All This Life

They live — he lives — at 25th and Bryant, in the Mission District. There are a lot of bars on 24th Street, a major thoroughfare through the neighborhood. From what he understands, ten years ago this was a pretty tough stretch, but people like Noah911, rich and white, have been flooding this corridor, corroding its character. People tag sidewalks and walls with pejorative thoughts on gentrification—This city used to celebrate diversity—but it’s too late. It’s already happened. Such comments are as useless as bemoaning the weather from last Thursday. And as Noah911 now understands, once something has happened, there’s nothing you can do about it.

He stops at the door of a bar, peeks inside. It seems too jovial. The room is filled with young and shiny kids. These people seem like they’re drinking to have fun, and that’s not what he needs. Noah911 seeks the kind of dive bar in which people drink to peel despicable memories from their minds like dirty socks. Is that REM on the jukebox? People still listen to them? The bar has perfect burgundy carpet, stools with shining leather, a bartender actually telling a joke to a gaggle of customers—How many straight San Franciscans does it take to change a light bulb? Both of them! — and Noah911 needs to get away from this cheery scene, sink into some squalor.

The next saloon he spies is a Latino bar, mariachi music blazing in a near-empty room. There are three guys bellied up, the faces obscured to him from the doorway, thirsty silhouettes resting elbows on the bar. Barren of any furniture. A concrete floor. No tables. This seems like a place to become a shadow, shrouded in blackness, but it’s the music that keeps him from going inside. Mariachi features horns. Trumpets. Tubas. Which brings Noah911’s mind to the brass band and there’s no way he can sit in a room with horns hollering at him.

He continues his hunt for a just-right bar. Noah911 approaches and rejects five more, before finding the perfect place to slide inside.

It’s the bar’s color scheme, or lack thereof, that entices him. The place is painted entirely black — floor, walls, and ceiling. Noah911 is reminded of his suitcase, and knows this is what it would be like to climb inside the thing, zip it up, bathe himself in the darkness and quiet, keeping all the guilt away.

He walks to the center of the room and his eyes are brought up to the ceiling. He’s wrong: It’s not totally black. There are pieces of broken mirror glued up there, shining like stars in the sky, and it seems so beautiful that he chokes up.

Flies swarm back by the liquor bottles. There’s a TV in the corner, playing the news. Ten guys, no women in the place. An old Jane’s Addiction song hits everyone in the face.

Noah911 climbs onto a stool and the old man approaches, wearing a T-shirt that says SPANK ME, IT’S MY BIRTHDAY.

“Happy birthday,” Noah911 says.

“Lay off, will ya?” he says. “Lost a bet with my niece and have to wear this stupid shirt all week.”

“What was the bet?”

“Aren’t you a curious asshole?”

If there was any debate as to whether or not Noah911 had picked the right spot, this seals the deal. He’s home. This is the perfect pub for what he has to do. “I didn’t mean any offense,” he says.

“No, it’s not your fault. My fuse is spent. People busting my balls about this shirt the whole time. What will you drink?”

“Ketel One on the rocks.”

The bartender limps off to find the right bottle, and Noah911 peeks up and down the other stools. There are a couple men like him, drinking alone, cuddling dejection with every sip. At the far end, though, way over by the TV and its news program, is a group of four guys. They have the look he needs and are pretty brawny, too.

The Ketel One is placed in front of him and Noah911 says, “Hold on, please,” and the bartender stands there for five seconds and watches Noah911 gulp down the whole drink and order another.

“I’m liking you more and more,” says the bartender.

“Be careful or I’ll spank you.”

He shakes his head at Noah911 and goes to get another vodka, coming back with the bottle and filling up his glass, then pouring himself one as well. No ice in his glass, only warm vodka.

“That’s hardcore,” Noah911 says, motioning to the tepid vodka.

“I don’t drink for the taste,” he says. As a toast, the bartender holds up his warm vodka and says, “To being one day closer to death.”

Noah911 doesn’t say anything and they shoot the vodka.

The bartender gets summoned by the four men, who are wondering whose dick they gotta suck to get the baseball game turned on.

Noah911 can feel heat and testosterone pulse from them. It’s written on their faces and wafts off of them, a violent pheromone, and Noah911 loves inhaling it.

“This ain’t a sports bar,” the bartender says.

“Just turn the channel, old-timer,” one says.

“Just go fuck yourself,” the bartender says.

Another starts clapping and howling. “Oh, snap, Willie. He sure got you!”