Hole in the Wall, "Opening Night" | by Robbie Pieschke

We thought of ourselves as more than anecdotes of the recession, but that is what we were. Fresh graduates failing to find work, living in a two-bedroom not far from Chicago, we told ourselves stories to justify the denials to which we were unaccustomed. Not that we had achieved much, but we tricked ourselves into believing success to be inevitable. It wasn’t. Our imaginations had always gotten the best of us, and perhaps this story is a testament to the fact that they always will.

It started when were running out of money. We were a desperate collective sprawled out on the cold, faded carpet of that shitty apartment, no longer accepting the subjective rationale by which we existed in harmony. The hard truth was that we were in need of work. And, though we would never say so, we believed ourselves to be above the only work available to us. Nevertheless, we would soon be forced to move beyond brainstorming and these sorts of interactions were often uncomfortable. We were absorbed by a constant tension that only a family could understand or tolerate, and our lack of families seemed to, over the years, make us one.

The three of us met in the back row of a class on British Modernism called “The Nightmare of History” in the third year of our undergraduate program. I remember the class well because it shaped my interests to the extent that British Modernism would become my focus throughout graduate school.

Oliver Wright was not interested in Modernism and he often argued with our instructor. He fancied himself a Victorian, an interest that would also extend into his graduate studies. Overdressing and manipulating women extended into his graduate studies as well. As I saw it, his most redeemable quality was his insistence on perfection. He was an engaging person and, although I never found him to be particularly benevolent, he was handsome and his arrogance was, at times, peculiarly endearing.

John Terry, on the other hand, was not confident or particularly engaging, but he was certainly agreeable. I suspected that his parents were burdensome, but he seemed to endure through smoking pot and growing his hair long, ultimately deciding to study Gothic literature and the Romantics. As with Oliver, John’s pursuit was a fitting endeavor. He was interested in landscapes and the sublime and slowly started to personify, in an unassuming gravitas, the more idealistic tendencies of the authors he would study.

We often discussed these interests over after-class drinks at a bar we referred to as “a clean and well-lighted place,” determining in our drunkenness that we would all apply to the same graduate schools and eventually teach at the same university. In the short term we would move in together. And that’s where we’d been ever since—running happily in place throughout graduate school and finding no light at the end of the tunnel.

First, sharing a bottle of our favorite, albeit cheap, red wine, we established a futile list of potential occupations. All of Oliver’s ideas were too expensive and none of John’s would make any money, but all of our ideas included positions for each of us, a paradigm that bonded us even in moments of conflict. We read so much about it, the “never leave a man behind” mentality, and subscribed to it, even Oliver, but especially John and I.

John adjusted his beanie, compressing thick bark-colored dreadlocks, the tips of which hung out from under the hat, and said “I just think that enough people will revert back to physical copies of books once the e-reader phase has passed.”

“There are a hundred book stores in this town and they’re all going broke because of Barnes & Noble,” said Oliver. He was sitting against the wall with his legs crossed tightly and stretched out long in front of him, wearing gray producer slacks with blue argyle socks peeking out from under them. He sipped his wine and said, “We should invest in something.”

“With what money do you suggest we invest?”

“We borrow from the bank—,” he started but quickly faded. “Yeah. Fuck. I don’t know.”

“I have some money left over from my Grandmother,” I said, “and maybe we could take a loan, but I’d like to come up with something we care about first. And I like your bookstore idea, John. You’re probably right about the e-reader.”

He smiled looking down into his lap.

“But so is Ollie.”

“So what do you have?” asked Oliver. There was a tinge of condescension in his question, but an anxious curiosity dominated the inflection.      

“Let’s hit the bar,” I said.

Within walking distance, Gatsby’s was the town’s premier 1920s themed bar. Antique trumpets and brass colored saxophones lined the walls and a large mirror with golden ringlets and crown-molding frame hovered over our usual booth in the corner by the window.

“What about a place like this?” I asked.

“It could use a facelift,” said Oliver. He sipped the overpriced bourbon we knew he couldn’t afford.

“Even this is beyond our price range,” I said, “but I’ve always wanted to own a bar.”

“Supposedly community colleges and bars thrive during recessions,” said John.

“It’d have to be in the city,” said Oliver, “There’s no money outside of the city.”

“We can’t afford the city,” I said.

“You know what is outside of the city?” asked John under his breath and never looking up from the bubbling amber beer in front of him, “Another city.”

