Brace yourselves.

About six different things are in progress. Pull up a chair and check back every few days.

Because I have a story to tell you.

People I meet in bars, #6: Stan (and Emma, kind of)

AUTHOR'S NOTE: For some reason, I feel like indicating that a Roy Rogers is a drink made of Coke and grenadine. There's a cherry, if you're lucky.

As you were.

--------------------------------

"And after Angie, there was Emma," he says, his eyes glazing over. His words trail off into what I assume to be the ether of sexual nostalgia. "Man, I loved that girl."

"What happened with Emma?" I ask.

"Same thing that happened with Angie," he says, taking a swig of his bottle of Bud Light.

"Which was?"

"Fuck if I know, man. I thought Emma was the one."

"But didn't you think Angie was 'the one,' too?"

"I like you, Andy," he says. "But you ask too many goddamn questions."

Stan's temples are starting to gray, like Mr. Fantastic's. He's wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches that appear to have been sewn on after-market, and his olive green slacks look like they have been crumpled up and stored in a Pringles can. It's one of those cases where someone looks like they're either 25 or 45, but nowhere inbetween.

"Why are you drinking that swill?" I ask. "They've got those good Salt Lake microbrews here. On tap, no less. You're drinking watered-down yellow piss when you could be drinking liquid rye bread."

"You Bud haters are such elitist pricks," he says. "There's a reason this shit is number one, man."

"Well, it certainly isn't because it's good."

"Of course it isn't good. It's good because it takes the guesswork out of the equation. You go into a grocery store anywhere in the country, and you KNOW that they'll have 6, 12, 24, and, if you're lucky, 36-packs of this shit. And nationwide, no matter where you buy it, it'll be the exact same. People take comfort in that kind of reliability." He pours the rest of the bottle's contents down his throat like he's trying to overwater tomato plant.

"Don't you find that sort of depressing?" I ask. "I mean, yeah, people want reliability. But why do they have to sacrifice quality for it?"

"They don't," he says. "It's not a sacrifice of quality. It's an exchange, man. They trade their own specific preferences, what they really want, so that they can have that. They're still getting beer, they're still getting drunk, and they're paying so little that you could do just quarters and you'd still have enough for laundry day. But if everyone, together, trades that in, they can all have something of minimal acceptable quality. It's a community thing, dude. People would rather have less together than more alone."

"That's horrible," I say between sips of my Roy Rogers.

"No, it's wonderful," he tells me, a glow flooding his cheeks and a light shining behind his eyes. "The fact that you can go into any bar in the country and order a Bud Light and immediately have a connection with, what, half of the people in there? That's pretty beautiful, man. The only other thing that brings people together like that is Jesus. Strangers to friend, dude. Anything that can do that is something worth considering."

"Did Emma drink Bud Light?"

"Nah," he says, "she didn't drink."

"What about Angie?"

"She was a Coors girl. Now, Liz, that girl breathed Bud Light."

"Who's Liz?"

"Ex-girlfriend. Thought she was the one, too, in case you're wondering."

I wasn't.

"But why did you think that all of these girls were the one?" I ask. "Do you even believe in 'the one?' Should I be capitalizing that when I say it? 'The One?'"

"Of course I thought they were all--you're the writer, but I think caps are appropriate, since it's, like, a title, right?--The One. Why would I want to be around someone I didn't think I could be around for the rest of forever?"

It's a valid point, and I wonder if he looked at those girls, the Angies and Emmas and Lizes (Lizzes?) with the same doe eyes that he's focusing so clearly on the pretty blonde girl with the pixie haircut at the end of the bar. You could say he's "staring," but that implies a sort of creepiness or single-mindedness that isn't really present in his gaze. He's looking, alright--and intensely, for that matter--but there's not a flash of guile or selfishness in his admiration. It's a curious look, and its innocence catches me off-guard.

Catches her off-guard, too, it seems, because after they make eye contact, she immediately turns her eyes to the ground and attempts, with mixed results, to stifle an embarrassed grin. She starts twiddling her thumbs and is looking so hard at him out of the corner of her eye that I worry she might hemorrhage.

"See that smile?" he says, brushing the lint off of his white oxford. "That's my cue. Cross your fingers."

"Will do," I say. "She could, after all, be The One."

"Dude, I know you're being sarcastic, but they're all The One. Just maybe not yours. Or mine. But sitting on my ass isn't going to get any of us closer to that answer, you know?"

Stan manages a healthy balance of swagger and sheepish as he saunters over to this girl. I can't read lips, and the jukebox is playing "Brown Sugar" too loud for me to eavesdrop, so I can only imagine what's happening by their faces.

It goes something like this:

She pretends to not see him coming, so obviously so that it's clear she sees him coming. He stands just close enough to show exactly what he's after without being invasive. She looks up at him. Her cheeks go rose red. After about twenty seconds of her looking as attentive as I can imagine a person being, she smiles and scrawls something down on a bar napkin. She hands it to him and goes back to her drink. He starts walking back, but I keep watching her. Her smile doesn't go away. It's lingering, like he's infected her with some Happy Bug.

"Got the digits, man," he says with a strange blend of arrogant gloating and grateful humility. "Her name's Emma, too. Small world, right?"

"Good job."

"Thanks."

"What was she drinking?"

"Michelob. Just like Kristina did." He wistfully raises his chin, presumably in her honor.

"Who the hell is Kristina?"

"Ex-fiancee."

"Are you fucking joking?" I ask, my voice sounding about twice as outraged as I want to appear. "All of these girls, ex-fiancees, The Ones...what the hell is wrong with you? Do you really think that each one of these relationships is a big deal? Because they can't all be big deals. 'Big' is relative, and if everything's, like the World's Biggest Deal, then nothing is the World's Biggest Deal because it has to stand on its own. Do you honestly think you loved every one of those girls?"

