I’m over a month without a shave, my facial hair curling into pubic snakes that indicate loneliness and madness. I’m wearing the clothes that I’ve slept in for the last three nights, and my left foot is in a boot, heavily bandaged with medical pins sticking out of it. I’m in a quiet bar in an undesirable neighborhood, listening to Latin jazz with a couple of illegals I used to score dishwashing jobs for.
A language barrier precludes me from understanding a little over half of the conversation, but somehow it makes more sense than those that I’ve engaged in the last twenty-six years. These folks have had their spines broken by life. Most are still washing dishes. They don’t watch television. They don’t go on dates. Their paychecks are gone before they can spend them on luxuries. They understand what it’s like to be desperate. There’s an understanding I have with the broken that transcends my companionship with the active.
They pour tequila liberally, often immediately after you hint at a hardship. It’s not my drink of choice but I throw it back and hide the wince, sucking on a lime as if it were a nipple and being mocked for it in a language I can’t understand. When they pat my shoulder and laugh, I think I see how they see me, a sap trapped in a foolish game that I can’t escape from. The sentiment is familiar. As we nod our heads to the music, I’m fairly certain that we’re recalling dances we’ve shared with the women of our past. At least I am.
The good portion of a bender is spent imagining what you could be doing if you applied yourself to playing the game instead of destructing yourself. When you sit down and think of it nakedly, it resembles life in that respect.
I make it an hour or two before discontent sets in.
I’m at my happiest driving through the night, a bit more lit up than I should be, singing along with oldies at the top of my lungs, taking the curve a little too fast, my stomach dropping, one hand on the wheel, cigarette dangling from the other, the all-important focal center of the universe, pinballing from lonely dive to lonely dive, each one a refuge from the world I’ve burned myself out in.
The highway lights streak by and the music rings out and the lines are cut, the shots are thrown back and the best part about is that I won’t remember any of it in a week. I’m not even cognizant in the moment. That’s what our species tends to favor – whirlwind experiences void of thought. Our deepest and most shallow romances, our orgasms, benders, dreams and triumphs all share this mark.
On the way home, I stop in at a bar where the girl with too much make-up always pours me triples and forgets to charge me every now and again. I’m more than certain she pities me, and probably respects that I keep my distance (or is allured by my preoccupied mystery). Our only real interaction is hollow smiles and thank you’s. Most of the other creeps in here make wincingly pathetic overtures on an hourly basis. I just gaze at basketball highlights and fiddle with my rumlogged lime wedge.
“How’s your foot doin’?”
“It’s hanging in there.”
“Whatcha thinkin’ about?”
“Girls…four or five, specifically.”
“And what have you decided?”
“That I’m an asshole.”
“I think you’re nice,” she says, scrunching her nose and smiling as if I were kidding before floating off to close out a tab. I daydream about how I would’ve handled this situation before it lost it’s magic.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a kid I went to high school with sitting across the bar, pointing towards me and whispering to another vaguely familiar face. I sip my drink, think of the women I’ve loved, and smile.
I want to be able to delude myself into thinking that a pretty face could save me again. I really miss that more than anything. And I hate that about myself.
