The Star Bar

A story by Keith Croes

He was in Buffalo on business. The lobby of the Sheraton was sound-absorbent. Nothing went anywhere. It was all sucked in. Wearing a comfortable pair of light-brown pants he thought might be linen and his favorite dark-brown, rough-woven sports coat, Tyler Fitzgerald had walked quietly over the burnt-orange carpet from the elevator and had straightened his tie. A moment later a cashier had raised an arm and he had glanced over, but she had been signaling a bellhop for an elderly couple waiting in front of the registration desk. His pace toward the bar off the lobby hadn't faltered. He had been undeceived.

The bartender had looked like a sailor, burly and ruddy with a thick crop of wavy black hair. He had had his arm shoved into a stainless steel canister almost to the elbow.

"Scotch rocks, please," Tyler had asked, knowing even as the words left his mouth that he didn't really want a drink in an empty place with elevator music.

"Put it on your room, sir?"

Tyler had nodded. He had asked the bartender if he had ever been a sailor, and the bartender had laughed a laugh that semaphored his limited intellect to Tyler with the force of an electric jolt, had said that he didn't even know how to swim. He had asked the bartender where the action was tonight. The bartender had shrugged. He had told the bartender he was in town on business, that he had a 9-o'clock appointment in the morning, a multi-million-dollar deal. The bartender had yelled "Anchors aweigh!" as he walked out of the bar and back to the elevator.

Now he sat in his room wearing his favorite sports coat. There was incomprehensible drivel on television. He paced in front of a mirror hung in a thin chrome frame above the birch desk. There was Sheraton stationery in a plastic Sheraton folder. The paintings were screwed to the wall. He took a slug of icy Diet Coke. "Jesus," he said. He found the Bible in a drawer. He took it out, put it back, closed the drawer. He felt his face. He had shaved just an hour ago. It felt great. He felt great. He took the elevator down to the upholstered lobby and walked out to the street.

"Cab," he said.

A whistle hooted and a cab pulled into the hotel circle. The cabby was American, an English-speaking blue-collar American. A Mets-Phillies game was on the radio.

He stretched out in the back seat and sighed as if something was finally scratching the itch he got when he was on the road. It was an itch he didn't always appreciate. He was almost engaged. Lived an orderly life, for the most part. And now he was exhibiting the breath control of an obscene phone caller in a claustrophobic vinyl cubicle dingy even in the sallow illumination angling in from the lobby lights. Yet the cab represented unlimited possibilities. It laid the city at his feet. The itch was irresistible.

"Do you mind?" The cabby was pointing at the radio.

"Not at all." He remembered that Buffalo had no baseball team. "Who do you go with on baseball around here?"

"I dunno. Yankees or Mets. Detroit. I like Boston. Where you from?"

"Philadelphia. The Eagles are gonna have a rough season."

"No worse than the Bills." They were stopped at the street in front of the hotel. The cabby turned around in his seat. He had a Fu Manchu mustache and wore glasses with black plastic frames. He looked to Tyler like someone who owned a lot of electronic military equipment. "Where to?"

"A bar. Not a disco, a bar. Something a little strange, maybe. Not too loud. I dunno."

"The Star Bar," he said, then drove.

Tyler gave him a two-dollar tip on a five-dollar fare and walked up the sidewalk toward the neon sign flashing Star Bar, Star Bar in pink, with a blue five-pointed star jutting its uppermost point between the two words and slashing across the r of Star and the B of Bar. Strange bars always reminded Tyler of Christmas. He could see movement and colored lights through frosted windows that extended only several feet above the sidewalk.

The place was mounted flat with every other building on the block, distinguished only by a differing pattern of brick face and the flashing sign. And the door was different, set into the ground with three steps on both sides leading down under a tattered green overhang. The sign on the door said PULL. Tyler tugged, then yanked, then heaved it open, holding it there against his shoulder and looking in for a moment. The door was a huge wooden slab. It closed soundlessly behind him.