Stan looks surprised.

"'Loved?' Dude, I still love them. All of them. Every single one left my life with a piece of it in their pocket and I'm spread between them all. And those parts don't grow back. If any one of them came back, pulled that part out again and reminded me that they had it and wanted to use it again, you're damn straight I'd let 'em try. Because these human connections? These things that you keep trying to write your fruity little blog about? That's what matters. So don't piss on my parade because there's rain on yours, dude. You never make the shots you don't take."

"How inspirational," I drip. "Oughta cross-stitch that on a pillow to remind me not to listen to fortune cookie advice."

"Go ahead and focus on your own neuroses, if that makes you feel better. But it doesn't. It never does. That 'baggage' bullshit? It'll twist your little mind, if you let it. But you've gotta let it go, dude. Drop it all behind you and move on down the path, brother. Because there are millions of people that could be looking for just that. Be that guy, man. I'm gonna go back over and talk to Emma volume 2. She's a lot sunnier than you."

"Hope she's it," I say, trying to sound optimistic. Stan smiles and walks back over to the "sunnier" end of the bar. I keep glancing over and it looks like he and Emma Vol. 2 are really be hitting it off. After about fifteen minutes of conversation, they walk out together. As he opens the door, Stan looks at me and gives me a thumbs up and a big smile. Despite its cheesiness, and no matter how much it reminds me of the last freeze frame of a bad 80s sitcom--roll executive producer credits--it makes me smile, too.

Because some nights are too cold to bear the thought of someone--anyone--sleeping alone.

People I meet in bars, #5: Rick

Rick holds his glass of Cutty Sark up to the light.

"I know scotch is, what, a type of whiskey, right,"--I nod in confirmation--"and that whiskey is brown, but seriously, most scotch is closer to clear than it is to brown. But why do we categorize it as 'brown?'"

Rick's not a big man, but he looks like he wishes he was. He's in his late 30s and is wearing a light gray suit over a black shirt so heavily starched it could be classified as a potato. No tie on his neck. He probably thinks he looks like 21st century Sinatra, but his ensemble, especially with the way he carries himself, makes him look more like the world's hippest funeral director.

"Couldn't tell you," I say. "I guess it's more brown than it is clear, and those are sort of the two categories."

"You a scotch man, Andy?"

"Yeah, I like scotch alright. Is that your drink?" I ask.

"Why do you ask it like that? Like it's in italics?" he wonders.

"Well, everyone's got their drink. Other people can drink it too, sure, but it's still not theirs."

As I ask this, Rick looks at me so contemplatively that I assume he's going to pick the question out of my mouth, pour it in his drink, and pound the whole thing down. After about ten seconds of gazing at the face that asked him such a ________ question (I don't know how he's taking it, just that he is taking it somehow), he brings his glass to his lips and takes a draw. He lets it sit in his mouth and juts out his chin with what I first think is satisfaction, but what ends up looking like distaste.

"My friends would probably say scotch," he says, looking like he just admitted to murder. "But I don't know. I've got a weird relationship with scotch."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't start drinking until I was, what, 25?" he begins. "All of my friends either didn't drink at all or started way earlier, so I ended up being behind the curve on that one. I always heard about scotch. It's what real adults drink, wheat from the chaff, all that bullshit. So I just started drinking it. And scotch--I don't know how much you know about it, but it's got a pretty harsh taste. Since that was all I knew, that's all I ever really drank, so I became 'the scotch guy.' People would give me nice bottles for Christmas, buy it for me when my daughter was born, all that. But now, I come to bars and just order it reflexively."

He stares at the glass like a palm reader looks at a hand.

"I feel like I've outgrown it, I think. I see these people here drinking, you know, gin and tonic, rum and coke, whiskey sour--what are you drinking?" he asks, pointing to my half-full glass.

"Shirley Temple."

"...seriously?" he asks. I nod. "Huh."

I sip innocuously and wait for him to continue.

"Yeah, so everyone else is drinking stuff they like. Sweet stuff with tons of sugar in it, or little pieces of fruit. Hell, they put salt on a margarita glass because it's too sweet, and here I am drinking paint thinner just because it's been, like, assigned to me."

"And you don't want it assigned to you?" I wonder.

"It's not really that I want something else assigned to me," he sighs. "It's just that I want to be the one assigning it to me, I guess. It's become less of a drink and more of a nickname."

It's snowing so hard outside. The view of the outside world through the glass front door looks like staring into a TV when the cable's out. A snowstorm is coming through town, and the wind is whipping under the door. Since Rick and I are sitting in the first two seats in the place, we're getting lashed by the bitter cold.

"You want to move seats?" I ask him. "There are a few tables open down there."

"No, that's okay. I like the cold." He sips again. "How many more days until Christmas?"

"I think it's seven exactly, right? Christmas is on a Friday, so yeah, it's next week."

"Oh," he says. "What do you do? You get some time off during the holidays?"

"I work at a software company," I tell him. "I've got all next week off. What about you?"

"I'm between jobs. So yeah, I've got next week off, too." He scoffs bitterly at his own joke. "Got laid off last month. So now I'm the unemployed scotch guy."

He runs a thin hand through his even thinner light brown hair. He's got the kind of haircut that is clearly trying to call attention away from imminent balding, but ends up highlighting it. He's got a pretty boyish look about him, which makes the whole package--the suit, the hair, the scotch--sort of dissonant.

"I like your suit," I tell him.

"I hate it," he says. "I bought it when I got married seven years ago. Wore it at the reception. Wore it when I met the divorce lawyer the next year, too. Felt like that was appropriate."

"What happened?" I ask.

