Originally written for YONQ: ISSUE 1.

Beautiful catboys in the churchbar, two-by-two, six in all, traipsing down the nave. They link identical arms and flash identical smiles. Twelve pairs of ears flex in perfect harmony.

The barpriest shakes his head. “They’ve been coming here since the Petcobar closed,” he explains. Then, somewhat more sadly: “They think they’re looking for Jesus.”

The churchbar is inside a church. The windows used to be grand. The barpriest has hung drapes across it. They have been cut through with many holes. The wind blows through holes in the roof and spills rainbow dots all over the pews.

“What are you looking for?” asks the barpriest.

I look at the dancing dots and imagine this is what worship must be like.

“Any signs and wonders are of divine origin,” he says. “Or alcoholic.”

There are partygoers in the pews. They shotgun communion wine from golden goblets, which have little holes punched into the base. They are gargling, or speaking in tongues.

One of the catboys marches up to the barpriest, refillable chalice in paw. The barpriest uncorks the wine, which is really supermarket Shiraz, and blesses it liberally with stale Doritos. The catboy drops him a handful of something shiny from his skirt. The catboy meows.

“Sorry, I’m not a real priest,” says the barpriest, pocketing the spare change. “I haven’t run a service in years. But I think you’ll find what you’re looking for elsewhere.”

I walk out of the door, trailing sacramental wine.

Twelve golden eyes follow me onto the street.

///

The bankbar is sunk into the vault of a bank. I get a flurry of dollarbills shredded in vodka. The cotton threads snag at my throat, pulling back my voice. “I think what I’m looking for is a little someplace to live.”

“There’s the homeless-shelterbar,” suggests the barteller. “It’s run by the bar-Salvation-Army. They’ve turned the beds into some rather nice seating. Though no one sleeps there anymore.”

Not quite what I was looking for. I try to make myself clear. “Everybody seems like they have a place in this city.” I swallow and the dollarbills sink in my chest.

The barteller gets more agitated. She motions at the racks of gold. “Everyone’s welcome in the hallowed halls of bankbar.”

There is no one else in the bankbar. Empty suits hold glasses in invisible hands. A robot flakes gold bars with a cheese grater.

“The cup of capital welcomes all,” she says. “Have you ever tried to grope for quarters on the floor of a vending-machine? Accumulation is the highest and most democratic form of intoxication.”

I try the champagne with the grated gold. The bubbles jostle the gold flakes through tiny electrostatic attractions that sends sparks arcing across the inside of my glass. The robot assures me that this is a mark of genuineness and originality, of which the bankbar has loads.

“What happens when you guys run out?”

The barteller looks at me confusedly. “We move on to the next vault.”

///

No one sleeps anymore because of the coffeebar, which is sprawled among the ruins of the Amazon warehouse on the edge of the city.

Great fans waft powderised caffeine into the air, which blankets the low hills in smog. All sorts of people roll in to the coffeebar, which itself escapes the smog. To stay awake, they chug mugs of cold whiskey and hot arabica stew.

“If you’re looking for some kind of permanent institution, this is as close as you can get,” drawls the bar-barista.

To sleep is to find a place to call one’s own. For some, these sedentary hours are enough. The potent brew fixes partygoers on the spot. Then they go out to drink again.

“The coffeehouse has always been a place where people spend hours doing absolutely nothing. I try to uphold this legacy during the afterparty.”

The night is still young. The warehouse is limned with inane chatter. People are still catching up with each other. Stories are exchanged of the before times of sobriety. Once caffeinated, they will go out into the streets again where they will have brunch and mimosas. Without sleep, they will never get hungover.

“I’m more of a forward-looking kind of gal,” I say.

///

In the petrolbar, they serve triple-sec octane. I put the nozzle to my lips and suck.

“Almost every single adult was drunk almost constantly for all of human history,” says the barpumpattendant.

“What happened after that?” I ask.

“Don’t know,” he says. “I had a headache.”

///

In the first days of collapse, the first bar sprung up in the ruins of a Walmart.

