The day held nothing spectacular. The air was warm and sticky. The humidity mixed with the rolled down windows of my jalopy had started the peeling of the interior fabric on the ceiling of my slowly dying vehicle. I drove home from the vicious revolving door of gainful employment, and began to plot the evening's outing. Two choices laid before me....where to go, and how far to take it when I got there. A friend of mine had sent me a text message earlier. I hardly ever receive a phone call anymore. Isolated from the rest of the world by emotionless, quick answers. I don't trust a text message. There is no way to be sure of who is on the other end. Of course, this could only be a by product of what my therapist once called the "projection of my fears and paranoia on others." Fearing that the girl I love is not on the other end, but some new lover is on the other side of our voiceless conversation, having a quick laugh at the expense of the forlorn and unsure. My friend's text message came and I informed him I did indeed plan to "go out" that night, "go out" being code for hit the clubs and bars. No one openly admits to their addiction to the dive, it is just a common well known fact that the craving haunts you. You never ask a bar hound if they are "going to the bar tonight", you always just ask, "are you going out". They will know exactly what you mean. We made some kind of half assed plan to meet around ten-thirty. I was to meet him in front of a restaurant, we would go get a pack of smokes, and then hit the bars and clubs. Anger and confusion are a terrible thing to mix with a twenty something and a fifty something who have nothing to lose or gain on a friday night. My thoughts went back to her. "Her" being a girl I had met a month ago in a small college town in western Oklahoma. She had me from the moment I saw her. I remembered leaning over to a friend while looking at a picture of her in the living room saying,"friend...she is going to be trouble". And trouble she was. The good kind of trouble that dominates your thoughts and feelings. Every day you go without seeing her only increases your appetite to hold her, to the point you feel like you might break and split in half if you don't get to see her again. She was my cocaine. Euphoria unlike anything else in all of God's wacky creation. She inspired with drawls that no man could suffer. She had shoulder length brown hair that shined in any kind of light, begging for the slightest touch. Her soft skin held scars that were beautiful in their own way. Each had a story of some athletic exploit or weekend binge. She drove me wild. She was an angel of the southwest. She had eyes of a dark brown hue that lit up when she laughed and squenched her eyelids, fighting to keep them open, but unable to do so. Even the dark, hidden parts of her soul that she bore only to me at certain times lit a fire inside of me. The personal tragedies she had endured I was captivated by, and each one made me want to hold her in the most compassionate of ways. I wanted always to wrap my arms around her, like a tight shroud of comfort that could protect from all things evil in this twisted side show we call life.
The time came and I went to pick my friend up. He wore a backwards cap, embroidered with the logo of a football team that meant more to him than sports. It represented where he was from, his original culture, before dragging himself to this place. No one was allowed to touch it. He was short too. A short mad man with a baseball cap and libido of a 14 year old who just discovered Playboy. We wanted it all. Tonight was the night we would grab the under-belly of the American dream and run with it until our bodies gave out. I pulled up and honked the horn. He motioned just a moment from inside the restaurant. I lit a cigarette and waited. What was taking him so long? Only God himself, or the Devil for that matter could know. Finally he appeared, jumped in the side of my dilapidated form of transportation and off we went into the night howling like a couple of demons on leave. We arrived at the club. I shut off the ignition and stepped outside. The car was billowing smoke. Just my luck tonight. Shrugging it off we began the walk up to the door. The club was a run down dive on the edge of town, poorly lit except for the one street light and the neon sign. Lights from inside of all various colors poured from inside the haze that waited behind the door and mingled with the urine colored lights outside that illuminated the drive. The exterior of the building was metal and rotted wood. Surely I was about to enter a mid leveled ring of hell. It was the kind of place that caused the imagination to run wild with fanciful dreams of degradation and depravity.
"What are you drinkin' man?" he asked me as we walked on foot around the corner of the building to the beckoning lights.
"Budweiser"
"And what are you shootin'? You know we gotta start the night right!" he said this with a boyish excitement, as if it were 6am on Christmas morning and we were walking in to wake our parents up.
"Tequila...undressed"
"Heh heh, hell yeah! That's a man for you! None of that light stuff!"
We made our way into the dive. He convinced the door man it was my birthday and I was allowed in free of charge, or so I was told. I lit another cigarette. We walked past a group of cowboys shooting pool, a bouncer, and frumpy twenty-something females who looked too willing. They kept adjusting in their seats, arching their backs and looking around the room for the drunk frat guy in a polo shirt who would spend the rest of the night buying them drinks hoping to get lucky. I winced. What a shame it was. We found an open spot at the bar. The bartender served up our drinks and poured two shots of naked tequila. My friend held his glass high in the air;
"To your birthday!"
I met his toast in the air with my glass and took the shot emotionless. Was there something wrong with me? The tequila no longer burned. The taste no longer kicked me in the back of the throat as it once did.
"Damn man! That kills me everytime! I don't know how the hell you do it!" He laughed that mad chuckle that only he had. He put his whole being into that laugh. I took my beer and together we found a spot near the dance floor. This was an integral part of the evening. It was here you would pick a "mark" for the night. It was much like taking a group of wild animals, sticking them in a clear glass aquarium, and then allowing you to pick which one you would hunt. The awkward middle class white female who had never even thought about what it meant to move rythmicly? Maybe the obvious single mother of some ethnicity that only her parents could tell you she was? None of this would satisfy the thirst. Rule number one of scamming on females in a bar; have nothing to do with a female who can not dance. A fool once said that all women can dance, and all women can sing. I have seen some who can not do either one, and that is a great disappointment. We set up shop. Placed our smokes infront of us, beer slightly to the side. We took off our coats and both leaned on our folded arms on the bar overlooking the dance floor. Simutaneously we scanned the room. The room was what my friend referred to as "thin"; meaning that the ratio of women to men was somewhere between none and not enough. I took consecutive gulps of beer. I was not interested in some low grade bar maid. I only wanted to see her, and she was too far away. Her mother was sick, and she had gone to be with her. I sent my cocaine a text message. There would be no responce. My paranoia grew with every second I did not hear from her. Maybe some other guy was knocking boots with her, after all, I was incapable of the drive and he would have been there to hold her in her time of need. He would tell her it would be ok, softly whisper in her ear as she cried into what should have been my shoulder with my arms wrapped around her. After an hour or so of this she would look in his eyes and then I would be yesterday's bad news. A simple good time lost in the vaccum of history. I fought the thoughts and continued to drink.