"'We grew apart' is how she explains it. But we were together for nine years before that, three of which we lived together, no problem. She acts like marriage is some magical bean that pushes people in opposite directions if it gets planted."

"Then what really happened?"

"You know that thing that people always talk about, 'the idea of me?' As in 'you don't love me, you love the idea of me?'" he asks.

"Yeah."

"Fuck that, man. It doesn't mean anything. Everyone is the idea of someone else. Nobody really knows anyone--they can't--so we latch on to the things that we like about people and ignore the things that we don't. And I don't see why that's such a bad thing, but Adelia--that's my ex-wife--thought was just the worst thing in the world. Kept harping on all the time about how 'you don't really know me,' 'you don't love me, you love what you think I am,' all that shit."

"Your wife's name was Adelia?" I ask.

"Still is, yeah."

"As in, 'I-deal-ya?' Like, cards or something?"

"Yeah, it's a stupid name. Her parents thought they were very clever."

"Do you think you actually did know her?" I wonder.

"As much as anyone could know someone else, you know? I mean, what, ten plus years together? I knew her better than anyone else did. And I was willing to talk to her about shit, you know? That late night, hiding-from-thunder-under-a-blanket stuff. The stuff that only comes out when the walls come down. I thought that was what she wanted. I thought she wanted us to challenge each other, like we were going to grow together."

"And she didn't agree?"

"I don't know. It's hard to say. I've still got no idea what happened." He raises his glass, stops its ascent an inch away from his lips, hesitates, and then pours the rest all the way down his throat without missing a beat. He's obviously well-practiced at such an operatic motion, and for the first time in our conversation, I think I see him do something that matches what he's saying. He surrenders himself to that drink, and you can see it in his eyes.

"But spilt milk and all that, right?" he says. "No point in crying about it."

"I guess so. No harm in talking about it, though," I offer.

"See, there I disagree," he interrupts. "What's the point of talking about it all the time? Talking's what got me into this mess. If I had just kept shit quiet, refused to bring up problems or whatever was bringing her down--which ended up being whatever was bringing me down--I probably wouldn't have to sit in this fucking bar, telling sob stories to people who are going to--wait, what do you do with these stories?"

"I just sort of paraphrase them and put them on a blog."

"Okay, gotcha." He looks back out the door. "So yeah, talking doesn't get anybody anywhere. It's all about what you do with your words, you know? You can sit around a bar with a drink you don't like, talking to a kid you don't know, telling a story that you're not really emotionally settled enough to tell, but that doesn't do anything. I'm just gonna feel worse remembering all of this, you're gonna get some nice little tied-in-a-bow, Meaning Of Life type of bullshit, but it's not going to affect anyone. Because nothing affects anyone. And we don't grow past a certain point."

"Didn't you say that you outgrew scotch?" I ask. He looks annoyed.

"Yeah, but that's not really growth, is it? Because I'm going to replace it with something else. Maybe it'd be real growth if I stopped liking alcohol altogether. Save me booze money and the embarrassment of waking up to a phone call from my ex-mother-in-law, telling me to leave her daughter alone." He looks in his empty glass, as though there might be a few drops left hiding behind ice cubes. "Those are fun phone calls."

Rick sighs loudly and cracks his neck. I hear six distinct pops. It sounds incredibly painful, but he looks like he just ate an 18-oz steak.

"Why do you still drink scotch if you don't like it anymore?" I ask him.

"Because it's too late for me to change, man. Scotch is familiar. I don't even know what's in a Shirley Temple. I'm not a big alcohol guy, just a scotch guy, because everything everyone always did sorta forced me into being one, I guess. It's the devil I know. God only knows what kind of effects gin or tequila would have on my nights. At least with scotch, I know that the worst thing that'll happen is that I'll leave a voicemail for someone that never wants to see me again."

"Why don't you just stop drinking, then?" I wonder. "Is it, like, an addition sort of situation?"

"No, not really. At least," he stops, "I don't think it is. But it's hard to tell. It's just part of the routine."

"Then why are you wearing the suit? Is that part of the routine?"

"Nah," he says dismissively, swatting away the question like it was a fruit fly. "The suit's just to help pick up chicks."

Of course it is.

"You're a good kid, Andy." Rick steps up and puts on his wool overcoat. "You got a girlfriend?"

"Not really."

"'Not really?'" he asks, putting on his black leather gloves. "The shit does that mean?"

I pause, searching for a word besides the only one I can ever think of.

"It's complicated," I say.

"Then shut up about it. Things'll get a hell of a lot less complicated when you just leave it be." He leans toward the door.

"Take it from a scotch man," he says, giving me a brief salute before stepping outside.

I turn my head and look at the ten or so other people in the bar. I count three people drinking what, based on the color, appears to be scotch. I wonder how many of us are just faking. How many of us are just doing what we think we need to do because someone told us so. How many of us are turning things we want away just because other people have told us we have to.

I wonder what people have told you.

Narratives don't always cut the proverbial mustard.

I hate that sitting at my computer for the past four hours has given me nothing. Nothing has met me halfway. Nothing has arrived here. I sit alone in this room, the Afghan Whigs drizzling the walls, begging for inspiration, engines idling, praying for change.

But I can't remember you. And nothing frightens me as much as that does.

You exist in some strange phantom world to which I have no access. I cannot get to you. My memories, my perceptions, my synthesized creations of your existence, of the life you maintained for 82 years, the stories you experienced, the tales you told, the loves you lost, the suns you shined, the grins you gave, the passions you pleaded, everything:

It's gone. You're gone. It's all gone.

This happens every December, too. There's an inherent regression to repetition of anything, especially dates/holidays/chronology, and songs like "Reeling in the Years" and "Remember the Mountain Bed" and "Don't Let The World Get In Your Way" are nothing but reminders of worse times, occasions in which I was even further from you, from wherever you are, from whatever metaphysical domain in which you reside.