They had everything in the Walmart. People flocked to the Walmart. There was surplus food in the back. There was surplus beer too, so the bargreeters hooked it up to a tap.

Walmartbar split into twelve aisles, each with its own niche. They divided the storeroom into twelve sections. The breakroom became a breakroombar.

Up and down the street, the people cheered and sang.

These first bars were in San Leandro. When the air traffic controllers died, the airport became the airportbar. Soon, all of Oakland and Alameda went under.

I worked at the Targetbar on Mission and 4th. I doused discount-rack hoodies in effervescent vodka for a slow-release high. On cold nights, I served bourbon-soaked band tees.

Wearable drinks never did quite catch on. The people moved on to other bars.

I hit the streets the night after.

///

The museumbar is near the old Targetbar.

I drink fixative mixed with rum from the neck of an old Brancusi statue. The pointed wings clip me in the neck with every sip. My neck is covered in scratches.

The bar-docent bows at me. “We must all suffer for the sake of art.”

I try to tell him that consumption isn’t production. He cuts me off with the wag of a gloved hand.

“All is production in a postconsumption age.”

Everyone in the museumbar is wearing a nice suit. The ones who are not wearing nice suits are wearing nice dresses. Some wear opera masks fashioned from the bottoms of beer bottles. They are staring at the paintings on the wall.

The paintings have many lines and squares. A woman raises her glasses to her face. “Mondrian was drawing New York, but I really think he’s drawing San Fran.”

Her partner nods effusively. “There is a bar on every street corner.”

In this painting, many women dance. Everything makes sense to somebody here. Meaning is made in little lines. A man who looks like a critic approaches me. He has glasses on, real ones. “You have paint chips on your dress,” he whispers.

I take his advice. I wipe them off with the wing of the Brancusi. “I never saw myself fitting into these fancy spaces, but I could get behind it if I wanted to.”

The air smells like new air conditioning and old paint. It is a most delightful smell. I imagine myself sinking into the painting before me, into the purple whirling arms.

The man who looks like a critic tries to hold my hand. He is holding a drink in a sculpted head. He pulls close to me, conspiratorially. “Is it true, wild child, what they say about the outside? I hear they babble in dead languages at the churchbar.”

I storm out of the museum, ripping the hem of my dress. The Brancusi statue spills rum into a ditch.

///

In the backseat of the carbar, one of the catboys has broken from his litter.

The carbar is a 2005 Toyota Camry. The rain beats hard against the windshield. In the distance, the shadow of Coit Tower looms.

He passes me a towel for my dress. I accept it gratefully. I slip in some coins in the slot and pour him some monoxide brandy from the dispenser in the glove compartment.

“Got a light?” he says, passing me a cigarette.

“I thought you guys meowed.”

“Not when I’m off-duty.”

We light up, letting the smoke peel from the shattered windows.

The carbar is in the parkinglotbar of a shoppingmallbar. Nobody’s here to see the catboy unclip his tail from his skirt, letting it dry on the rear deck.

“What do you want out of this grand meta-charade? This eternal afterparty? This night with no seeming aim or end?”

I breathe in smoke, letting it mix with the fumes.

“I want to live a little,” I lie.

He laughs. “Not all of us are born to party. Some of us just want a way out.”

Across the parkinglotbar, streams of men and women clad in latex stream past the bondagebar, the neonbar, the parkbar, the dinerbar. There is a loud sound as somebody drops something. And then everybody laughs.

The monoxide brandy numbs the back of my nose. Or maybe it’s the smoke.

“It’s okay to want a little quiet,” says the catboy. He takes out his phone, places it on the dash face-down. “Everyone needs a little break sometimes. My sisters can be incredibly annoying.”

“What were you doing in a church, anyway?”

“Their wafers taste like Doritos.”

We play music on the carbar’s radio until the meter runs dry.

///

I drive the carbar a little way down the street. The engine sputters to a stop.

“Seems like the engine’s run out of brandy,” I say. “We can borrow some from the grocerybar.”

