The Therapy Bar

It was Halloween 1985, a useless holiday that kids wallowed in, running from house to house like banshees, eating copious amounts of candy until they get sick and go home. 

Henry and Lucia lived on the 14th floor so, they didn’t expect any trick-or-treaters, but were ready if any showed having filled a basket with Cadbury chocolate bars, royally endorsed by the Queen of England, who liked them. He asks Lucia,

do they celebrate Halloween in Cuba? She answers, 

No, it’s banned because it’s subversivo! The party periodico, Granma, runs stories about criminales in the US who come out on Halloween and do bad things. Cubanos love Halloween because they are always looking for an excuse to party, or put a costume on.

The phone rings, it’s his editor Dave Spleen, talking quickly he says, 

Henry baby, your last story, Way, Way Out There was a total bust! We got hate letters from our readers! What did you expect? Writing about a bar party where a deli owner lays down a line of coke that runs the length of the bar? Just awful stuff! Henry says, 

look, Dave, in defense of Way, Way, Out There, OK, it’s out there, but for some, a 3-meter line of cocaine is a dream.

Dave hangs up the phone saying, 

gotta go, gotta deadline to meet!

Did you know Edgar Allen Poe is considered by literati to be the father of the modern short story? Poe a short story writer who was a native thinker and an architect of writing techniques.

He attended the University of Virginia in 1823 and was brilliant academically but had to drop out because his step-father couldn’t pay. 

By 1825 he moved from Boston to his hometown Richmond, Virginia and joined the Army, at the same time publishing for the 1st time, a book of poetry entitled, Tamerlane and Other Poems, which went unnoticed by readers and reviewers. 

As an artist, Poe felt out of place in the army and was discharged in 1829 for dereliction of duty, then moving to Baltimore to live with his aunt. It was during this time that Poems, his 3rd collection of verse was published. Over the next few years, his first short stories were published in the Baltimore Courier, one-story  MS. Found in a Bottle, won a cash prize

Poe wrote habitually and was unemployed,  his financial situation became so bad that he skipped meals, spending most of what little money he had on whiskey. Luckily, in 1834 he was offered the editorship of The Southern Literary Magazine, a job immaculately suited for him, so he packed his bags, bringing his Aunt and 12-year-old cousin, a Lolita he later married when she was 14, to Richmond, Virginia.

While editing The Southern Literary Magazine over the next 10 years, he published his own short stories and poems, as well as writing top-shelf literary criticism, becoming America’s leading man of letters. 

Nevertheless, Poe continues to struggle financially, making ends meet by editing for a number of magazines such as Graham’s Magazine and the Broadway Journal.

Throughout his life Poe abused alcohol, turning to booze to deal with personal struggles, the booze exasperating hard times and causing mental turmoil. Poe had tried to quit boozing often in a time when there was little help for addicts other than locking themselves in a sanitarium or joining the Temperance Movement. 

When reading Poe's short stories, which are written in 1st person narrative form, his narrator often speaks of using opium as a vehicle for voyages into the macabre. 

Poe didn't use opium, but towards the end of his life, he drank absinthe mixed with brandy, a nasty psychedelic brew. Absinthe is distilled with herbs, including Wormwood that contains the chemical Thujune which is a hallucinogen.

In June 1849 Poe set out on a speaking tour to make money which he desperately needed. He boarded a ferry at his home in Richmond, Virginia to travel to New York, but he would never make it. While cruising on the ferry he drank himself into a booze stupor, getting off the rig in Baltimore, out of his head and in rough condition. He goes to a tavern so loaded he collapses on the bar. On the ferry, Poe had exchanged his trademark black wool suit with a fellow reveler for a cheap, ill-fitting, clown-like suit and a goofy straw hat.

An alert patron sends a note to a doctor who comes to the bar, seeing Poe was close to death the doctor had him admitted to a  hospital. Where, over the next few days Poe hallucinated, drifted in and out of consciousness, and raged insanely to anyone who would listen. 

A week later he dies alone in the hospital from complications of alcohol poisoning.

In his life, Poe received acclaim as a fiction writer and some popular success, especially after The Raven was published. Many years after his death world literati wrote countless essays that questioned his sanity, wondering if he was as demented as the madmen and murderers in his work. 

As late as the mid 20th Century, respected scholars such as TS Elliot, Aldous Huxley, and Henry James repudiated Poe’s work as being vulgar and debased. While others, William Carlos Williams and George Bernard Shaw considered him to be one of history’s greatest writers.

Poe was misunderstood in life as well as death.

As Henry raps the bit on Poe the phone rings, it’s his editor Dave Spleen who says, 

We’re having a Halloween party at the office tonight, show up, bring your trophy wife, costumes only, gotta go, gotta a deadline to meet! 

Dave, a well-known speed freak hangs up the phone before, saying the usual, his epitaph,

gotta go, gotta deadline to meet! Henry yelling so Lucia who is in the bathroom can hear him, 

There’s a costume party at work, whataya gonna wear? Lucia says, 

a Gypsy, and you?

Thinking some, deciding to go as Freida Kahlo, she was born on July 6 and he was born on July 3, he felt connected with her at the soul. Lucia could braid his long hair to look like Kahlo, draw a line between and accentuate his eyebrows with a black magic marker. Putting on a dress would be easy.

Some guys look good in drag and others don’t. Henry was drop-dead gorgeous in drag, for one night only the couple would-be 2 sisters clubbing, Lucia asking,

do you get hot in the dress bebe? He says, 

no, I like it, it’s comfortable, crotchless, your stuff can breathe, dresses are great for men.

HEADBANGER Magazine offices were in the Meat Packers district, the subway stops at 13th Street Station and the drag couple gets out, walking to and going into the 1st bar that comes their way, a gay-bar called Therapy Bar. Inside they sit in a deep-set booth with their legs up, resting on sofa cushions, they order drinks, enjoying the gay music, watching hombre a hombre dancing.

Henry and Lucia feel hidden in the deep-set booth they are sitting in and begin to make out, looking like 2 women making out, or a ladyboy making out with a woman. 

There's a large dance floor in Therapy Bar, the couple enthusiastically jumps up to dance, free flow hippy dancing. Pharma drugs are readily available here, Xanax, pharmaceutical opiates and hash oil.

Relaxing in their booth, Henry and Lucia order a pitcher of margaritas and 2 dime size plastic packages, one Xanax and one Tramadol. Sampling the mix, feeling numb.

At midnight, they leave the Therapy bar and catch a taxi back to Queens.

At their apartment they shower and go to bed, lying on their backs as they look up at the ceiling, feeling like they're freefalling backward.