And I'm tired of not having a connection. I'm so sick of being on my own in all of this, but that's sort of the nature of it, isn't it? People like me can't have co-authors to these stories. We barely have the stories themselves. We've got R&B-drenched post-punk and London dry gin and Derrida and all sorts of bullshit that we think helps clarify this mess, all of this madness poking its groundhog head into the landscape of these inescapable constructs, but sometimes it feels like there's no point.

I wish you could've met her. You would've liked her. She's sassy. She generally says what's on her mind, and I know how much you would've respected that. You could've said anything to her and she would've rolled with it. This girl could've met you punch for punch. But goddamnit, in both life and death, I kept you isolated from every other thing in my life. I kept you separate because I think I had to. I had to compartmentalize you from the other things I thought were so important. You heard snippets, sure--"I had a good date last night" and "I met a girl on an airplane" and "She likes folk music"--but that's all truncated. It's versions of what happened. And I never gave you a chance to make your own version.

Karin keeps talking about "access." I think I didn't really know what the hell that meant until someone read part of your story outloud. I heard it with my ears instead of reading it with my eyes and I think I had an inkling of what other people might take from it, and it killed me. It brought me to tears in the middle of a fucking class where I only know three people (and only respect two) and I had to leave early the next three days because I was so ashamed of my inability to rationally approach anything. I have no objectivity. And I know that no one has objectivity, in a Derridean sense, but I don't even have it in a reductive sense. I exist outside of nothing but these ridiculous, melodramatic textual vomitings and sometimes I really hate that I can't manage to forge an identity outside of that which my literary evolution has assigned to me.

I'm trying so hard to recreate you from the handful of memories that actually leap to the forefront of my recollection that I end up making up brand new ones. Mom doesn't like what I've written about you so far. I don't blame her. I don't have all the information, and I'm so terrified that my preconceived notions, the binaries by which I've defined all of this--you, her, her, her, her, her, and her--will crumble when examined under any kind of shining light. Which is so depressingly ironic, considering how I've tried to find me in you.

It's so unfair that I've put all of this responsibility on you, especially post-mortem. You deserve better. Sometimes I feel like I have a considerable gift and I'm doing it a great disservice by pissing it away, writing these bullshit flash fictions about girls that don't exist outside of my mind and can't exist, no matter what actually happens on Tuesday nights, because I'm constantly and inavoidably assigning a greater meaning to things that either don't deserve it or don't require it. I'm overthinking everything and I'm horrified at how reflexive that is. This isn't something I'm choosing to do: it's something that I. just. do.

I keep hearing songs that I think you would've liked. And I've gotten this thing going in everything I've written about you where I include lyrics to a song that I can't imagine you ever heard. I know it's not fair to assign that knowledge to you when you weren't ever exposed to it, but I'm not capable of non-fiction and I'm sorry I can't do you greater justice. I'm sorry I never knew what songs you liked. I'm sorry I can't write more of you, that I can't put your physical presence into these things like I want to. I can't pay you the tribute you deserve because the only thing I know is that I wish I would've known more.

And it's my own fault. You never kept yourself from me, but I thought that other things were more important. I thought that these ridiculous relationships and short stories I wrote but didn't understand the implications of and these subtexts that exist independently of anything that actually matters where what counted. What I'd remember. What I'd want to write about. What deserved to be written about. But that's bullshit and I see it now. I see how empty everything prior to this September was.

Despite what some people seem to assume to think about me and my beliefs, I truly do believe that you're in a place where you know all of this already and that you can read what I've written, or can at least somehow sense what's going on, be it ephemerally or otherwise. I'm no theologian, so I won't try to quantify it, but even so.

I almost got married this summer. Isn't that fucked up? I almost committed myself to pledging the remainder of my existence--eternal existence, even--to someone I didn't even know. Someone that I never trusted. But that's not even her fault, because I don't trust anyone. I don't trust anyone. I don't trust anyone. I don't trust anyone. I don't trust anyone. A big part of me honestly believes that, if you would've still been around, whatever you would've had to say about her and everything relating to her would've been enough to either cement what I now believe to have been a horrible set of decisions or to encourage me in what Katie calls a "blip."

Katie made it all better, you know. She keeps telling me how much she respects that I threw everything--reason, accountability, self-respect--away for the sake of love. Love that ends up never having existed, but love all the same. Because I'm tired of living in a world without love. I get so physically sick of seeing people I care for so deeply subjecting themselves to arbitrary baggage and unnecessary roadblocks to their own happiness. Nobody seems to want to connect to anyone else these days, and I can't say I blame them. With few exceptions, the connections I've managed to establish since you made your way elsewhere have been tenuous at best and self-destructive at worst. I keep allowing myself to get infected by people that you would've been smart enough to quarantine. But I'm missing that part of me that lets me know who is what they appear to be and who wants to find validation or self-worth in me.

When the Afghan Whigs were recording Gentlemen, their best album, Greg Dulli asked Marcy Mays to sing the lead vocals on "My Curse" because it was too tender for him. It was too personal and too close to his heart to be able to do it any amount of even pseudoobjective justice. And whenever I try to write about you, about the effect that you and your subsequent absence have had on me since your passing, I completely understand why. I want to hire Kaley or Sam or Kelsey or anyone I know that's a talented writer to do it for me. I want a ghostwriter. I want someone to take this on themselves. Someone to qualify all of this and help me make sense of it all. Someone needs to be able to understand this in a way of which I am simply not capable, especially on nights like tonight. Two gin and tonics, three golden wheats, and a hot toddy have put me squarely in a corner that I cannot manage to escape without several hours of sleep that I don't think I'll find tonight.

