Playing Resident Holiday Mixologist in the Basement Bar
^ I spy with my little eyes…a flat bottle of soda water that was opened two years ago and has been sitting inside the passably cold mini fridge on the floor
While I have declared with absolute assuredness that the only way I’m leaving New York City is in a body bag, a part of me wonders what interior design chaos I’m missing out on not servicing the Great American Suburbs as a real estate broker. What joy I would find splaying myself across a Jacuzzi tub suspiciously built for 8 people inside the primary bathroom suite. How fulfilled I would be to develop a sales pitch for the add-ons like a fallout shelter, an adult tree house, and a wall of first floor windows that directly face a seemingly never-ending dark void of menacing forestry teeming with bears, murderers, and teenagers smoking pot. But of all the things I want to paint the prose of for potential buyers, the basement bar would be my magnum opus. So without further ado, “The Suburban Basement Bar” by Liz Lawton:
After descending down worn heather beige carpeted stairs, watch your step around the pile of unused exercise bands and aspirationally weighted dumbbells stuck in the eternal “donations” limbo at the basement landing. Embrace the gentle suffocation of being inside a cold, windowless, cement box while you make your way past the wraparound 12-person brown lazy boy and CRT TV, a fleeting vestige of 90s basement sleepover core. Tucked away in the corner of this crypt of unfinished home improvement projects and lingering pubescent angst, you’ll find yourself standing before a cherry wood alter of sorts, Puritan in nature, claimed by a prominently displayed family crest placard and advertised by the engraved slogan “When You’re Beer, You’re Family.” Flat bottles of store brand soda water, jarred concoctions, and unwashed mason jars liter the bar top, a seemingly hastily abandoned party all coated with a film of the faintest stickiness. Tucked around the back of the bar, an encyclopedic library of uncomplimentary spirits awaits a brazen teen looking to fill an empty Poland Spring bottle or a reveler looking for a cranberry juice compliment. A Kenmore mini-fridge encased in a faux wood paneling exterior hums loudly from behind the bar, its contents bearing various half-opened liters of soda, an expired orange juice, and a bag of ice that has congealed into a singular massive block encircled by a thick halo of freezer burn. The walls are dotted with newspaper clippings, amateur art, and yellowing family photos; the ceiling has a constellation of opaque pastel glow-in-the-dark stars, which the buyer must assume responsibility for removal of. It is here in the catacombs of the property foundation where residents and their conflict-averse relatives can seek asylum during election cycles seasons or simply slip away from the forward momentum of life for a moment of nostalgia, silence, and the sadistic burn of a high proof rum that came out of a plastic bottle.