This is my first piece of fiction writing since a fourth-grade assignment wherein I described a guy running down a volcano, barely outpacing a flow of lava.
[Nov 19-20, 2022]
1.
A black crescent of a man looms, tilting and wavering on an axis that itself slowly revolves. He orbits the group, protecting them, a three-dimensional parenthesis, his posture sweeping out a forcefield. Every time his friends laugh, his blue eyes dart around the bar. A quick shoulder rotation -- half-open, half-closed body language -- hoping to take credit for the mirth of the party. To be responsible. His gaze should not meet anyone else's; he should merely scan, soaking in outside admiration. What should we admire? That you have friends? That you stand while they sit, that you are big?
Not too big to fall. Your attention is split, thinly laid across the night out. Playing a role; hearing what the laughs are about; gazing around; imagining yourself lookin' tough. The swirl of ego, surely. How else could you act like that? Like what, exactly?
A sigh leaks out undetected.
Is it my problem that I am irrationally angry? The last bubble escapes the beer in front of me, and floats over towards him. It does not make it through the forcefield. His back shuts it out. The right hand inches forward and grips the glass all-too-deliberately. Hunched so that my lips are already at glass-lip-height. Tilt the glass so that beer splashes against my mouth, but do not really drink. Cannot afford any strength to be impaired; nothing can leak out anymore.
The friction of the ground against the chair means I can prepare the motion of pushing off against the bar without really moving. Rehearse it over and over:
"Hey, buddy."
No good. "Buddy." But how ridiculous is to conjure up an elaborate scheme just so that we can fight? How would that make it just? Earned? No bar fight comes down to morality. No bar is moral. If the clouds parted and God shone down on you, you would not see it. The windows are in the worst possible place, the worst possible angle, to transmit God's light.
A diversion -- a bottle smashed on the ground, a fall, a spill -- no. A diversion from what? A stranger having a night out? Stranger indeed. I am the stranger here: the stranger stranger, rumbling alone, stewing, sliding my thumbs over the back knuckles of my index fingers. If he walks over to me, he's in my court; I'd have the upper hand. But no; I'd have to spin around, get out of the chair; it wouldn't be my good hand anyway; his hand would literally be upper.
"Don't talk to her like that."
Talk to whom like what? You're not saying much at all, just tilting around jaw-first, posing for a camera that isn't there. Glinting in no sun at all. I could crumple you. All you need is an opportunity to act as bad as you are. Show what you really must be made of. I'd be ready to spring up, protect everyone else from you. Nip the situation in the bud -- one swift, decisive, punch. Out cold -- total control, no spite. Pay for the drink beforehand. Don't owe nobody nothing.
"Hey!"
Simple. Better. Get your attention -- un-split your attention, fold it back into a single moment wherein I punch you in the fucking face. Feel every molecule of air giving way to fist. The heat of compression an instant before cold, hard contact. The first and last word you'll ever hear out of me.
Across the bar, the crescent-man hugs his friend as he stands from his chair. He sucks the twisting friend into the hug. Two firm pats, but he cannot help his eyes from scanning yet again. He does not detect the pathetic, sputtery rage seven chairs away, deeper into the bar.
The friend automatically pats for his wallet, his keys.
"Bye!" with two fingers awkwardly extended, backing out of an improper and meaningless salute. The blue-eyed man takes his friend's old seat; his defensive convex posture wilting into a straight line, leaned back against the chair and the floor.
After a few cycles, everyone's conversation becomes everyone else's. Nobody is talking about anything at all. The world before tonight is indistinguishable from the world after. A full revolution; one point in the middle never moves at all.
The scrape of the chair against the floor blends with the guy's nod to the bartender, and both blend into the texture-devoid sea of conversation. Every step, ostensibly towards the exit but in actuality towards the target, reverberates internally. His heart beats up into his throat. His fists wrap his thumbs and wobble like bad pendulums.
Nobody has any idea.
Nobody has any idea. Dozens of scenarios flash out. Someone always ends up on the ground. Someone yelling. Women sobbing reflexively. Not out cold -- wind knocked out of him, to be sure -- but enough life left to admit defeat.
