The Bar Book.

There’s a photo next to my mom’s dresser of me throwing this black, square hat into the air.

Two weeks later, a document came in the mail.

That piece of paper is now in my mom’s room beside a chipped Swarovski crystal tortoise decoration.

I’m not sure why she didn’t choose the living room, dining room, or any other room in the house to hang it.

Maybe it’s because it would turn a perfectly good dinner conversation awry.

I could see my mother now, speaking between dollops of potato salad.

“My daughter studied for more than seven years,” she'd say.

“What about now?” they'd ask.

“Oh, now she works as a bartender.”

The somewhat cringe, hackneyed ending I played in my mind featured a compilation of feel-good songs and friends gathered around me with buttercream cake-stained teeth and a montage of us in our future roles.

The credits, instead, rolled to me pouring drafts to ex-frat boys and suburban characters, propped high up in barstools; hoping to get a couple of cheesy one-liners in before their spouses came to join them for a craft beer no one outside the town had heard of.

On off-days, I submitted myself to a different type of monotony.

“The best part about this is that you can start with no money.”

Those words came from John P., or John P. the Career Confidant, as his weekly email newsletter implied.

He’s the guy we all paid seventy dollars to stand in front of us, scream, sweat, and show off lackluster PowerPoints with clip art from 2008.

I looked around: younger people, older people, people with nothing to lose, people with event discount codes--whom which I envied-- and alas, people like me.

“When?” John P. spoke into the microphone.

“Today!” the group shot back, off-key.

The mix-up of both giddy and unenthusiastic contenders around me made me nauseous.

“That’s right,” he said, while adjusting the sound-level of his microphone to incite further second-hand embarrassment.

The woman in the seat next to me, single-mom of forty-something, whom I had met 2 weeks prior, whispered to me: “I don’t know, but the other presenter’s slides at the seminar last week looked more... glossy?”

“Well,” I squinted at her name-tag.

“Pam. I will have to agree with you.”

I looked back at the stage and stared at the discount Tony Robbins. I wondered if this self-made entrepreneur had someone behind him offering him support. The cheers and closed responses around me muted into the background like an oscillating fan.

I wasn’t always so disenchanted.

My ex thought he could save me by drawing motivational quotes on the banks of exotic beaches and uploading them to Instagram.

You are series of uninterrupted waves

Crashing into my shore.

I would peek through his small, different colored, Moleskine notebooks while he showered; not as a jealous-lover looking to validate my suspicions, but to admire the pretty handwriting and assemblage of dried up flowers.

I thought about one of the last times we had together, late last summer. He sat across from me in an outdoor eating area. His hands were still covered in sand when we bit into our sandwiches. Each bite contained a crack.

We both laughed.

The next day he was pushing hair out of my wet face in the back seat of an Uber. It was simple: I was out of money and Matt wasn’t.

Truthfully, I was happy to be his motivation, up until two weeks into his Polynesian excursion. I had saved up enough from my current job to take a week off.

I found him in a hostel bunk bed with the hostel owner. Her sandals inside the doorway.

Long distance relationships and surprise visits are two beasts best left separated.

I left the seminar early and cut into the bathroom to change into a plain black V-neck for work.

I brushed my hair with one hand while I scrolled through Instagram with another. My thumb hovered over the search bar.

Matt was in Portofino now. He must have been making money from his writing.

I felt like getting on a plane and plopping myself down next to him at the beach. Even the most mundane and simian of tasks, such as picking sand out of his hair, sounded okay to me.

In any case, after a few months of blocking calls from strange numbers I decided I would never go back.

Five hours later I found myself standing behind a long dark mahogany counter watching strangers smash cold glasses against their mouths.

It was some time past midnight, and a remixed Rihanna song blasted in and out of my ears, the barback’s ears, and the ears of about 200 inebriated bar hoppers, all those which were thrusting credit cards and 20 dollar bills towards us.

I wanted to duck down, rip one of the long dark nozzles off a random vodka bottle, and take a swig.

On my break, I scrawled a small and ugly buy dish detergent on the side-lines of my planner. I was down to my last ten dollars, and it was a mystery as to why. The bartender job was bringing in manageable living, but I still was short at the end of each month. I tracked my monthly expenses between the calendar pages, but I couldn’t pin down which one was more important: a streaming subscription or the extra liability on my auto insurance plan.

I presumed the former.

I closed the pages and reached for my apron. Two barstools over there stood a guy with a plain white t-shirt and a beanie. His hair poked out of the sides and his skinny index finger pointed up in what seemed like an attempt to catch my coworker’s attention.

With my apron on fully tied, I made my way back behind the counter to save the awkward stranger from the unruly patrons surrounding him.

I tilted my head up to acknowledge him.

