by Tom Ball.
March 2020
I said to my lover, Jane, “I will write a novel of our times. I had written a number of sci-fi of flash fiction books, short story books and a few novels and now I am going to write my best novel in the mainstream.”
And I said to Jane, “I’m going to let the story come to me! And I’m starting an inspirational Virtual bar, Harry Monaghan’s bar… It would be a classic case of coping with Covid-19. And I’ll chronicle it in a novel. Let the novel come to me as it were.”
It didn’t matter where we lived, but in fact we were living in NYC.
And I said, “I am a superfluous man. I am too clever for my own good. But there’s nothing, other than writing, that I want to do, other than drink! And make love.” My lover said, “You can do anything you want.”
I added, “And I am bored with my creative writing classes I teach. You simply can’t teach someone to be a great writer. I’d rather spend my time drinking in my bar. So, I am quitting the job.”
And I said, “Even for those who are good writers, they often die in obscurity. They are outsiders, they are rebels.”
And I said, “I am starting my own Online publishing house, with my best friend, Chuck, a clever Russian man of 38. To speak to those on the lunatic fringe, the outsiders. It is called “Midas’ Sinkhole;” we brought issue #1 out in this month, of 2020.”
And I said, “The Online publishing plus the Virtual bar should keep me busy…“
And I noted, “That people will come the bar with an image which is not their own, even altering their gender. But that is too far out. Everyone will have to show ID for an image of themselves in the Virtual bar and will need to prove they are special, to get in. They will move the joystick to move around and will direct conversation in one direction or another. The software only cost me $10,000 USD, but everyone who wants to come and is approved will get their joystick in the mail for $40.”
Jane said, “Go for it!”
And one of the features of the software, was you could disappear without a moment’s notice from the bar at any time. And sometimes characters were on the phone and were frozen in place on the bar floor with their Virtual arm raised.
I added, “I won’t expect a perfect book to come from it, but it will be close.”
And I was foolish enough to let my lover, Jane, hypnotize me. And I found out later that she’d hypnotised me to be a success, and to love her.
And on the Website, I put some of my books on for people to read before they came here. The door charge was $45. And the idea was for the bar to be a bar of good conversation and a place to meet would-be lovers from anywhere around the World. The bar spawned a lot of long-distance relationships…
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Jane was Chinese and 45 years old. I was 52 and I was white. We were both very attractive.
July 2020
One of my first customers I talked with was Jenny, a white, pleasant looking 40 something. And she said, “In the near future condos will continue to outpace income for most. Most people will be indebted their whole lives.”
And she said, “Religion will die out soon. And people will believe instead in Space and progress. And marriage is dead. And most future people will visit a shrink. It will be insane times. And everyone will be greedy for new loves. People will all be amoral.”
I said, “Your vision is believable. But who knows though what Supercomputers and Superhumans are capable of? But everything we imagine will come true to some degree. And, the future is not written in stone. And I have given the future a lot of thought.”
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He, Carl, was white and said, “We will see new political parties crop up. The Atheists, the Alienists, the Love party, the Madness party, the Science party, the Imagination party, the Kind party, the High IQ party and a surge of the Greens. This left/right progressive/conservative situation today is foolish and unnecessary and cannot be sustained.”
I said, “Politics is all about ass kissing, new or old.”
But he said, “You are a would-be writer. You have to kiss ass with publishers.” I said, “Not the way I do it.” However, he said, “If you want to succeed you need to do it, I figure. All great writers work for money,” he said.
I said, “At any time I could write horror novels like Stephen King.” But I don’t want to sell out and write like others have written. I want it to be in my own style. My own way. But I still believe I can succeed, now that I am going mainstream with a tale of this bar.”
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Meanwhile Jane had been painting sci-fi paintings of aliens and amazing landscapes. I praised her work, but I said, “You were down on me for writing sci-fi!” She replied, “Your sci-fi is too far out there. You need to bring it on home.”
And she had shaved her entire body and said, “I won’t grow my hair back until you succeed.” I was growing a long, long beard and told my love, “I wouldn’t shave it off until I was successful either.” She said, “You are 52, it is now or never.”
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And then I met a man who said, “The World is becoming a giant suburb, and everyone would work from home and then soon, computers would do all the work.” And he thought that, “No one will go to bars anymore, it will all be Online dating and Virtual bars like yours.” I said, “Once Covid-19 is over, bars will rebound. But in the meantime, Virtual bars are where it’s at. There didn’t seem to be very many of them. At least not in the USA.”
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Then I was talking to a pleasant-looking local reporter, from Israel living in the Middle East, a woman of about 40. I said, “Watching the news during Covid-19, is a vexation to the spirit.” She said, “That’s the way it always is. It’s a life of tragedy. I had contracted Covid in early March 2020 but am OK now.” I should have tried to love her, but I let her get away from me.