Tyler had a theory: If there wasn't any room for you at a bar, then you probably didn't belong there. The place was busy but not crowded, with tables around three walls, an oval bar in the center and a smaller bar along the fourth wall to the right. Tyler took a stool at one of the pointy ends of the oval bar. Directly behind him was a small dance floor.

He knew he had to watch himself, that he always drank too much when he felt this way, probably in an unconscious effort to bring his heightened senses down to normal awareness, only he usually passed right by it on these occasions -- knocking back scotches that had somehow come to taste no more ferocious than roadstand lemonade -- with hardly a wave of recognition. Especially if the company was good. A woman with cream skin and an orange flattop to his right was creating an excited knot in his chest that came with a warning of its own.

Tyler had a theory about that, too. By definition, when you traveled you were out of your territory, you were in new territory, maybe somebody else's territory, and several million years of evolution went to work to swell up your libido like a fat spring berry. Tyler wanted to spread his seed, shoot it out over the land like a piece of farm equipment, make a billion little Tylers to carry on, to take over. To conquer this new territory of Buffalo, no matter how stupid or inappropriate it seemed. The woman next to him, the one with porcelain skin and fiery hair, wore a sleeveless green top that revealed a mole in the shadows beneath her armpit, a dark mole on the milky skin of her left breast as she sat smoking a cigarette, her elbows on the bar. One word from her, Tyler knew, and he was doomed.

It was patently unfair that the word could not come from him, that he was forced to balance a 9-o'clock appointment against a primal urge. But such was his decision as his eyes wrenched their stoic way to the counter of the bar, his pack of cigarettes, his lighter. For if he occasionally indulged his itch, he had never had the abandon to scratch it raw.

"Scotch rocks," he said. The bartender looked like Mr. Clean. That shook Tyler for a moment. What kind of a place was this? He searched for a chink in the adrenaline-charged wall of his passion, somewhere to let the outside begin to get through to the inside. He started by gazing up. A drop ceiling overhead mirrored the oval shape of the bar and was made of the same reddish wood -- cherry, maybe -- and from somewhere released a smoky, pleasing brownish-yellow light that sparkled off rows of wine and martini glasses hung upside down in slots. Most of the people at the bar were men, and most of them drank beer. It was a tougher place than he had realized at first. Lots of leather, rough voices. Maybe a lot tougher.

Two groups of men were standing to Tyler's left and right almost directly across the oval bar from one another, unused stools propped among them or pushed aside, their faces too far away from the light spilling from the drop ceiling to be seen clearly, though Tyler could discern the silhouettes of some pretty creative hair styles. The congeries were lively, full of quick movements, seeming almost like two distinct organisms.

Mr. Clean showed up with a clinking highball glass. One motion: the napkin. A second motion: the drink. He took Tyler's bill, returned with change and a curt comment: "We mostly get locals here." Tyler sipped and watched him retreat, back between the two groups of men, to the far end of his corral, then lean over the bar and cup his hand to a waitress's ear. Carrying an empty tray under her arm, the waitress circled around the room to a panel mounted near the thick wooden door and appeared to punch something into a keyboard, going through a slow, careful. sequence of entries.

It was a long sip. Tyler placed the drink, now mostly ice cubes, on the napkin. His attention was drawn for an instant to an unusual slash of wood grain on the bar. He lit a cigarette, rubbed his finger across the pattern, and seemed to fill from his toes to his head -- in a very definite upward direction -- with a dread so ugly it dimmed his vision.

The pattern on the bar resembled the stitched seam of a football. Once when he was too young to really understand the vile pit of racial prejudice, some older black boys had invited him to join a game of football they were playing in a vacant lot. He'd just been walking by -- taking a shortcut. It was two or three plays later, standing in the huddle with their merciless hands emptying his pockets, that he'd had a similar feeling. He'd been invited to play; he'd be lucky to get out alive.