“Ginger ale,” he said in a scratch of a voice.

“Mixed with?” I asked.

“Only ginger ale.”

I popped open a small can and watched it pour and fizz up to the brim. I set it in front of him on top of a small black napkin.

“How much?” he said.

“It’s fine” I replied, knowing that charging him for it would take longer than its worth.

I could see him more closely now.

There were customers piling up behind him, which caused him to swish back and forth to keep his balance.

He had a cut on the top of his lip and his shirt had an apparent affinity for oil stains. He licked the side of his mouth in a grotesque way, like some sort of amphibian. He grabbed the drink. In one mechanical motion he had descended back in the crowd like a gecko scattering back under its rock.

My coworker, Carl, popped up from under the counter.

“Oh hey there, beaver,” I said.

“Groundhog,” he said back with a blank face.

“Oh,” I laughed.

“But anyway,” he leaned in closer to me.

“Well, that made me uncomfortable.”

Coming from Carl, I would usually burst out laughing, but his reaction sunk into me. I watched as he tossed a napkin in and out of the sides of a glass.

The next customer in the queue poked in like a pigeon lurking for stray crumbs.

“Gin and tonic, please.”

Carl handed me a polished glass and before I could change the mood and ask what the difference was between a beaver and a groundhog, I spotted my planner stretched out on the table. For me, putting away things is often overlooked. This was evident to every roommate I’ve ever had after coming back from the grocery store.

I picked it up from the sticky countertop and piled it into my purse.

At the end of the night, we counted tips while the kitchen staff fiddled with cigarettes outside the back dumpsters.

Carl screamed out from within the bathroom.

I would have screamed too.

He came out with his hair stuck to his forehead and a wet mop in his hand. His face was disheveled. His cheeks, presumably from the amount of profanity that was leaving them, were losing air like a deflating balloon.

My cheek tickled. I raised my shoulder and tucked in my laughter. I counted up the entirety of my cut and wrapped a receipt around the wad of cash tips. My bag bounced over my shoulder and headed towards my car.

At home, I sat on my bed and watched headlights fade away from the parking lot. The apartment was on the side of a busy intersection that squandered its notoriety well into the complex.

My neighbors blasted music from the second floor balcony above me.

I sighed.

My cigarette was inside my purse; somewhere. I pulled my planner out to get a feel for the abyss that was my handbag. My hand sifted through strange and volatile objects ranging from restaurant napkins to old lipsticks. I felt around a flat, smooth texture.

In my hands I held a second journal. In confusion, my eyes glanced from the planner on the bed to the one I was holding.

Get new sponge

Phone bill late

It read the same banality of my previous entries. The one I set down before was indeed mine.

This one, however, was a moleskin.

It looked like Matt’s, except it was fat, deformed, and something was protruding on the inner back cover.

Quickly, I ascended page-by-page; afraid of turning it around first. Inside was a series of poems in Matt’s handwriting. They talked about the sand, the sea, and the complexity in the curve of a particular individual’s hips.

My heart turned.

The last entries, were sets upon sets of numbers and words I couldn't make sense of.

Then came the last page.

Panic flashed its way in and out of me, like a site banner. Then, all at once, I surrendered to it. I clawed apart duct tape and plastic from the inner cover.

By the time I had finished counting the two thick wads of hundred-dollar bills it was way past dawn.

My upstairs neighbors laughed. The music had now receded and a pair of heels scampered across the hardwood floor. The door opened and slammed a few times. The party was over.

At work, the next night, I found Carl in the bathrooms again. I didn’t ask why; I walked by the hallway.

“Would it be too cliché if I said I don’t get paid enough for this?” He said and wiped a hand on his apron.

I managed a disingenuous “hah” and dropped my coat and bag behind the bar.

The night commenced over again as organically as the previous-one. Lonely bachelors sat at the bar with their jack and cokes and phone screens lit with Fantasy Football. Soccer moms, on their weekly night out, each clung to an equivalent of liquified Jolly Rancher candies and other alcoholized-concoctions of food coloring passing off as cocktails.

The week went on in the same monotonous rhythm, except for now I had 20k in the back of my head and inside my desk drawer.

Eventually, It was Saturday night again. Popular songs resonated through the venue and bodies broke in-and-out of motion. I tried Matt’s number a few times, but my messages bounced back. The calls ended in an error-tone. Could he have changed it? It had been over a year.

I felt desperate— should I have told someone?

I was wiping down the syrupy remnants of grenadine from the mixing area when I looked up. In one second, the entire contents of what was maturing inside of me for the past seven days spilled out.

Carl’s comment from last week came back to me: Uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable stood in front of me poking a scab on the corner of his mouth with his tongue.

“The journal,” he started,

“He left it for you.”