October 2020
And I was back telling all the people in my Virtual bar, that I had recently been writing, “Ice Beacon.” I wrote, about Alaska and being isolated in a small frozen village during the harsh winter of Covid-19. It was a sense of total isolation, just like Space.
“And I knew the US military was testing new weapons nearby, including a disc-shaped ‘UFO.’”
Jane said, “You’re writing sci-fi again.” I said, “No, it is all very plausible and contemporary. And I am still writing about the bar.”
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And then I was going on about a story about a rich man who is carried on a stretcher up to the top of Everest. With plenty of oxygen. At the top he drinks champagne, but on the way down several members of his party die of altitude sickness. I said, “It was golden to be rich.”
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Then I met an interesting Taiwanese shrink who said, “She wanted to hypnotise me.” I politely declined. I told her Taiwan was my favorite country and I had travelled to 96 countries.
I told her I was hoping eternal youth would be discovered before I died. But I was 52 now and it looked like it would be 40 years at least before they discovered it.
She said, “Better to live for the day and don’t worry about it.”
I said, “But I want to write a lasting novel.” She said, “Posterity will be so different there’s no way they will remember you, no matter what you write. Society will move on, and people will become cleverer.”
But she put a spell on me all the same and I was her slave. She flew to NYC and I met her at a downtown hotel, the next day, and she dominated me in love for a few days…
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And we advertised for issue #2, and it produced a number of great works of literature that we would publish in our Online mag. My partner, Chuck, he was my best buddy, and was white and aged 38, but he didn’t care for my Virtual bar. But he said, “When it comes to literature, the more far out the better,” I said, “Chuck, you are trying to be humorous on the website to lighten things up a little, right?” It took a lot of time to read the submissions, so we hired some of the submitters to work for us as editors. In particular I liked some of the science fiction we were taking, like a story of a man who is cryogenically frozen and awakes in a bizarre Utopia. And another about people who are shrunk to just a couple inches tall. And a story of android love dolls and so on.
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Meanwhile my love Jane and I were growing closer together, not driving each other crazy with cabin fever like many. And there were no parties to go to during Covid-19.
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But I concentrated on my Virtual bar.
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Another day I talked to a man, Jack an aging black man who had recently broken up with his girlfriend. He said, “I was trying Online dating, but most people there weren’t serious about finding love Online. I was sick of it and came here to the Virtual bar hoping for more luck.” I introduced him to a woman who was in Buffalo, clever and ready to go and they hit it off.
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A girl was saying her name was Christina, she was half Chinese/half white, aged about 45 and attractive in a weird sort of way, and she had just moved back to our city from L.A.
I asked her, “How was L.A?” She answered, “I was sick of ass kissing to try and become an actress and wanted to settle down. And I am a lawyer and could work anywhere but choose NYC.”
I welcomed her to the bar.
And I asked for her love. She said, “Sure let’s go!” So, I met her at a downtown hotel. And it was wild loving.
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Bert, was Chinese and about 60. He said, “I was a historical interpreter for various sites in the region.” I said, “Surely history is bunk.”
He said, “In the past almost everyone was a farmer or rural dweller. And they worked all day into the night. And sickness and disease. And the life expectancy was very low. Some regions were easier to live in than others. For example, Polynesia, they just picked the fruit off the trees and were free to love but were cannibals. No society was perfect he said. But now we are approaching perfection in our modern cities. Utopias.”
I said, “Happiness is just a state of mind.”
He said, “I’ve written a story about the Wild West only I wrote it in the future, about a mad colony on Mars. The colony was full of desperados and violence and suicide.” He said, “The future will be full of desperate people.” I said, “Some will be desperate, but others will show grace under pressure. And those who go to Space will be closely monitored to be sane before they would be allowed to go!”
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Then I met a girl, white about 55 from Quebec, Lianne who told me she was superfluous just like me. She didn’t know what to do with her time. She said she was 60 and getting old and still hadn’t made it as a screenplay author. I read some of her works and they were brilliant but had a lot of sex in them. I said, “Try and be more mainstream, for your last gasp, as it were.” She said, “We are both in the same boat. Let’s make a pact to both try and go mainstream! Covid or no Covid.”
So we arranged to meet in Montreal. And it was good loving. But I told her afterwards, “It was just a one-week-stand.”
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I told the man, Juan, Hispanic, aged about 40. “It’s hard to play the game. And I am not writing for the common man, but rather the elite.”
He said, “Hopefully one day everyone will be rich and there will be no elite!”
I told him, “There will always be rich and poor. It’s just the way it is. Some lose, others win.”
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My lover, Jane, said, “I want to illustrate your book of the Virtual bar. Enhance the people to make them look like saints, and angels.” I said, “Good idea.”
And she painted Covid-19 horror stories. Paintings of sick and dying and plague.