"Ahh, he got me..." a defeat that begs for sympathy.
Three chairs away. Just as many steps. Stepping with the left foot now puts me right on track to throw my whole weight right down onto him. Each motion bolder than the last -- the bend of the knee slingshots up the chest, generating energy for the eventual, inevitable swing. No second punch necessary. Even better than "hey": silence. Make yourself known in an ancient, tribal way. Command respect.
It is actually unfortunate that I have to counteract my inertia, that I cannot merely keep moving through this asshole. Stamp proudly on the left foot; deliver the silence loudly.
"Hey, buddy."
His blue eyes wheel around and then stop for the first time all night. He twists outward, his back concave. He waits for the next part, lightly bemused. But as soon as the stranger had appeared, he is on his way out the door, stomping meaninglessly.
The door lets in a cold gust that dissipates into the bar, melting away under the stagnant warmth. All of the acceleration, the negative thermal energy, flattens into nothing.
"I don't think he was talking to you."
2.
At exactly the midpoint of the bar, three women sit in a row. The two outer women have adjusted their chairs inward and the inner woman has scooted back so that all three of them face each other. Their backs-out defensive formation protects them from weak-hearted suitors, but the outer women's crossing gazes can pick up attractive men across the bar. Their system had formed naturally, never actually described in words. Single women do not hang out at bars if they are totally, unshakably, opposed to sex. Sex was the pilot light way back in their brains: the initial source of both passionate flares and directed mechanical energy. Try on three outfits before picking; predict what the other girls might wear and try to stand out. A Rock-paper-scissors that nobody wants to play. Every week, the same quip: "not looking for anything." A perfectly degenerate answer, right in the middle of two realities.
A cosmic rule prevented the three women from sharing the same sexual fate. Two would find someone, or one would. On nights where none would have, the cosmic rule would step in early and cancel their plans. But once they took their formation at the bar, the future condensed into two parallel streams separated by a coin flip. Nothing special in the air tonight. The right-side woman has little to scan for: an irrelevant loser with bad hair, sulking; two indistinguishable men wearing vests and loafers, rattling off names of athletes. The left-side woman, looking past the bored face of the right-side woman, shuffles through a mirthy party. A mixed group: a tall, slouchy guy floating around, glinty blue eyes clumsy and insecure; a blocky guy with rectangular fingers and a cone for a neck; the closest guy, back turned, mysterious; and two women who would lean forward with arms crossed and necks craned as if to remind the men they were three-dimensional.
"I'm like, so over it."
"Yeah."
"Me too."
"Me three!"
"Here's to us," says the left-side girl, extending her vodka-and-cranberry steadily until the mystery man's revealing twist sends a tiny wave down her arm and onto her face. The other two women, detecting the sudden ping, instinctively spin around in slow motion, flipping hair as a pretense. His clothes are generic but the contour of his profile lights a fuse.
"I'll do one more. Thanks."
A strong jaw, waggling with some heft as he orders. A smile that curls up and back into crow's feet. Un-combable hair, evidence of an independent and defiant personality.
The right-side woman swivels back to face the other two. Her face flattens into an impartial brick wall, ready to adjudicate.
"Um, yeah," gulps the middle woman, giving her friend to the left license to giggle.
A quick double-check. No ring, just a watch that slides gently up and down. The shoes: hard to see but obviously fine judging by their heels.
The right-side woman has figured the whole story out just reading the two other women's faces: her adjacent friend would entertain this guy's advances, hypothetically, but she isn't tingling in her seat; the left-side woman is already half-drawn into a fantasy. A Sunday drive where they both wear sunglasses, a strong grip when he helps her up a forbidden path.
"Go for it."
The middle woman stands up and walks over till she is directly behind the man, then calls out to the right-side woman, summoning her to the bathroom. She scurries over, handbag dangling, and right on cue, the man turns to the left. The remaining woman's calculated posture, her chin balanced on the backs of her fingers, gives him space to look at her, and he takes it. She stares out into a not-there distance, her neck soaking up his gaze. When her eyes shift fifteen degrees and focus on him, he doesn't recoil. She shows a millimeter of teeth. His eyebrow crinkles and his nostrils fill with air. He lays his hand on the blocky guy's shoulder for a moment and then pushes off. She looks down for just a moment, so that when she returns to him she can smile bigger, so that he can look down into her.