But I'm not trying to make excuses. I'm trying to figure out what keeps me from you. I'm trying to isolate the things in me that prevent me from writing anything honest. Because it's all construct. These people I keep writing about? You know the nature of them. Wherever you are, you're fully aware of what inspires these diatribes. And I would love to ascribe all of this to drinking, but I don't do that often (or intensely) enough to be able to blame it on anything but my own fascinations, predilections, tendencies, and/or reflexes.

And I think what scares me more than anything, including the idea that you don't even exist inside my mind, is that I have no symbols of you. There's the painting that you left Nic, but that's not enough. That's just something you owned and put on your wall. But whenver I pass that Pleasant Grove exit or see Sandra Bullock or drink iced tea or see Emery or hear a reference to the south or am asked to give a blessing that I'm no longer qualified to give or play a piano or hear a folk song or unplug something from the wall or consider buying a cowboy hat or hear a Care Bears reference or hear someone call me "babe," it's you I think of. And I'm so sorry I can't do more.

I wish you would've been born two years later so you could've come to my reading. You would've hated my story. It had foul language, repeated references to alcohol, offers of promiscuity, and an audience you would've chuckled dishearteningly at.

But I think you would've been proud of me for stepping in front of a primarily unfamiliar audience and telling them things I couldn't even bear to tell myself. And I wish I would've given you more reasons to be while I could've. The only regrets I have in my life are the excuses I've made.

I'm sorry if anything I've written about you has hurt or offended you. I never meant to. I'm just trying to find my feet. And I'm so sorry that I'm only now realizing the importance of that. I'm so sorry I wasn't what I should've been. What I could've been. I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to learn these things that other people seem to have been equipped with. I've been trying so hard.

I miss you so much sometimes.

People I meet in bars, #4: Jason/Caitlin

If I didn't know any better--which isn't to say that I do--I would assume that Jason had just hoovered cocaine lines like he was in a Jay McInerney novel. His eyes are darting like they're solving a connect-the-dots puzzle without a pencil and I'm wondering if he's on the verge of an aneurysm.

"Is she looking over here? I can't see. What's she doing? Is she smiling? Is she looking at us? Tell me what she's doing." He rockets two shots of tequila to his lips like the first volley of a 21-gun salute. "You're being a really shitty wingman, Andy."

"Sorry, I don't do this very often."

"Yeah, I can tell." He gets his game face on. "I'm gonna go talk to her." He doesn't move. "I'm gonna so say hi." He somehow appears to sit even more still. "In three minutes, I'm gonna go talk to her. Two more shots, please."

"You think that's a good idea? More?" I ask.

"It's the only way my ass is getting out of this chair."

For the last half hour, Jason has been alternately staring at and actively ignoring a pretty redhead sitting with friends at a table about twenty feet from ours. The three of them--the redheaded girl and her two slightly less-pretty friends--are just about within earshot, and I wonder if Jason is tempting fate by speaking so loudly. The three of them have looked over at us a few times, and I think we were even pointed at once, so we're on their radar. I'm hoping that what appears to be Jason's overconsumption doesn't sink his ship prior to it ent---wait, too much innuendo. Nevermind.

"Why don't you just go talk to her?" I ask him.

"Look at that girl," he says. "Girls like that aren't after guys like you and me."

"Why are you lumping me in wit--"

"They want more than us. We're not attractive enough. A girl like that wants a gym rat, someone with a popped collar and a communications degree," he says. "Do you have a fauxhawk? Goddamn, I feel so stupid saying 'fauxhawk' outloud. Like it's something that anyone should want to have. Or should have to assign a word to."

Two more shots arrive. Just as quickly, they're consumed.

"So what are you doing in a bar, man?" he asks me. "You here to meet some chicks? Want me to introduce you to one of her friends?"

"No, that's okay. I'm mostly just here to watch."

"Yeah, bullshit. No one comes to places like this to watch."

But I do. I do.

"I've gotta pee," Jason says. "Tequila goes through me like a car through a tunnel." He stands on his feet and begins to walk to the bathroom. He stumbles his first three steps, but quickly composes himself and walks, left right left right left right left right, until he passes the table on which he's placed so much of his focus. I'm wondering what his move is going to be. I think of a few different scenarios.

SCENARIOS.

1. He could walk by completely casually, smiling all the while. Upon passing the table, he could make brief eye contact and add about twenty watts to the brightness of his grin. If she smiles bigger back, he's in. He returns post-bathroom, good-natured adoration ensues.

2. He could walk by smoldering a little bit. He's not mad, but golly gee is he trying to restrain those waves of emotion, those torrents of passion that drive a man as intense as he. He'll make eye contact for a split second--just enough for her to recognize--and if she doesn't take hers away and instead transfers them to the back of his head as he enters the restroom, he's in. He returns post-bathroom, impassioned adulation ignites.

3. He could walk by, completely ignoring her and her table.

Because he's a fucking idiot, he goes for #3.

He's in the bathroom for about five minutes and I begin to worry. I sip at my cranberry juice, looking around to see if there's anyone else interesting in this place. Something else has to be going on. I decide to take Jason's seat. I've been watching one side of the bar all night and completely ignoring the other. Maybe there's someone interesting over there. Maybe there's a foil for Jason sitting at the table right behind me and I can draw some interesting parallel. Who knows what will await me when I turn around. There is a world of infinite possibilities.

I switch and am now facing the other direction. It's strange; I've never looked this way. Wherever I am in this place, I always end up looking at the jukebox. But now I'm looking at a vending machine. A machine that's like a bartender for people who don't drink alcohol and who don't want any human interaction. Next to it, there's a locked cooler filled with box upon box of beer. A man-made unit displaying a sweet escape from loneliness and bullshit that won't let you in without physical force. There's a pool table. A horizontal platform upon which---

"Excuse me," a voice comes from behind me, accompanied by a light tap on the shoulder. I turn around, and the redheaded girl is standing right over me. She's got her coat on. Behind her, I can see her friends waiting for her to leave. She hands me a little slip of paper.