He listened. Tyler had never been very good at eavesdropping. The sound of nearby conversations was always more of a background noise or, in the case of a friendly bar, a comforting symphony of sorts. When he was like this, alone on the road, it wasn't unusual for him to spend several hours just listening to the wax and wane of barroom badinage. So he wasn't surprised that he couldn't understand a word of what was going on around him. Considering the place, he wasn't surprised that the music -- where was it coming from? -- was like nothing he'd ever heard. But there was an ominous undertone, something bad happening in the group to his left. At the corner of his eye, he saw the fist, tightly clenched and with a dog-collar decoration around the wrist, begin a descent about a foot above the bar. He followed its entire, millisecond route down to a jarring slam, but he jumped anyway.

Mr. Clean's response was only another instant behind. "Hey, that happens again and you're outa here!" He had one arm in the depths of a cooler and a thumb stuck over his shoulder.

Silence but for the strange music. Someone laughed. As conversation resumed, Tyler flew straight into the paroxysm of terror that seemed to wait for him like cocky black hoods on a street corner, shook his head and muttered, "Some get nasty, some get horny."

"Some get both," said the woman on his right.

He finished the drink, straining it with ice cubes against his upper lip, then found himself descending into a glittering pine forest of green eyes. "Yeah, I guess so. Well, gotta go."

"Butch!" The woman watched the bartender approach, oblivious to Tyler's existence, his position halfway off the stool. "I'd like to buy this guy a drink."

Mr. Clean leaned forward and whispered something in her ear.

She shrugged. "He's here, isn't he?"

He looked at Tyler. "You want a drink?"

The woman smiled. Her skin was translucent ivory, blue veins barely visible, arching themselves toward the surface here and there. "Scotch rocks," said Tyler. He slid back onto the stool.

She had fire on her lips, too. Tyler looked at the wood grain, surprised by his lack of motivation to say anything. He listened. It was okay. Everything was okay. Or maybe it was her.

Butch returned with his drink, but Tyler noticed that the bald man didn't touch the little pile of bills on the bar in front of the woman. He whispered to her, and Tyler thought he heard the word: "Mistake."

"Can't be," she said.

Everything was louder. He waited a moment, intending to thank her, then felt a hand clamp his shoulder. He turned and stared into a chest full of leather and grommets.

"Be nice. That's my sister," he smiled, though Tyler was weirdly unable to make out his face -- just the riot of orange hair framing his head.

Tyler reached out, crushing his pack of cigarettes and his lighter into a lump in his fist, and stepped off the stool. When he turned around, the dance floor was full of gyrating figures. He headed into them toward the wooden door with his forearms raised like a man walking into a fire.

Someone grabbed his arm. It was green eyes.

"Wanna dance?" she asked.

"No."

"Well, let's talk."

He looked down at the fervent grip of her small hand on his coat. The dancers milled around them, made room for them as they stood on the dance floor. "What kind of a place is this?"

"There's not going to be any trouble," she insisted. "Besides, I don't think you can leave."

He jerked easily from her grasp and dove through the crowd. There was a pushplate of pounded brass on the door. He shoved it straight-armed, then backed off several steps and rammed his shoulder against it without inducing even a grudging vibration except in his rattling teeth. She appeared next to him.

"Look, there's not going to be any trouble. This is the only..." Her words trailed off. "They're not allowed anywhere else. They can't afford to fuck up. Besides, I bought you a drink. Come on." She tugged on his sleeve.

He followed her back to the bar, the panic ebbing as he watched her narrow back and swaying hips. He shook his head in disbelief. Locked in a Buffalo punk bar, a huge meeting in the morning, but still able to get an erection. The thought of it made him happy. It gave his itch something to think about.

He regained his stool, looked back through the dancers and immediately saw a huddle of figures enter through the front door. "Look at that, will ya." He tilted back a long chug of scotch and pointed. "Son of a bitch." The bartender was coming toward him, was directly across from him when he shrunk, his gleaming head disappearing beneath the bar between Tyler's legs.

"Excuse me." The voice was muffled.

