When you hear the name Speakeasy, you think of a 1920s bar with laughing, dancing, and music. That is not what I found Saturday night at the Speakeasy Restaurant & Bar in Clarksville, Tennessee or as Jeremy referred to it, the "Speak-Sleazy." (It might have been in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Who knows.) That's not the point though. My point is the a seedy little bar the was home to a few of our good, young men in the Army, their girl's and her friends, and the backwoods population that only come out at night. I wasn't expecting much at the now definite SpeakSleazy, but I was hoping for a little bit more that what I had walked into. There were three to four very hefty women wearing tank tops and short skirts or dresses, trying to look sexy, (didn't work), a handful of young, almost handsome looking service men playing pool, quite a few dirty old men with all but two teeth in their mouth, and a handful of young girls talking to the army guys, and even the dirty old men. The air was filled with smoke and the floor sticky from spilled alcohol. Jeremy and I met his friends and sat down near the back by the pin ball machines that no one was playing. His friend's name was Chris and they were once in the service together. Now both men were discharged and meeting for the first time in years. Chris' friend's name was Ben and he and Jeremy hit it off more than Jeremy and Chris. Heck, they hit it off better than me and Jeremy. They spent the whole night talking about punk bands that they both enjoyed, the instruments that they played and the best way to play them, and the concerts that they went/wanted to go to in the future. Chris had another friend show up who's name I do not remember and they were conversing on the left side of me and Jeremy and Ben on the right side, and I was staring into space and listening to the dreadful women and men singing their heart's out for karaoke night (There was one guy that was OK, I think), and slowing sipping on the drink that Jeremy had ordered for me. It was called a Washington Apple, which was a mixture of Crown Royal, green apple schnapps, and cranberry juice. To me, it tasted slightly better that cherry cough syrup. I finished off the drink as some girl was in the middle of torturing is with her version of Miranda Lambert's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Just hearing her made me want to get another drink so I could drown out her voice. Jeremy and his friend went to the bar for another drink, our waitress was kinda of slow and to use her own words, "new to alcohol," and he came back with another drink for me. This one was called sex on the beach. At last something I was familiar with, the drink not the activity unfortunately. This was a mixture of vodka, peach schnapps, orange juice and cranberry juice and was a little better to handle that the Washington apple. I finished off the drink in about half the time as the other one although I wasn't paying too much attention to the drink. I was too busy staring at the woman trying to sing a song while staring at herself in the mirror wall behind her. It is crazy how people make fools of themselves like this. It was almost midnight now and our party was getting ready to depart from the much beloved Speakeasy. Farewell smoke-filled, stick floored, SpeakSleazy. Oh how I will not miss thee.
