Glory Ho

PRELUDE
There’s something about secrets that truly feeds the ego. When one becomes a player or even mute participant in sometimes sordid, private details—anything from a pregnancy to a pirated operation—the human head expands to allow the size of such privilege and trust. We instantly feel we belong to the inner circle. Further, we now wield the power to make our own selection about with whom we should share.

I had been looking for this place called “candlebar” since we arrived in Sofia, hearing endless stories about the mysterious knock-requirement, lack of electricity and signless entrance. “I guess people say you have to be drunk to find it. . . “ our last sleepover guest said with a an apologetic frown, while others claimed it was near the book bazaar.

So, while hookah browsing at a friendly middle-eastern themed boutique full of miniature buddhas, moonstones and imported textile handbags, I decided to ask a local. And conversations, with friendly bilingual Bulgarians usually go something like this:

Andrea speaks Bulgarian
Bulgarian stranger answers in Bulgarian so fast that Andrea can’t understand.
Andrea displays confused face and confesses that she’s clueless.
Stranger goes back to English.
Andrea, still up for the challenge, attempts Bulgarian again.
Bulgarian stranger goes back to Bulgarian, slower, but not slow enough, hopeful in his new American acquaintance.
Andrea once again, is forced to confess her lack of comprehension.
Bulgarian goes back to English. . . . .and the cycle continues.

But what a nice guy. He came out on the sidewalk and gave us easy directions—it was just around the corner.

ACT I
With pasta in our bellies and politics on our mind, Boudreaux, Matt, Bill and I engage in a post-dinner search around 10:30. . .we find Ugo, look right, see a black dog, . .crawl under the graffiti’d wall, (okay so there was no graffiti’d wall) enter through the grand English-inspired gate and come upon what looks to be an apartment door, with various buttons and name plates. Hmm. It felt wrong, just how it was supposed to feel (fun!). But what could I do? I rang the buzzer. Almost immediately, we hear a sound, push, and in we fall. . .toward a candlelit stairway and then a wall-size mural of a nude woman with a few yellow pears in her hands. . .up we continue, a daberden is exchanged, and then we oh-so-curiously peer from room to room, each interrupted squatter, necker, drinker or conversationalist looking up at us as though we might have been Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut. The ceiling was high. The cushions were low. The paintings were childlike, yet erotic and the whispering was almost rhythmic.. Michael and Matt went off in search of a substance. (and found some absinthe) while Bill grabbed a guitar and I picked up a Madagascar photo book from a nearby shelf. We sat, listening to Bulgarian voices, American music and a few English conversations, too. The only window I saw framed dark branches with indirect moonlight, helping me to imagine we’d found a cottage deep in a Balkan forest. I was drinking delightful herbal tea with a convenient warming mug-tops and so I sipped and gazed and inhaled and listened to the crackle of my clove. Turns out absinthe is a highly potent, black-licorice tasting liquid often drank by hallucinating poets of the 60s (and a few bohemians at Montmartre at the turn of the century as well). Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong decade, but that’s another blog. Apparently they outlawed one of the five ingredients awhile back, so now it’s left with a much softer mind-altering mix–perfect for Michael’s taste. I didn’t think he would ever get up from that bloody red cushion. But eventually, our friends grew restless. Matt wanted to meet a Bulgarian friend, Kamelia at candlebar. But wait, weren’t we AT “candlebar”? It had occurred to me that there weren’t enough candles here, but frankly, it just didn’t seem likely that we’d stumbled onto two knock-required miastos in one night and on the same street! And this trippy little tour had been a sufficient distraction.

INTERMISSION
So we met Kamelia just a block away and headed toward the Zion sign, where there was a many-layered door of leftover-scrap wood and distressed two by fours—a square entrance that had surely been driven through before this final construction. We could hear the party, just beyond the door. Could sense the life on the other side of this wall.

So, was there a secret knock?
Wouldn’t that make sense?
Was I just thinking of Stand By Me?
But we just knocked—a regular sort of hard, three-rap style.
And we knocked again.
And we jumped around trying to warm up in the square, makeshift shelter that, in a small town, might be called a porch. Here in the city, next to glass doors,, café umbrellas and apartment stairways, though, the awkward frame, (taken from what woodpile, exactly?) was oddly out of place.
We waited maybe a full 35 seconds.

Then, the object of our stares finally creaked (really creaked) open and a customer let us in.

ACT II
And there we were in the actual “candlebar.” Eyes and fire lit the high ceilinged room, and the wicks on every wooden stool, floorboard, counter and wall (as well as the liquor) must fuel the burn. It was more of a barn than a bar. And it had history. This very space was the original publishing house of one the first communist newspapers in Bulgaria. And no sooner did I rest my wine glass on a wax-encrusted table, than I noticed a communist-red relic, the sketched outline of a Gorbachev-looking head and a half-faded block Cyrillic message, resting on the wall-lined shelf. The trendy truth, is that I’d shopped for items that were manufactured to look that old and symbolic.

A corner bar, loft-included layout and open staircase made it feel like a Highlands Ranch house great room or a studio in downtown Seattle. I can see you. You can see me. (Without the stainless steel appliances and Plush Pottery Barn textures.) But I suppose this visibility carried a controlling kind of connotation, too. I tried to imagine the communists, digging into my memories of pop culture. I thought of the Soviet Union, the ending of the cold war, Wind of Change by the Scorpions and that movie Gorky Park, which I had never seen. I was just starting high school when the Berlin wall fell. What did I know about communism? All I could really visualize were suited men with fur caps like the Russian’s bodyguards in Rocky 4. I tried to picture them all rushing around like a great campaign volunteers, operating antiquated printing presses and believing, with 4:00 AM kind of fortitude, in their cause. I made a mental note to pick up the popular historic novel about Bulgaria’s pre-democratic times. I needed to know more.

We stayed at “candlebar” until around 3:00, when our yawning (but certainly no overhead lights) pushed us out the door–our exit, of course, much quieter than our arrival.

And so, tonight, Sofia got a little sexier, we became more of a local. . .a member of some, mysterious, urban, Eastern European secret society. And that felt good.