"My friends and I are leaving, but can you give this to your friend? He kind of disappeared and I wanted him to have it."

"Hey, he's just--"

"Thank you," she says, walking away.

"Wait, he'll be--" She waves goodbye and briskly sets out for the door. I look at the note. It's got some writing on it. This place is too dark for me to see very easily, so I pull out my phone and open it, lighting this scrap with a heavily-pixelated picture of my dog.

It says "Caitlin." I guess she looked like a Caitlin. Which is a compliment.

In a moment of conspicuously cosmic coincidence, Jason exits the bathroom as soon as Caitlin and her friends exit the bar. He exits with a blank look on his face, but goes to look for her. As soon as he sees that she's no longer here, his face gets full of indignant disgust: his cheeks puff up, his eyes squint, and his mouth opens just wide enough for a slew of misogynistic curses to dribble out.

"She just walks out? Fuck her, man."

"Actually, she--"

"These stupid stuck-up bitches think that they just own the world. Think that everyone's just gonna bend over backwards to get their attention and then they'll just shit all over it. I'm done with that, man. I'm done with all of it. I'm done with this bar, I'm done with these women, I'm finished. I'm going home."

Jason starts walking away, but turns back after about ten paces.

"And you know what, Andy? Nothing would've ever happened with her. Better for me to go home by myself than waste $20 of Cosmopolitans trying to get that girl to come home with me, only to tell me that she's got a boyfriend right after she's just drunk enough to stop feeding me bullshit. So it's better this way. Better this way."

I nod in agreement.

"Nice guys finish last. And yeah, I'm not perfect, but I'm a nice guy. I'm so damn nice and look what I get for it."

"Hmmm," I say, exchanging any number of the things that I want to tell this guy for an onomatopoeia.

"But good talking to you, man," he says. "Glad to hear I'm not the only one that feels like this."

"Well, I mean, I wouldn't really say that--"

"Stay strong in the fight, dude. Don't let them suck your soul away." He walks out.

I know it wasn't meant for me, but I take several furtive looks at the note hiding in my palm. I look around for a clock and wonder what time Caitlins go to sleep on a Saturday.

Because we're not all like that, you know. And some of us would rather try and show you than sit around and feed you lines.

Trust me.

Retrospection is a funny thing.

I wrote this about someone incredibly important back in, what, May of 2008? That was a long time ago. A lot has happened since, and that's an entire narrative to which some of you are privy.

But what matters is this:

It's nice to find a reminder that you've always been like this, that you've always felt things this intensely, that you've always relied too heavily on a thesaurus. But there's something comforting in knowing that, no matter what's happened since, no matter the lies you've heard or the tears you've caused or the Lyle Lovett songs you've listened to on repeat for hours at a time, there was a point at which you felt something and were able to more or less articulate it.

And it's like I told Sam so long ago: I still love you. I still love all of you.

Also: my current fondness for incredibly dramatic last lines is one with a great deal of precedent.

It's strange how things come full-circle in so many different ways.

----------------------------------------------------

I am sorry, my dear, but I cannot stay here tonight. It is with this that I must leave you.

There is a house some miles north of this town, a town where there are few stop signs and even fewer traffic lights, a place where there's a warm bed that's half-full in my eyes, half-empty in hers, and I'm on my way. I am ashamed to say that I cannot deliver this in person, but, as you are well aware, I am a man of weakness and not a man of principle (unless, of course, that principle is weakness).

It's already 1:15 AM and I should have been there hours ago. She has likely already cried the hour or so of tears that she does every night before she falls asleep alone, as she resigns herself to another recommended eight hours of solitude in that oversized bed with the down comforter and cheap cotton sheets that somehow feel like a too-warm summer night spent on a trampoline in your parents' backyard after you realize that you've been living at home for several years too many.

I plan on surprising her. Not by appearing out of the blue, not by appearing at all, but by how warm my hands will be. You see, because there is no connection between you and I, outside of the one to which we arbitrarily assigned ourselves in order to avoid these aforementioned lonely nights of our own, you never saw first-hand evidence (sorry in advance for the pun) of the uncanny ability my palms have to become sweaty in the presence of someone I love. It happened with Her four years ago, it happened with Her two years ago, and it happens with Her, right now, even as I think of her eyes when they're lit by a dim street lamp, glaring car headlights, and the promise of gentle goodnights and soft sunrises, even as her presence is only in my head and in my heart, those two most tenuous of real estates whose occupants are constantly shifting in and out, sliding like silt and sand against the shuffle of whatever waves the shore of Maryland is by the grace of God blessed enough to receive.

If you ever wondered why there was distance between you and I, it is because of this mighty, omnipresent sentiment: I loved her. Love her, rather, as past tense would be inaccurate in a case such as this. In fact, "love" is even too trite a descriptor of what is inside of me, trivialized as it has been by saccharine pop songs and insincere confessions (and, perhaps, some would argue, writings such as this). However, I will stand by "love" for the time being, as it serves as shorthand, a signifier onto which others can place their deepest longings, their most intense subjections, their most vulnerable moments. And perhaps that will allow you to understand precisely what it is going on behind my eyes.

I see disappointment beyond yours, but do not allow such a pervasively negative influence over what should be a beautiful moment. Yes, this moment, as you read these words and realize that I will not be with you this evening, nor any foreseeable evening in the future. Because this is a moment of inspiration, a moment from which, no matter how difficult for either of us (and it is more difficult for me than I am leading you to believe), we should both take an equal allotment of hope.