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And Jane looked to meet charitable people on the website. And she told me she’d met some really kind people. Many kind people have a kind looking, clever face. They were angels.” I said, “Yes, the future will hopefully be ruled by the kind, no matter what happens.”
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And I said, “In any case I’d like to devise a test of imagination.” Of course, it would be largely subjective, but we could have different tests for different types of imagination. And different judges. And those who test the highest, would-be VIPs in my bar. Jane said, “Brilliant!” So, part of being very special for admittance to the bar was to show imagination, like to write a creative story ad lib. But I said, “Let’s leave it till after Covid.” But Covid showed no signs of going away.
And my love said, “Write like Hemingway and we’ll both be famous.” I said, “Hemingway wrote about fishing, boxing, bull fights, wars and parties, everyday fare.”
She said, “It seems to me there was something more to it. In any case you are planning on writing about parties, just like, ‘The Sun also Rises.”’
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A lot of our customers were former bar owners who had gone out of business during Covid-19. And they were barflies. I talked with one woman, Renee, who was Japanese and who was smoking hot and I told her, “We are all pent up by this epidemic, and why don’t we let loose some steam and love one another?” So, I arranged to meet her the next week.
Renee proved to be a good lover as I suspected. But I told her, “It was just a one-night-stand.” She said, “I know you are in love with Jane.”
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Then one of our regulars, Betsy, Hispanic and sexy, said she was changing into a man. Everyone was bummed out and depressed that such a pretty girl would do such a thing. She made a big deal out of it. And everyone had their say about it. And we wondered what kind of penis would she have? She said, “There have been advances…”
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Then I was talking to Karen, a Latino, 30 something good-looking nature lover who liked to watch wildlife. She said, “We need more wildlife parks. And some of them should not allow humans in, just have cameras everywhere and fence in the parks.” I said, “Parks in the far North and the Antarctic coast are fine with everyone, but it is the parks near big population centers that are endangered. Or not considered as potential parkland.”
We talked about Greenpeace and other wildlife organizations and animals in Space as pets, and stem cell meats and so on. And when the night was over, I invited her back to my place; she was local. And she agreed. We had great love, but I told her, “It ended here today.” She said, “Thanks anyway.”
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December 2020
In the past summer, Covid had dropped but it looked like it would come back in winter, with a new panacea vaccine in sight.
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I was starting to get rich from all my clients at my bar. On a given night there were a few hundred guests, who all paid the $45 door price. Some starving artists/students said they couldn’t afford to pay, so I let them in for free.
I paid no attention to other Virtual bars….
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And there were a lot of insane people here, but if they made trouble, I blocked them from the bar. However, I had a soft spot for mad people, and figured I was crazy myself, but I didn’t tell most people that.
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Then one night I met a Korean, sexy, young lady who said, “Any woman can get plastic surgery and wear make-up to look attractive. All women should be attractive; in South Korea, the ladies consider it to be polite to wear make-up.” I said, “Make up is wonderful and so is plastic surgery; it’s all about the image you project. I like your image!” She said, “I am celebrating my 37th birthday tomorrow in Boston, and would you come? I said “Sure,” and loved her the next night. She said, “It was love at first sight!” I said, “But I have a steady lover already!” I couldn’t see her again. I knew she was disappointed but c’est la vie!
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Eddie said, “I am 43 and aging fast, and 2020 was a wasted year due the plague.” He was Latino and handsome.
I said, “It’s similar to war time only worse. But it will soon be over with the vaccines and we will restart life fresh and new.” And he said, “I had a brick and mortar small publishing company, that went under during Covid-19. The future is in Online books.” I said, “You should open an Online publishing company like I did.” He said, “But it will be hard to be successful.” And he asked, “What kind of books do you like?” I said, “My favorites are sci-fi and fantasy from the 50s, 60s and 70s. That was when the Space Age beckoned, but now people are having problems publishing good sci-fi.”
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Another, regular, customer was Roger, who we called, ‘Jolly Roger,’ since he was black and good humored. He was 49 and he claimed to have an IQ of 160, and was an astrophysicist. He had relationships with many of our regulars. Roger said the bar was just like a video game. He said he was getting very used to meeting mostly girls in the States at my bar. And he would fly to meet them. Roger and I became good friends that night, and I was blessed with the appearance of my co-publisher, Chuck who also liked Jolly Roger. “Let’s drink to friendship,” I said. Chuck was saying, “We had a dynamite third issue full of good writing.” I asked Chuck, “How are things?” He said, “I am still chasing after Nirvana in my Buddhist meditations and have made some progress.” He had also written 90 stories and a novel in total and had published some with “Midas’ Sinkhole.” Most of his stories were experimental and way outside the box.
So, it was in the beginning of the Covid years. And the bar was thriving. And the planwas to make it famous throughout the Globe as THE virtual bar.