After a moment, Tyler noticed that his seat was in front of a hinged portion of the bar that served as an exit. He stood to the side, retracted the stool, and the bartender emerged from the tunnel under the bar and disappeared into the crowd. Tyler pulled the stool over next to the woman.

"I'm Tyler."

"Carol."

Carol seemed suddenly thoughtful, pulling on a newly lit cigarette and smiling at him. Tyler grew quiet also and listened. The two groups of men had seated themselves at the bar now, and though they remained oddly indistinct, he could tell that the group on the right had green hair and the group on the left were orange. "Are you with them?" Tyler asked, nodding toward the men on the left.

Carol shook her head. "They've sort of adopted me -- cause of my hair?" She patted the back of her neck. "'They're Wooners. The others are Damtams."

"Gangs?"

She giggled. "Yeah."

Mr. Clean was back with a bottle. He edged his way by Tyler and under the bar, then stood and turned. "Scotch," he said.

"Sure."

He snorted, twisted off the cap with a hand the size of a ham, and filled Tyler's glass, which by now contained only the smallest of ice cubes. Their eyes met. "The manager tells me that tonight you're my best friend," he said. "So keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. If you really want to leave, I can let you out. But you have to decide now."

Tyler thought of his 9-o'clock business appointment and set it against the itch that grew by several factors even in the comparison, like a hungry animal that had just received an indication of feeding time. He shook his head.

At that moment, articulated clearly over one of the random lulls that can occur in a crowd, Tyler heard the Wooner who had grabbed his shoulder say, "Why do you think Lake Erie stinks so bad?" He glanced at Carol, who shrugged, then fished his crushed cigarette pack out of his coat pocket and tried to salvage it, eventually removing a bent cigarette, pulling it straight, lighting it.

"Wanna dance?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Maybe later." He took a drink and watched over his shoulder. More figures were bumping through the door. The scotch, still warm and unaccustomed to the minute specks of ice bobbing bravely within it, took a slow dive down his throat. He looked harder. He squinted. He opened his eyes in a caricature of alertness. And then he saw who they were -- these customers of the Star Bar. Perhaps alcohol had broadened his view, made it possible to see the patently impossible. Perhaps a sober man would have missed it altogether.

He loosened his tie and waved goodbye to the retreating shreds of normal awareness.

"You're not much fun, you know?"

"Sorry. I think I just went insane." He returned the highball glass to its circular impression on the napkin. "Funny. I don't mind a crowd as long as I have a seat at the bar." He looked at her. "Not that it matters, but are you human?"

"Uh-huh."

He stubbed out the cigarette. "Let's dance."

She was good. They floated on the weird music among tree-bark faces, nozzle noses, claws and fangs, eyestalks and bat wings, vague forms beyond his ability to perceive, a whirling, oddball menagerie emanating a tolerance and friendliness that made the small dance floor seem larger. A saloon in the Yukon might possess such charm, he thought: the cockiness of four walls against a cold universe, customers part dreamer, part predator, creatures consumed of wanderlust who know that one good time -- right here, right now -- depends on their ability not to care where anyone else comes from, how they live, whom they had killed, whom they had bedded.

After a few minutes, a Wooner cut in. Flushed and a little breathless, Carol gazed at him. He nodded his assent and left the dance floor.

A tall black woman had joined Butch within the oval bar. She was drawing a beer and she smiled at him as he sat.

"Ready?" Her eyes fell briefly to his glass.

"Sure. Scotch."

The Wooners were making ugly noises, and Tyler bristled as he slid a bill across the bar toward the woman. "I think I owe for two."

She shook her head and smiled. "They tell me yours are on the house."

He grunted. "Nobody picking my pockets tonight."

The stubble-faced Wooner with the big mouth was leaning on the padded bar rail. Tyler had no trouble hearing him.

"You can always tell when a Damtam has been to a planet before you...by the smell!"

Tyler rose and slapped the counter hard, his palm landing square across the wood-grain stitches. Orange hair on the left, green hair on the right. All the faces turned. Butch was waving a warning at him. "How does it feel to be the biggest asshole in here?" Tyler said.

