Never in my wildest dreams, when I played at recess, did I think, someday, I’m going to sit in a bar every night until closing time. I thought I would be a superhero. If not a superhero, I would be a baseball champion, pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the youngest pitcher to ever grace the mound. I used to daydream about that when I stared out the window in class, only for the teacher to send me to the principal for not paying attention. They put me in other classes, separate from the normies.

I grew older, and the baseball dream was zapped like the acne on my face from my dermatologist.

Soon after I became an adult, a woman I was dating introduced me to bars. I would drink into blackouts. The baseball dream may have gone, but I had other dreams of becoming rich. Those dreams faded, too.

Next thing I knew, I heard the bartender shout, “Last call!” The music shut off. The bartender switched on the light and exposed our drunk faces, which was never a pretty sight. We all had to pay up. He gave us freebies on the house. I would get deals because I went there every night and blacked out at some point. The bouncer used to smoke with me out front before marijuana became legal.

Everyone would wait for me to show up. I was the staple of that bar. They should’ve named it after me: Ben’s Hideout. But that never happened. I would’ve loved to have had a bar named after me and have my picture on the wall, so people, decades later, would see who the best customer was in the early part of the century. The picture would’ve been framed, with me in front of a group of regulars.

There was one time, when I blacked out and ended up at the bar in Hollywood, not knowing how I got there. I called my buddy from work, who’d driven me after the work party.

“What the hell happened last night?” I said.

“Oh, we ended up at your watering hole, and you fell asleep at the counter.”

“I was afraid of that,” I said.

“You climbed onto the counter and slept there.”

“No, I didn’t. And they let me?”

“They let you until closing time.”

I went there the night after he’d told me, just to confirm that it happened and that I wasn’t booted out permanently. And my favorite bartender said, “Yes, you did.” That was when I knew I owned the place. The scariest part about that particular blackout was that when I awoke the next morning with a wicked hangover, I saw everything in the right place. My shoes were exactly where I always put them. The same with my wallet, my keys, my clothes. None of it was scattered or missing. It was like my unconscious had navigated me through it all.

That happened over six years ago. Ancient times. I don’t drink anymore after having gone through it all–rehab, recovery, outpatient—still as the same person. A part of me still wishes he was still doing it with the regulars.