Kevin Costello
12:30am––The bar is disgusting. It is positively ran-through. There have been an unusual amount of events tonight & they have all been running train on me. First a comedy show hosted by a local figure who should have absolutely been canceled by now, or at least canceled again. There was a birthday for a gay guy in the area who I’d never met before. They were having trouble using the jukebox because I unplugged the wifi when I saw them heading towards it. I’m so sorry I don’t know why it won’t play, I say, having anticipated George Michael & Robyn. The Phillies won earlier & I received the afterbirth. The cokehead regulars trickle in. My boyfriend brings in another birthday party. There are cake smears & party poppers & amyl nitrate poppers & more cokeheads. My whitefish salad & pickled jammy egg toast has been sitting behind the bar on a paper plate. It’s getting older.
1:00am––The bar is dying down which gives me a chance to talk shit with some friends. I recount stories from the night & I get theirs in exchange.
I tell them about S, a BPD pill of a girl & once every three months regular, who I caught sneaking beers in upstairs. I went upstairs & I took it out of her hands. She followed me back downstairs. Since you ripped my beer out of my hands can I get one from you. I told her to go away. She came back an hour later & tried to leave an empty beer bottle on the edge of the bar so it would fall & break. Because you like taking my drinks so much. I looked at her & smiled & told her to drop dead & she left the bar screaming at me to go fuck myself.
My friend tells me she found out she has been accidentally spreading chlamydia. She has been asymptomatic. We think this is very funny.
I explain how earlier a very young & very wealthy semi-regular had offered to buy everyone in the bar a cheesesteak in a showoff-y gesture. I was not included. I put my friends’ drinks on his tab.
A friend comes downstairs & describes the comedy show. Too many queers in one room.
I tell my friends about a group of young Marxists who come to the bar occasionally to have meetings. One of them broke a pint glass & didn’t know how to clean it. Please Comrade I have no broom & I must scream. There was once a time where the ringleader was talking to a new recruit while I was dealing with a burst pipe in the basement. I had to shovel human shit & piss into contractor bags & discreetly take them out the bar through the cellar door. It was the beginning of my shift & we were the only three people in the bar. Walking past them I could hear them say words like plight & worker & proletariat.
1:45am––It’s last call & it feels like heaven. The bar is destroyed. I load all the discarded cans & bottles into trash bags. My father was a bartender & I remember him making the joke you can tell it’s a graveyard by all the spirits in the building. Womp womp. The gay guy who had a birthday earlier is still here with a girl. He is very drunk. As I walk by him he touches my shoulders & says Kevin thank you so much for everything tonight you are the best. You are…the one. This comment delights me. It is hollow & abstract. I will weaponize this in the future.
2:00am––I kick everyone out with little fanfare. The night before I had to push through a sea of disgusting looking men ripping miller lites out of their hands praying one of them would call me a faggot. No luck. My boyfriend & I get into a silly argument & he leaves. I clean the bar alone.
2:45am––I go to the second bar in the building & sit with my coworker B & our friend E. We take a couple shots & talk more shit. They tell me that the host of the comedy show’s mom was there tonight. Everyone performing made jokes to the effect of how do you sleep at night knowing you gave birth to this person. The severity of this makes me choke on my liquor & I love it.
3:30am––We close the bar. I take two of the finest narcotics to ever hit the scene: Advil PM. Frontloading so I get home & immediately cease consciousness. In the professional world, we call this innovation. I wash my face & see there is dried blood around my nose ring. I will not investigate this further.
10:30am––I wake up. I look at pictures of celebrities at the Met Gala & imagine putting them all in Saw traps but instead of looking for an antidote to neurotoxins they are fighting each other for Ozempic.
12:45pm––I walk to the gym by my house to exercise before my shift. This is a means of self-flagellation. I’m only doing cardio at the moment because this summer I am hoping to look like all of the hot emaciated gay guys I follow online (the ones with the haircuts & the tank tops & the minimalism & the advanced degrees). I admire these men for spending their God-given time on planet earth either bobbing up & down on a Peloton or excavating the collective asshole for shit. Today’s workout: take 10mg of adderall & use the anxiety from that to hurdle myself to such a speed on the treadmill that I can sprint to Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” without crying
1:15pm––I am red in the face & look like I have suffered a massive stroke. This is to say I am succeeding. One of the best parts of going to the gym is delighting in all of the apish men & fabricating myself into their lives. This is part of a larger dance of determining who is the true apex predator in this shared space (my vote is me). First I spot two boyfriends I am fascinated by. They are a traditional gay couple: paramilitary twink standing ferociously at five foot five with derpy mouth-breathing bf, who is a good foot taller than twink. The tall one is handsome. Twink storms around the gym like he’s the only one in the room with a gun. Twink uses the rowing machine & dead eyes his reflection for the 20 minutes he’s on it. Twink would never shit on cock. They look totally normal––Penn State shirts thin lips low taper fades no substantial facial hair I’m guessing five/six inches cut not thick probably little hair around taint/hole. It is a treat to haunt their relationship, especially while I am wet & in pursuit of another body.
1:20pm––The other person I recognize is an absolute wonder. He is hot in a fuck ugly way & he sometimes comes to the bar I work at. He’s giving three zyns packed so tight in his lip I could curl up & die in the hole he’s digging. He’s balding & has 90s tattoos & maybe the bones of a goatee. I’ve seen him be weird to gay guys at the bar so I like to imagine myself rooting for him on the bleachers cheering yes! yes! smear the queer, smear the queer! & then we make love on the fifty yard line & the crowd goes wild. Recently him & his friend ran out of the bar on a weekend night because one of them had projectile vomited on the wall by the pool table. While cleaning it I thought to myself zyns make you sin. Getting to watch him swing a dumbbell around feels like his way of offering me an apology & I accept.