"Let me buy you another."
She nods gently and the bartender obliges, stepping away to peel an orange.
Her fantasies start to collapse and fade; he does not have the voice of a Sunday driver nor the hands of an up-helper. Reality seeps into their place. He works nearby but hadn't been going out for a while. He recognizes the origin of her name. He lies innocently:
"I noticed you the second I stepped in here."
Fine. It's better than being called "ravishing" or being the butt of a dumb superlative.
"What did you notice?" She turns her head away and blinks three times before waiting for his response.
"I noticed that you were the most beautiful woman at the bar."
As superlatives go, this was acceptable. Down-to-Earth, realistic. Perhaps even factual. He had earned a chance to say something else.
"I don't want to pull you away from your friends, but--"
"Why not?"
"Well, OK, I do. May I?"
He extends his arm towards the chair on her left; she swivels anticlockwise, as if rolling along the arm. He settles into the chair, turning his back on the bad-hair loser two chairs away.
"Have you ever been married?"
Her eyes widen. What was he implying?
"Umm, no. Do I look like I've been married?"
"You look great."
"Is that a yes?"
"No."
Mercifully, the bartender returns and plops down her drink.
"I'll do one more. Thanks mate."
He brandishes a bill that had obviously been sitting in his hand for a while, judging by how moistly it unfurls onto the bar. The bartender accepts the order and walks back over to his station.
"Mate?" She is hoping he is funny. Tell me a joke, mister.
"Uh... It's a habit from my pirating days."
"You used to download movies for free?" She cracks open a fresh smile.
"Well, I didn't want to risk the eyepatch."
If that was a joke, it didn't make any sense. It didn't make any sense if it wasn't a joke, either. Her fantasies becomes fleshy, less romantic, yet more urgent. She sees him from above, a conduit for a transaction between herself and her loosely-defined needs.
"I think you'd look hot with an eyepatch."
"Well, yo-ho-ho then." He clinks her glass and speaks.
"I think you look hot right now.”
His breath is unobjectionable -- about as good as breath can be -- and his lips are elastic, absorbing pressure and fitting to hers.
"I live five minutes from here."
"Let's go. Let me say bye to my friends."
"Yeah."
An inoffensive man. A template onto which she can project any number of full, complete lives. He sends sparks only when she has decided to receive them; he could never overcome one of her bad moods. He drives his Lexus safely. Can safety be hot? She answers his questions -- questions she has answered countless times -- while she summons up a vision of his apartment, his bedroom, his abdomen.
He balances out every mistake with a good move. She likes the feeling of his hand low on her back; she can ignore his college-bro utterances.
"Alright! Home sweet home!"
Oh God. At least take my coat. He takes her coat, peeling it off in consort with gravity. A miniature kiss on the slope of her neck -- something she could never do for herself -- lights her back up.
"You have beautiful legs, now that I get to see all of you."
He might as well have said "you have legs." She laughs at herself and at him, and at the vision of her friends grilling her tomorrow, prying out inconsequential details just so they have something to text about.
She gambles: "you play the guitar?"
"Sure do."
He grabs the instrument by the neck and spins it onto his lap as he sits on a gray-blue couch. He plucks surprisingly softly: no all-at-once chords, just one-at-a-time arpeggios. She wonders if this, whatever 'this' is, is Spanish, then lets the thought float away as he moves onto a new sequence. She fixates on his index and middle fingers, oscillating in alternation, nails clean. His thumb looks heavy.
The song progresses, turning like a gear, drawing them both in. She can no longer tell what has been repeated and what is new. The music as a whole has become familiar. He no longer looks up from his fingers to check on her. She no longer looks at anything in particular. She tilts her head five degrees so that the weight of the music lands on her at a different angle. She sees the music through a lock of her own hair. She uncrosses her legs and balances them on her heels, toes up like blades of grass. Bubbles escape the can of beer he had cracked open, drawn to the music hanging in the air.