“He’s right,” I said. I listed off four familiar areas that had available suites that would build to suit. It didn’t take much convincing. “I’m willing to run with it if you guys are.” 

Even Oliver showed some excitement. “We should celebrate,” he said. “Waiter!”

“Gatsby’s is the competition now,” said John.

“Oh shit, you’re right, Johnny boy!” Oliver stood and buttoned his jacket tight. Then, throwing his head back, he took the last of his bourbon like a shot and hurled the highball to the ground. Shards of glass landed on the waiter’s boot, and locking defiant eyes with him, Oliver said, “We’ll take the check.”

We spent the next three days drawing imaginary bars in the dusty carpet of our apartment. After I met with a loan officer—who assured me we’d receive the loan in no less than one year, no more than five—we dispensed several responsibilities such an enterprise would require. It was decided that John would secure the liquor and business licenses and Oliver would purchase the furniture. But first we would wait.

Our enthusiasm endured the next three months, and we spent nights projecting our individual imaginations onto the collective fantasy; somehow, over Woodbridge red wine, we were each able to articulate the same image—our bar was a sort of transcendental signified, nameless, formed from the vast recesses of our fancy.

Our excitement dwindled, however, near the eighth month of waiting. Like a river slowly freezing over, I felt our spirits grow tight and shrink. John applied for a job bagging groceries to pay his share of the rent, Oliver continued work on his novel, and I kept in contact with our loan officer, who said he was fighting for us but that our high asking amount was presumptuous.

“The business plan is written, Toby. I’ve calculated the expenses, initial and continual. Everything is in place. What’s the hold up?”

“Brother, you’ve got one chink in your credit that I’m trying to work around, but my guy is on it.”

“It’s just that we’re getting restless.”

“You and everyone else in the country, my friend. But trust me, I’m on it.”

I’ve found that great thoughts are always tested in waiting. Like paint chipping, time seems to unmask the idealism of midnight ideas. There is a necessary anxiety to maintaining and manufacturing great thoughts, seeing them through carefully, objectively. It pains me to admit this, but our idea was not great. It was far from careful and not especially smart. I’m usually one for overanalyzing, usually one for overthinking the most intimate details of any thought. This wasn’t the case with our bar. I was blindfolded by my self-inflicted desperation to work and found myself fighting for something I never entirely believed in, but there was nothing else, so I jumped in headfirst without looking.

The snow melted before I heard from Toby again. Over the phone he said, “Alright, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. We’ve got the loan for you, but, I’ve gotta be real with you, it’s not close to the asking amount.”

“How off is it?”

“Sixty percent.”

“Jesus!”

“It was difficult getting you guys the forty.”

“I know, it’s just—.”

“Look, the building you’ve picked is half of the problem. Is there another option?”

And that’s how we ended up with our bar, a hole in the wall on the south side of town near the transit. Before it was boarded up, the skinny suite served as a small restaurant. Toby said that the previous owner was, fittingly, an alcoholic who lost all of his money in a gambling scheme with members of the jazz club on the other side of the tracks, a story we found both depressing and far too believable as we viewed the surrounding landscape. Sandwiched between a barbershop and a drugstore, not visible from the train’s landing, its sizeable windows were covered by thick wooden sheets and the sidewalk was littered with cigarette butts. Hair clippings fashioned small mounds of trash against its discolored bricks. Even John said that we could do better. 

“It’s utter shit,” said Oliver.

“This is pretty much the only place we can afford,” I said standing outside of it, “And there is an apartment building half a block that way.”

“I’ve heard Paul’s has good pizza,” said John, looking in the same direction.

“Good pizza and a place to live. I’m sure we can make this place feel like downtown.”

And we did. After further discussion with Toby and bushels of paperwork, we were able to purchase the building and move in a month later. It smelled like seaweed when we tore down the thick, moldy boards from the windows and unbolted the heavy rosewood door. Humidity seemed to make the wood paneling sweat, and it was cracking in several places, a problem we remedied by prying it from the dirty brick wall. We cleared cobwebs from the crevices in the aged wooden counter top, the only remaining monument from the storm of time and dust, which seemingly sectioned the small building. Parallel to the bar was a row of booths, several that needed reupholstering—a responsibility that I was assigned. An office room was hidden behind the bar and the main room opened up into a square space, almost separate from the rest, past where the bar and the office ended. There, in the back, was a jukebox that John dusted and rewired. We installed new beer taps and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned for weeks. In the beginning we were attempting to construct a replica of our imagination, but, soon enough, the bar became a new dream unto its own image. We named it The Lighthouse, a suggestion I made in reference to a Virginia Woolf novel. Soon, I thought, we’d be doubling down on the very society that would not have us, and, in a strange way, that’s how we’d became part of it.