The room came to a stop. The silence surprised him. He hadn't planned on it. But the whole evening was taking on a rather spontaneous tone, he noticed, and with a strange detachment, he felt the moment as if he held a bubble filled with either death or laughter, depending on how he popped it. The air pressed out between his lips, and the words were quiet and matter-of-fact. "We're having a good time here. Why don't you join the fun or take a hike?"

"That's right," Butch smiled and nodded, and the crowd immediately crowed, rasped, honked, sang, squeaked and whistled its support, and, for all Tyler knew, transmitted it out over much of upstate New York. The black woman shook her head in amazement. Carol appeared next to him, mounting her stool. Her leather skirt made popping sounds.

"They're really very gentle in bed."

Tyler stared down at her smiling face and, as the music began, was struck by a wave of nausea. He fumbled for his stool. His tongue seemed to lag behind the words. "Are you telling me that you make love to them?"

"I'm here for a good time, Tyler. We're not all the same species, but we're all sentient. Most are identifiably male or female. Shit happens."

Tyler drank in silence, aware that Carol remained seated beside him, turning down several offers to dance that came in quick succession.

"How can it be?" he asked finally.

"It's the same...and it's different."

He peered around, searching for the loud-mouthed Wooner.

"He's gone," she said. "But here comes one of his friends." The Wooner was making his halting way through the crowd along the oval bar until he stood between them as they sat on their stools. He smiled, and Tyler confirmed what he thought he saw during the pregnant pause he had initiated: Wooners could grow hair all over their faces. They shaved it in different patterns. Some, in fact, were clean-shaven. This one had rows of hair about a half inch wide trailing straight down from his lower eyelids to his jawline.

"We are not all like him," the Wooner said carefully. "But sometimes, it is easier to let him go. You understand?"

Tyler nodded.

"I understand something, too. I understand why this planet is set aside. But now, I would like to dance with Carol."

Tyler nodded again, and the two had been gone only for a minute when Butch placed a drink in front of him. "There's a bunch of women over there want you to have this." He looked perplexed. "I never realized it before, but we're getting a lot more women in here."

"Jesus. I've got a 9-o'clock business meeting. Where are they?"

Butch indicated the direction with a nod. Tyler turned and saw a flowing mass around one of the tables, what he took for silks and smiles and waves and winks, a teasing gaggle of beings who seemed to glow from within. Taking the drink, he rose from his stool and walked toward them.

The rest of the night he would remember in snippets. Spinning across the dance floor with warm apparitions, some of them brazen in their longing, all of them beautiful from a perspective he doubted he'd ever gain again. The steps upstairs to a dim, luxurious bedroom. Several erections, each one handled in a way that was indescribable in the shards and tatters of his memory. His seed came under close scrutiny that night, he would think later, and his hardened dick would come to embody the yang of the universe for at least a few lonely travelers. But the pain in his groin was a happy tweak compared to the pain in his head when he lifted it from the bar at 8 a.m. Butch was cleaning glassware knowingly.

"The boss says to make you an offer."

"What?"

"Two thousand a week, same as Carol."

Tyler's head descended and he laughed with his cheek against the cool wood of the bar. Finally, he managed, "It would be a cut."

"Twenty-five hundred," Butch said. "Same as Carol. And all you can eat."

He straightened, pulled his cuffs out of his sleeves and resurrected the knot of his tie. "Thanks, Butch. But you don't have any baseball team here. I need a phone."

"There's a cab outside, if that's what you're looking for."

The bright street took its time materializing through Tyler's headachy squint. It was the same cabby, the one with the Fu Manchu.

"The Sheraton. But I guess you know that."

The cabby eyed him in the rear-view mirror.

"I have just enough time to wash up and make my appointment. But I am going to make my appointment. Understand?" The cab pulled quickly out into the morning traffic and Tyler twisted around to catch a glimpse of the green overhang and the sign, now gone dark.

THE END

MORE STORIES BY KEITH CROES

keith@croes.com