Because there is beauty in this world and there is love around us. Although phrased ridiculously, it is nonetheless true. For every time I have been left behind, I have never understood why, generally dismissing any comforts given as a mistake on their part, a misplaced affection that will dissipate as a sand castle against a fervent tide, but I finally now realize the arrogance of such a position.

Ideally, these people found what I believe I have found: that purest of magnetism, the attraction that transcends physical or mental or emotional and becomes a triumvirate of the three, a composition of something that, until now, never existed in such a concentrated form.

But have no fear. I have made countless mistakes in my life, the results of which have ranged from tragic to catastrophic and back again, so if there is anyone that does not deserve to feel this, that does not deserve to find this in such a corner of the world, I am that one. I have done hurtful things to others for no purpose other than instilling the pain that I harbored into someone else. I have lied and cheated and stolen and cried for the pain that I have caused.

This is not a matter of merit.

If there is a just, loving god--and, despite what you may have heard, I truly believe there has to be for any of this to actually exist--you will find this. In fact, perhaps you already have. If you find yourself faced with it, if you discover that you are in its presence, I will literally get down upon my knees and beg you to fight for it, to pursue it, to not let it go. Cling to it. It will be your life preserver through these torrents of darkness and it will resuscitate you when you are without breath and it will resurrect you when you are without life and it will inspire you when you are without love but you will never be so with it around.

To be completely realistic, there is a substantial, if not overwhelming, chance that I will be met with silence this evening, that my adorations and dedications will be turned away, that they will be dismissed or deflected or too little or too late or any number of other unpleasant conclusions. After all, I can think of no feeling worse than someone else holding a place within you that you do not hold in them. However, such a thing would be alright. Of course, it would be terrible all the same, to believe such feeling was within your grasp, only to have it stripped from it and to find yourself alone.

But I am after something perfect, and something perfect would be met with no hesitations, no second guesses, no nagging questions of whether or not it truly was perfect, because we would both know that it is.

Given all of that, it is likely that I will sleep alone tonight. But that will be of little consequence, as I will finally be able to honestly dream of the realization of what I have so adamantly believed truly exists.

Keep your eyes open and your ear to the ground.

People I meet in bars, #3: Anne

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

You don’t have to believe that this happened. I wouldn’t blame your skepticism. But the presence—if not consumption—of liquor creates an atmosphere that’s almost supernatural in what it’s capable of.

And just remember: everything’s a story.

This one's for you.

-----------------------------------

"I'm such an awful person," Anne tells me, looking past her black hair, into my eyes so intensely that I think she's trying to see straight through me to the other side. "I just didn't know what to do."

"Why did you think that disappearing this morning was the best option?" I ask.

"Because...I don't know." She opens her mouth to speak, but says nothing. She stirs her ice with a straw that comes about four inches above the top of her glass. "Because I didn't want to disappoint him."

"What do you mean? Disappoint like how?"

"You have to understand that Johnny thinks the world of me. Thought the world of me, anyway. And marriage is something I take really seriously, you know? I mean, even though we decided to elope, even though we were just gonna plunge headfirst into it and run off somewhere where we could leave all of this town's bullshit behind, it wasn't, like, something I didn't think a lot about before. I woke up this morning and knew that he'd be there to pick me up in half an hour and the only thing I could think to do was hide for the day."

“Do you still love him?” I ask.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve ruined it. I think I had to. I think I had to disappoint him all in one big way so that I didn’t spend the rest of our lives not being what he thought I was going to be for him.”

“Oh come on, Anne. Give yourself more credit. Hell, give Johnny more credit. After—what’d you say it’s been, four years?” She nods. “—after four years, you think he doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into?”

She lifts her eyes from her glass to the rows and rows of alcohol on the other side of the bar. I can see her blue eyes darken a shade or two as they move left to right, up a row, right to left, up a row, etc. until I imagine she’s examined every single bottle. I wonder if the longing her eyes have played host to throughout this entire conversation are for Johnny or for the idea of evicting him from her brain for a few hours. She even leans forward, just noticeably, toward the libations sitting there, taunting us. She looks at her glass, then looks at mine.

“What are you drinking?” I ask her, pointing to the clear glass and its transparent contents.

“Gin and tonic,” she says.

“How is it?”

“Good.” She jerkily draws it to her lips. Her arm is shaking just enough for me to notice. “What about you?”

“Just club soda,” I tell her. “Nothing exciting.” She looks really disappointed. There’s a silence for about fifteen seconds. With as much of a chatterbox as Anne’s been, with the back-and-forth that we’ve established in the half hour or so we’ve been talking, it’s weird to not see her say anything. It’s like someone draped a blanket of quiet over her. She looks like she wants to say something, but isn’t sure how.

“Johnny doesn’t know my natural hair color,” she says, slightly above the decibel level of a purr, like she’s saying it to herself more than me. “He knows I dye it, but he doesn’t know what color it is when I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“He’s never asked. He doesn’t care about these smaller things, the first date-type of things. He doesn’t know that I get scared when I hear leaves getting blown around on my porch. He doesn’t know that I don’t eat salads. He’s got no idea that I want to live in New England.”

“Have you ever told him?”

“He’s never asked,” she repeats. Her eyes sink another ten degrees; she’s not even looking at the bar anymore, she’s looking right at the floor. Staring at her shoes.

“These fucking boots,” she says, pointing to the black leather enveloping her feet and extending to her calves. “I hate these boots, but I wear them because I thought he’d like them. And he does.”

“Why don’t you tell him that you hate them?” I ask. “If we’re talking scheme of things, footwear’s pretty unimportant. And if Johnny loves you, which it sounds like he does, he knows that and wouldn’t care.”

