“I go back to...I go back to...”

Blaine could hear the vintage Winehouse backing track as his manager's cool kitten voice wrapped around and through him, creeping into the corners and curling in the shadows of the club.

His club.

Even after 18 months of owning Eclectic he still couldn't quite believe that it belonged to him.

Blaine Anderson had always followed the rules. Growing up in a stoic house in Westerville had shown him that to succeed in life you needed to conform and obey or be cast aside and lose everything. His parents had made this quite clear when he had come out at the age of 15. Under no circumstances was he to flaunt his “special nature”.

Things had come to a head at his sophomore year's Sadie Hawkins Day dance. He had gone against their wishes and asked a boy to the dance. It had been wonderful and so much fun until…until it wasn’t. His parents had been there for him that time - to a point. He had barely survived the beating. A punctured lung, dislocated shoulder and multiple contusions on his body were barely healing when Thomas and Sylvia Anderson sat on the edge of his hospital bed and explained to him that, although they loved him, this could not – and would not – happen again if he expected to live under their roof and be supported by them. Their reputation in town, his father's law firm, all of the things they worked for could be ruined by his “preferences”.

It was a lot for a fifteen-year-old boy whose pain was not limited to his physical self to take.

Things had run relatively smoothly after that. His parents transferred him to Dalton Academy and things seemed as though they would go well for Blaine. Oh, he tested his father's patience with his participation in the Warblers, the school’s Glee Club. He skirted that line by arguing that all colleges looked for well-rounded individuals (even though they both knew that he would attend Columbia University and study law like his father and grandfather before him) and he was allowed the one thing that truly made him happy.

Until Jeremiah.

In the spring of his senior year Blaine had it all. The Warblers were doing well, about to challenge that rag-tag bunch from McKinley High at the regionals competition when Blaine met him. Jeremiah was a little older, a boy who seemed to like him, and they had been on a few dates. Blaine just wanted to kiss him. Just to see what it was like – finally – to be accepted for who he was. So he did. On his front steps after their third date.

It was the phone call from Shirley Stuckney, neighborhood nose that ruined it all.

Blaine sat in his father's study, feeling alternately hot and cold as his father informed him that apparently he hadn't been clear before in his wishes. That of course he loved his son but his “sexual issues” should be explored later in life, after he had settled and secured all the things he needed to prosper. So that Blaine would not forget this he had been in contact with Columbia and revoked his financial support for room and board so that Blaine would know what “real work was” and his father's contacts would be watching him to be sure that he “still knew where his focus” was.

He was also told to quit the Warblers that very day.

College was difficult for Blaine, to say the very least. He made it his mission, though, to prove to his father that he could do this with flair and that all of his naysaying would not break him. On the contrary, Blaine would succeed despite his father.

His four years of undergrad work were a blur of papers, resident assistant duties, and his second job as a barista downtown. Blaine worked all hours, sleeping little, and focusing greatly. There was never any time for others and thus he had little to no social life to speak of. He had a loose circle of acquaintances and made friends with ease (he had always been an affable guy), but his social time was so limited that he really had no time to develop and nurture friendships, let alone intimate ones. Through it all, though, the loneliness, the avalanche of work, the supreme focus of proving himself, Blaine remembered that his time would come. He held it like a badge, chanted it like a mantra. My time will come. My time will come. He desperately wished this to be true.

Law school had been a little lighter, surprisingly, as his father rewarded his summa cum laude status with full payment so that Blaine could focus his energies on “joining his team at the Anderson firm”. Having had no social life outside of papers, classes, and duties had put him at a disadvantage, however. He had no clue how to even approach a man, let alone ask him on a date. And so it was for Blaine as he worked his way to his degree and graduated at the top of his class, albeit without the closeness of other people he so yearned for.

It was at 25 that his life changed. One moment he was exhilarated, having just completed his bar exam and about to call home with the good news, the next his father's secretary was calling to tell him that there had been an accident.

That he needed to return to Ohio and grieve.

It was serendipitous, really. The day the Westerville house was signed into his name, the day the law firm officially became his, and the day that his bank account held more money than he would ever know what to do with (his grandfather having passed during his junior year) was the day he found out that he had passed the bar.

He may have drunk heavily that night.

He lost two years, then, working in his father's office, seeing his father's old clients, attending depositions and just going through the motions until one day he passed this place and had a spark.

He missed music. He missed feeling the rhythm in his limbs and playing his heart out on the piano. He missed his veins pumping with the thrill of performing. He missed laughter and dancing. He missed the joy of people. And so an idea nipped and scratched at his brain each night until he finally succumbed and bought the place, turning it into what it was today.
At first Lima didn't know what to do with Eclectic. Was it a bar? Was it for dancing? Was it for drunks? Who were the clientele supposed to be?

Blaine made it purposely diverse, attracting the more well-to-do on Piano Sundays, the place lit like a classy restaurant, white curtains everywhere, tables festooned with flowers with fine dining options from the kitchen. Then on Friday nights the club was sheathed in black, laser and black lights infused with pumping bass and fruity cocktails, enticing college students and older dancers alike with cutting edge up-and-coming DJs. Saturdays were hipster nights, the brick walls bare and stark white lights illuminating the stage with the piano and guitar stands available next to the open mic.

When he had first opened he questioned his sanity. Would this work outside a small town in Ohio? Could he do this? The money wasn't a problem, even though the first 6 months he saw consistent losses. Mostly it was his pride at stake. He poured himself into making it work and slowly but surely it became what it was tonight. Packed with revelers, 35 people working for him, the place to be on a Wednesday (Karaoke night), and turning a profit that Blaine didn't need.

I am so very blessed at 30 years old, Blaine thought, as he closed his balance book and readied himself to go home.

There was just one thing missing. One thing he didn't know how to solve and wondered if he ever could bring himself to find.