When opening night was upon us, John painted on an enormous white sheet “Grand Opening” and hung it over the front window. It cast a transparent, gray shadow on the tarnished hardwood floor until the sun set and we peeled open the door to eager streets.

How distinct reality is from our wildest imaginations! Nobody came.

I could hear myself think and breath and the flicker of Oliver and John lighting cigarettes as they tinkered with the jukebox. Several hours passed and we were alone. I tapped my shoe on the side of a barstool.

Finally, Oliver said, “Might as well meet the natives” and dragged John out into the streets.

I sat in the sparkling old bar, itemizing our mistakes—its visibility, its history, the location, the funding, our desperation, our unmarketable degrees, our poor study habits between frames at the bowling alley, our diverse personalities which tugged in opposite directions at the decorum in our final days of cleaning. The list went on until Oliver and John returned, and, with friends in tow, Oliver announced, “Meet the first two patrons of The Lighthouse pub!”

The one with missing teeth and the giggles was Tallis and the one with incoherent war stories called himself John Denver. John poured them each a tall, light beer and declared them to be “on the house.”

Oliver said, “You’re drinking on us tonight, boys. Enjoy.”

“Tell your friends about us,” I said sarcastically without looking back as the homeless men found their way to a booth near the jukebox.

“What’s up your ass, Captain my Captain?” asked Oliver. “It takes time to establish a clientele. Ain’t that right, Johnny boy?” They clinked their glasses together.

“You guys are drunk,” I said.

“That may be true,” said John through a mumbling smile.

“Let’s not waste it,” said Oliver. “Boys, come on over here. Let’s dance.”

John Denver shot up and raced over holding his beer above his head like mistletoe. The four of them formed a circle in the small space between the bar and the booths and danced to the Beatles, which John blared through the house speakers that Oliver installed in each corner of the bar. They each undulated awkwardly and hollered throughout the chorus, “Come together, right now!”

I decided that the only way to salvage our irresponsible decision to open a bar would be to drink—so as to not waste the inventory we’d inevitably never sell. But starting in on a glass of whiskey, Oliver’s brand, I actually began to find the situation rather charming. There were my best friends making the most of the worst opening night in the history of opening nights, drinking beer and dancing to classic rock with two homeless men.

“Cheers to the night!” cried Tallis, who with a big smile on his face punched his glass into the middle of the circle and lost control of it, sending half a beer crashing to the floor. Oliver cheered with his hands in the air and John moved quickly to clean the spilled beer and shattered glass.

As I poured Tallis another beer, a woman walked through the door, and when she did, I couldn’t determine from where the tingling in my stomach came—either the fact that we had, potentially, our first paying customer or that I found the woman to be decidedly magnificent.

“You here to dance?” yelled John Denver above the music, moving his hips in small circles.

She smiled and sat at the end of the bar where Oliver rushed over to help her. He leaned his elbows on the bar and looked up into her eyes.

“Looks like he’s manning the bar,” said John, setting his beer down next to mine.

I put my arm around him and smiled. Hunched over a lighter, he lit a cigarette and handed it to me then lit one for himself.

“Only one fucking customer,” I said and turned over to John who was starring at the woman.

“But what a great customer she is,” he said without looking away from her.

In the middle booth on the sidewall, I heard Tallis giggling with a hiss at one of John Denver’s war stories; up front, Oliver was making the beautiful woman laugh; and next to us I heard the jukebox rotating CDs. Three Dog Night’s “Mamma Told Me Not to Come” came on and I couldn’t help but sing along—“Want some whiskey in your water/ Some sugar in your tea/ What’s all these crazy questions they askin’ me/ This is the craziest party there could ever be/ Don’t turn on the lights, ‘cause I don’t want to see.”

Outside, the same chaos was surely spiraling around the city. Inside, we were warm and happy. We continued to get drunk through the night and the last I remember of it was toasting with John to our success. “The first of many beautiful customers,” he said. And I replied, “the first of many beautiful nights.”

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Next time on The Hindsight Bridge: Paul Walter Hauser releases the prologue to his novella-in-progress, “The Day that I Died,” a fictional memoir of true hindsight in which a young man revisits the integral moments that lead to his passing, and the lessons that come along with living. As always, thank you for supporting THB!