“He’s got this weird view of me in his brain, this bizarro version of me that I’ve kinda just turned into. He hasn’t done it on purpose or anything—I don’t think—but I wonder how much of it is me and how much of it is him, you know?”

Anne stands up from her stool and straightens her back. She drops her hands to her side and looks right at me with pleading eyes. She brushes her hair behind her ears.

“This isn’t me,” she says, pointing to the skinny dark blue jeans adorning her toned lower half. “This hair? I only dyed it because he said that he thought black hair was hot. I’m just what he’s made me and I hate that. Because what if I leave him forever? What if he never talks to me again after today? Then I’m just this thing that he made that can’t stand alone. He does everything for me, Andy. Everything. If he’s gone, I’d have nothing. I’ve given him all of me and now his fingerprints are all over my hair, my clothes, my body, my mind. I don’t even have my fucking mind anymore. It’s not mine, it’s ours.”

She’s gone from wistful and sad to angry and bitter in a paragraph. She’s still looking right at me, her posture demanding a response. I can’t tell if she wants indignation or pity. I can’t decide whether or not to give either to her.

“I gave him everything,” she says, dipping a toe back to wistful and sad, “and the thing I hate more than anything—more than the boots and the hair and everything—is that I’ve never asked for anything back. And I’ve been satisfied with just giving for so long. Giving to this person that only gives back pieces of what he ends up with. And it’s not even like he’s mean to me. I don’t think he told me about hair and boots and stuff like that because he wanted me to change, but the second he did, I felt obligated to, like he’d leave if I didn’t, if I didn’t end up being this thing that he doesn’t necessarily even want, but just something he’s said that he likes. And then where am I? What am I supposed to do then?”

She realizes that she’s still standing up and blushes out of embarrassment. She sits back down and slides her glass a few inches away.

“I’m not drinking a gin and tonic,” she says. “It’s just club soda. Like yours. I don’t even like alcohol. I just figured that I needed to come to a bar and pretend to be drinking to try and complete the picture.”

“It sounds like you weren’t ready to get married and it's probably a good thing that you didn't run off with him this morning,” I offer, immediately realizing how stupid a thing it is to say. “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m gonna put my coat on, have my sister cut my hair off, throw away these stupid boots, and start from scratch.”

“Are you going to see Johnny again?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“Maybe he wants to know you and just doesn’t know how.”

“I don’t know how to know the difference between him not caring and him being unable to.” She slips her arms into her oversized pea coat. It’s big enough that it looks like she’s wearing a down comforter. While I initially assume that she’ll struggle to walk from underneath this massive dollop of wool covering her like melted ice cream on apple pie, as she glides within it, it’s like watching a person seeing their dog for the first time after a long vacation. What I am witnessing between Anne and her coat is a tender reunion that often occurs between a person and an inanimate object by which they have come to find a great deal of comfort through cold nights and hot tears. Anne is leaping within a shield and the relationship between them would be completely intimidating if it wasn’t so…sweet, I guess.

“I like your coat,” I tell her. “Looks like it would fit me better than it would you, but I think it works. Where’d you get it?”

“Johnny gave it to me last winter,” she says, a smile sneaking its way to her lips. “We drove to Canada—he’s always wanted to go—at the last second one day. He just showed up at my house with a cooler and bags packed and said that we should just go if we wanted to. Spur of the moment type of thing. He had even bought me this coat to keep me warm, and when I tried it on, he was so embarrassed at how big it was. He wanted to take it back and exchange it for the right size, but I kind of liked it. I mean, what’s too big, anyway? And it’s plenty warm for New England, if I ever get there.”

And it’s a good thing that she puts on her coat when she does, because the bar’s front door opens and a thin, wiry guy with messy hair and puffy cheeks steps inside, the green of his eyes highlighted and exaggerated by his scarf that matches them to an eerie extent. There’s a need on his face, and he starts scanning the bar so quickly and so intensely that he looks like he’s about to have a stroke. His eyes leap to Anne’s and immediately rest on her.

This has to be Johnny.

They just stare at each other for a few seconds. There’s a conversation in body language going on here that I can’t translate, that no one can translate except for them. I am witnessing history repeating itself. I am observing a relationship flash before its very eyes. Hypothetical timelines are being considered. Future arguments that will come up are being played out behind both sets of eyes. Discussions that turn to debates that turn to fights are enumerating themselves in light-speed fast motion. After potential years and decades and semicentennials have come and gone just to arrive back at potential, Johnny opens his mouth.

“Are you okay?” he asks her.

“Please don’t hate me,” she says. “I know you can and probably should, but please don’t hate me.” Johnny slowly steps toward her, like a wary child approaching a pigeon in a city park.

“Don’t worry about that. I just want to make sure you’re alright.” The second he’s within arms’ reach, she leaps to him, latching her arms around his neck.

“I’m so sorry, Johnny,” she tells him. “Can we just go home?”

Displaying an amount of physical dexterity and hand-foot coordination that only long-term, Serious Business couples can cultivate, they walk to the front door, still clutching to each other like a nun to a cross. Johnny pushes the door open with his foot—his arms are still around Anne—and the exit. I watch for the next ten feet before they’re out of my line of sight. The bartender and I both give out exhausted sighs as soon as they’re disappeared.

“Well,” the bartender says, “that was dramatic. You gonna write about that, too? Or is it not sad enough for your little project?”

“It’s not like I’ve relegated it to sad stories, dude.”

“Not a lot of amateur writers hanging out in bars every night like you are really all that interested in happy stories,” he says.

“Maybe I’m an exception to a lot of rules,” I say. He chuckles to himself and starts polishing glasses, like he was in a saloon frequented by Clint Eastwood. I think about the winter in New England and wonder if Anne will share her coat with Johnny when they get there.

Because some things aren’t dramatic or oversized as much as they are built for two.