their shifts are Friday, Saturday and maybe Sunday. They end up making more money in cash per week than most blue-collar people like us can understand and more than most white-collar people make a week at the same time, where all the money goes, that is a whole separate topic. The Heathers are Phil’s favorite bartenders at the moment. When bartenders end up in this group they live in their own parallel bubble of reality. They/we live the lives of vampires, rarely seeing the light or life of day, but without stupid young teenage girl fantasizing about us. Often it is hard for the Heathers to maintain functioning, relationships lasting longer than the time it takes for someone to zip their pants. It’s hard to date one of them/us for this reason and hard for anyone to get past the trick title due to our incompatible/ horrendous schedule. I can attest to this personally, but that is a separate story and for another time, maybe a whole book of it's own. Since they work every time the world around them lives, they get stuck in the inner-workings of the bar. This becomes their air, water and life before they can realize it.
(To Be Continued)
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