2:30pm––I stop by the Italian Market before work for my pre-shift essentials: sushi lunch from Kyushu, black iced tea & coffee from Gleaners, & a candy apple, my favorite treat, from a vendor who is there on some days & some days not. I cannot wait for the combination of red dye 40 & the plastics in my blood to give me terminal brain cancer at 35 & rip my body to shreds. Once again, innovation.
3:00pm––Every other Tuesday a man comes to the bar while I’m opening to service the pool table, the ATM, and the jukebox. He is quiet & we don’t speak to each other much. He looks like a regular working class man from Pennsylvania, but I learned from my boss recently that he is a multi-millionaire. One day I was playing Lucinda Williams & he came downstairs & earnestly told me he loved the song (“Fruits of my Labor” ofc) so now when he is in the bar I play songs in the same vein & in that way we quietly spend time together. Today I am playing Sheryl Crow’s self titled album, her best. He bops his head quietly to “Maybe Angels”, the lyrics of which are about salvation through alien abduction. He says bye you see next time in his usual monotone & then I clean the toilets & the AC filters alone.
5:00pm––I open the bar & go outside to smoke my first cig of the day. I apply SPF moisturizer fifteen minutes prior so I can stare into the sun without consequence. I put on The Royal Tenenbaums in the hopes that someone will come in & say I was only gonna come in for one beer but I forgot how much I love this movie & will now stay for five more & reward you for this experience. I’ve never seen it except for the suicide scene.
5:45pm––A couple regulars are posted up. What I think is a first date comes in. He orders a mixed drink with peach Mad Dog & she gets a Stoli Orange & OJ. They ask me what I think about Drake vs Kendrick & I jokingly say I hope they both kill each other & they both have an uncomfortable look on their faces as I guess a bodyguard was just shot. Whoopsie! The guy asks her what music she likes. She says Taylor Swift begrudgingly. But she’s a billionaire. We shouldn’t even have billionaires! Absolutely Queen. I feel like we should go back to your place & do more dabs. Purr.
6:20pm––A new friend of mine comes in after he gets off work. He’s a line cook at a nearby restaurant. Big BOH energy. We go outside for ciggy #2. He shows me his chest tattoos & tells me about his father. They’ve never met, as he is in prison. I say at least you’re breaking the cycle. He laughs & tells me about when he was younger he went to prison after he was caught tagging a freeway underpass while high on speed. The police found a gun & bags of meth in his bag. He was in prison for a week & was then bailed out. I don’t suspect him of embellishing but I am also radically neutral. I ask how old he is & he says 27 & I laugh. We go back inside & he shows me pictures of his kid.
7:30pm––My first bona fide creep of the night comes in. He is wearing salmon shorts & his eyes are 100% open. He asks if I can sell him a draft beer for happy hour price. I would diagnose him as being on a shit ton of adderall. He exudes terror. I decline & he pays full price. He goes upstairs to play pool. I would rather serve him than the people who come into the bar & ask me to tell them my life story instead of just being satisfied that I am a gay guy.
8:15pm––Bar’s dead. Hailu Mergia is playing. The white neolibs of South Philly love to tell me I just love Ethiopian jazz. One of my regulars who is my age blurts out to me that his girlfriend, also my age, has thyroid cancer but don’t worry really everything’s fine it’s more common than you think they’re going to take half of it out on Friday she probably won’t even have a scar. I give him a shot & he continues to reassure me. He has plans to propose to her in Japan later this year.
9:00pm––Bar’s full. I card someone who I’ve literally bought a drink for at a different bar & it’s awkward. Whoopsie!! He says to the guy next to him (who shares my birthday, July 30th) Philadelphia is the last vestige of Tammany Hall. Now they are talking about autoworkers. I will direct them to the MarxistsTM. I love the rust belt. I’m very pro-labor. I imagine being buried in a tomb constructed of overeducated liberals.
10:30pm––A drunk woman who lives in the neighborhood comes in & I don’t want to serve her. She is chatty & flirty & she likes to come in on my shifts. I am constantly letting No-Face into the house. Sometimes I get $4 out of it. She sits across from me which means I have to stand & do all my side work to avoid her. The interaction makes me think of how much I hated the guy in Baby Reindeer & how Martha was the real star. She leaves with a bored look on her face but she tipped. Sorcerer by William Friedkin is on & Roy Scheider is so hot my eyes are hearts. Some of my friends show up & we have some shots & talk shit. They get a bag.
11:00pm––My boyfriend & his best friend/ex-girlfriend/maybe(?) ex-bandmate J show up. It’s all very modern. I give her a seltzer & she puts it in a koozie that reads Sam the night you left Ron made out with two girls etc. She is giving my boyfriend a hard time about his friendships & I love it. I chime in. This is what we call spit-roasting. He calls her an Uber & she leaves. I kiss him & we hug.
11:50pm––It’s clear that the night will not pick up & I am unbothered. My friends & I are watching Heat on the TV. We are once again drinking & talking shit. I am in charge of doing inventory as my boss is out of town. This means counting every bottle & can & measuring the bottles of liquor & asking my friends to pick up the kegs & measure them in exchange for free booze & permission to stay at the bar after close. More cokeheads trickle in. They are sweet to me & hug me & call me their family & kiss me on the cheek. Permitting this behavior is my way of begging for their money. I am good at this & this work is good. Tomorrow I will work at a different bar in the city & I will beg for money there as well. I am good at this. I think this is perhaps my calling. I am told I am the one.
Kevin Costello is a writer originally from California. He received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
