AUTHOR IN THE MAKING

THE BLACKNBLUE TAVERN
SYNOPSIS

This is the chronicle of a bar that was known as The BlackNBlue Tavern and how it affected the lives of those who encountered and patronized it. The characters and stories that are contained within tell a story about the situations and adventures that the characters enter into and how they resolve these situations through self-discovery and growth.

The bar was located in an old two-story building in an area that once might have been an ethnic neighborhood, but now was a burned out, boarded-up mélange of dying buildings. Little to no traffic ventured here, especially after nightfall, owing to the number of hobos, bums, drug addicts and homeless people that populated the area from time to time. To say that the area was not exactly hospitable would be a moot point, but the only time anyone with any sense ventured into the area was when they either got lost or were new to the city and didn’t know their way around. Even the police rarely ventured into this area of the city except to make sure that none of the inhabitants there were setting fires to the building remains. Every once in a great while, they would find one of the inhabitants’ bodies in one of the buildings and have to have it taken away, but that was usually the exception.

The BlackNBlue Tavern was established in 1996 by an ex-professional wrestler named Joe Santini, who had retired from the scene twenty-something years before. After his career came to an abrupt end from a ring injury, Joe and his friends all came together to help renovate the run-down building into the vision of what Joe had dreamed of for so long.

The exterior of the brick building was old and looked as though it would collapse at any time, but Joe preferred it that way. The kind of bar he wanted was a place where men interested in wrestling and fighting could come, have a few drinks and fights and leave, making it necessary to have it be in a place that few people would ever come to or know about. Especially at night, the area was more formidable than in the daylight, with the parking lot at one end of the building that had not been taken care of in many years to the alley with its half-brick wall entrance and chain link fence down one side, separating it from the dilapidated three-story warehouse next to the bar. At the far end of the alley, which was closed off, stood a large trash dumpster. Along the wall of the outside of the bar was an exit door, the air conditioning units for the building that were in almost-working order as well as a small wood storage shed that was in worse condition than the building itself. The large, plate glass windows on either side of the front door were old and cracked as well, but now they had been painted black to keep anyone from seeing in and witnessing the bar’s goings-on.

The interior of the bar was old and dirty, but at least it was semi-inhabitable for humans. The floor was black tile and filthy. Joe and his friends had tried in vain to clean it, but the years of disuse and neglect made that virtually impossible. Joe thought about having the floors redone, but the cost of it was too much and, he reasoned, the shape it was in now fit the general atmosphere of what he wanted anyway. The walls were also black, flat and ugly, glinting only where maybe drinks had hit them with runs down the walls at those spots.

Directly across from the bar stood a 12’ X 12’ wrestling ring that had been a donation by one of Joe’s promoter friends. It was obviously very well-used and second-hand, a fact that Joe liked. The ropes were red, black and blue in that order from top to bottom with black turnbuckles at each post. The mat surface of the ring was discolored from years of sweat and blood being spilled on it.

Between the bar and the ring were two small used tables with chairs for those customers who didn’t want to sit at the bar or wanted to get a closer view of whatever fight or match was going on in the ring.

Over the bar was a large loft that Joe could gain access to through a stairway at the far end of the bar, just past the door to the alley. He’d made it livable enough for himself, although he doubted that anyone else would call it that.

When the bar first opened, Joe knew that he could count on his friends to patronize it, but he worried about how to publicize the fact that it was open without drawing too much attention, especially from the local law enforcement agencies. It was ultimately decided that other men with the same interests would be invited through word of mouth. Joe and his friends had decided early on that it would be a place for a very select group of men who could come together in an atmosphere where they could relax, be themselves and not have to put on that everyday image that life constantly demanded of them. The clientele attracted all types of men, both straight and gay, and varied from construction workers to blue-collar and white-collar workers to even the highest-level executives in the city.

Not having to project that everyday image made these men equal in all ways when they were at the bar. They could drop all of the pretenses of everyday life, relax and just be themselves. Some came to wrestle, box and fight, some came to watch, some came just to kick back and enjoy the camaraderie, but all of them were there because they enjoyed being there as well as the feeling of being on common ground with other men who shared their interest.

And it was this common interest that led these men to change who and what they were and to grow beyond who they once were as they made discoveries about themselves and each other.

This, then, is where the saga of the BlackNBlue Tavern begins to unfold…