“No need, sis,” he tells me. “It’s far enough for me. Thanks for the ride, nya.”

He sashays onto the rain-slicked street, tail tucked between his stockings.

In the laundrybar, I watch my clothes dry in front of the barlaundryman.

///

The foodbar’s one-of-a-kind, or so the fluttering signs say. The barchef decants a nutrient-substitute slurry into aliquots of vanilla liqueur, which he passes among his guests. He tells me the bar’s founded on the ruins of an old biohacking start-up, trying to come up with a replacement for regular meals. There’s still a few thousand of the boxes in the basement, unopened. According to the product label they expire sometime in the next millennium.

“Everyone loves it,” he says. “You don’t need to think about drinking on an empty stomach here. Come on, fuel up.”

The concoction goes down surprisingly smooth. My stomach’s fuller than it has been in days. I think to pay him in coins, reach into my pocket, and find none.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, patting his belly. “Everybody eats at the end of the world.”

There are too many people in the foodbar. My place at the counter is swiftly taken up by a gaggle of teens in skin-tight zentai suits. Their mouths part as I pass. They smell like piss and turpentine.

///

The barpriest introduces me to a friend.

“I met her just the other day and thought of you,” he texts me.

She’s Japanese, she’s got tattoos around her ankles and wrists, and she speaks with a Texan twang. She tells me she’s been hitting up bars up and down the highways, ending up here, at the end of the land.

I ask her what the other bars are like.

“Less rowdy, mostly. Just a few truckers here and there transporting the last of the grain to the breweries near the coast, running leftover crates of gin. Say, they aren’t any close to running out here, have they?”

She’s flighty, that much is certain. When she speaks, she has a habit of running her hands along the sides of her cropped jeans. I can see why the barpriest had thought of me. I let the comparison slide.

We jog past the wreckage of beachbars, giggling. Seagulls stare at us. Seawater laps at the tarmac below our bare feet.

“You seem to know your way around,” she says.

I tell her I’ve been working in convenience stores up and down this stretch since high school. It had given me something to do. I saw myself rising up an endless chain of convenience store management, once. But I was always jealous of my classmates who worked at Dairy Queen. I was always comfortable with cold drinks in my hands.

“Maybe you’re happier like this,” she suggests. “I think we’re all happier like this, pretending we’ve got shoes to fill, when we’re really just chilling in the longest afterparty of our lives. Peace on earth after so much sin. The guy at the church said that.”

“You know he’s not a real priest, right?”

“Sure, whatever.”

On a concrete outcrop, we kick our toes into the surf. She pours me some rice wine from a plastic flask.

“You know, there’s bars in other lands, too.”

///

The Japanese biker passes me a few coins. I hit up the garagebar for a set of working wheels. Then I hit up the coffeebar for the long journey ahead.

At the line for checkout, I bump into the barpriest. He’s ditched the robes for a shirt and jean shorts, which cling to his skin like a prayer.

“I handed the place over. Haven’t you heard?”

Heard about what?

“We ran out of communion wine yesterday. And they figured out the wafers were Doritos.”

I ask him where everyone went.

A pause. “The Targetbar, probably.”

When it’s finally our turn to pay, the sun is rising over the hills. We look down from the warehouse just in time to see the great fans waft coffee-smoke into the city, mixing with the rising fog from the sea.

“My brother at the museumbar thinks they’re close to finding Jesus,” he says. “I think I’ll go join them there.”

“Best of luck with that.”

///

At the bridgebar, the barcop checks my papers.

“Destination?” he asks.

“Thought I’d cross the bridge, hit up the woods beyond. It’s still a natural park, right?”

“I can’t guarantee it,” says the barcop, twirling his badge. “No one’s been that way in a while. Sure you don’t want to stay here?”

I am quite sure.

He offers me a shot of Everclear. I tell him I have everything loaded in the back of the bike. He shrugs and raises the gate arm. There is no other traffic on the bridge. Whistling, I gun the engine and cut into the fog ahead.