Their movements shrink to the absolute minimum: his fingers stepping through an algorithm; her chest expanding and contracting; her right ankle swaying. For the last time, she accepts a sexual fantasy through her mental gate. His heaving seems so unnecessary, his grin so barbaric, so stupid -- she would have to close her eyes, to transport herself to the place of masturbation. He had already fulfilled his role. The only way to toy with destiny is to deny a foregone conclusion.
His music spins outwards, towards a new song, less hypnotic than the last. She can see that he wishes he could go back; her body language is all wrong, impossible to fix.
"Hey."
He keeps his left hand firm so that the strings keep ringing.
She listens to the notes' retreat, then says, "Thank you. I really enjoyed that. You should keep playing."
"Like right now?"
His delicate left-hand grip loosens so that it merely holds the guitar's neck, no longer ready to play. His right hand is awkwardly stuck between reaching out to her and not.
"No. Just, like, in general."
"Oh, OK."
He sets the guitar an arm's length away, and impulsively shifts his weight, ready to pounce. But he is not that dumb. He sits back upright, looks into her eyes, and offers a tiny nod.
"Goodnight."
3.
One man gets there early, the other is 'running behind.' Probably not actually running, thinks the early man, lackadaisically, as he slides his jacket off one shoulder at a time. The sweat under his arms will have time to evaporate, but his torso will stay warm. The vest is the perfect garment for a sweaty guy who is self-conscious about his big nipples, said nipples being prone to icy-hard erection. Warmth plus padding plus armpit ventilation make his vest essentially non-negotiable in fall and winter.
It's been so long, he thinks. Their misadventures stand out like lightning bolts through the mist of his repetitive adult life. That last year of college felt like they had stolen it away. No responsibilities formed any memories. Only billowy reddish-purple long nights of marauding, yelling, grinning. Drinking as an ambient activity. Infinite physical stamina. Jamais vu: the continual renewal of familiar, played-out scenarios. Every drive a maiden voyage, every shot a bristling, brown lumpy swallow, peeling the lips back into an adult's grimace.
Crystals; long stalagmites in the memory cave. But since then? Nothing solid at all. Soft spirals of showin' up, gettin' paid, goin' home. Was his old friend's life going to be vastly more exciting? Doubtful. He stayed in the same town, took a just-as-predictable job, maintained the same perfunctory online presence...
The sweat wicked away by the bar's heater-dry air is replaced with anxious, apprehensive sweat.
The door opens on the other side of the bar, and the late man struts in, upright with anticipation. The early man stands up and casts aside his perspiratory fears. Both men tilt thirty degrees clockwise and embrace.
"Man!"
"I can't believe it."
"Are you tellin' me that we both lived here for this long, and never did anything about it?"
"I know, I know."
"So how the hell are ya?"
"Oh, you know -- can't complain."
"Well, ya could!"
Both men lean back and release hearty laughter -- the heartiest they will release all night -- in a show of conviviality. Their bellies very nearly touch.
"Whatcha drinkin'?"
"Beer, dude."
"I coulda seen that comin'."
They both laugh once more, at a fraction of the power of their previous laughs. The late man unzips his jacket, revealing a vest underneath. The early man internally sighs in relief that his vest is black, instead of dark blue like his old friend's. The late man snuggles into his chair and the early man reflexively -- empathetically -- shifts around in his.
"Can you believe the season we're having?"
The early man is not sure if his friend is talking about the weather or basketball. He defaults to basketball, wary of the cliché about weather.
"It's insane, man. Iverman put up--"
"I bought a fuckin' snow blower. I feel like my dad."
"Oh. I know, dude. My brother lives in Florida now--"
"Nice."
"-- and every time I talk to him on the phone, he makes a point of telling me the temperature. I'm like, 'yeah, good luck with the 'gators!'"
Both men laugh at low intensity but for a high duration, taking as much time as possible to pity the early man's brother.
Just before the laughter fully dissipates, the late man grabs a menu from an arm's length and pretends to read it carefully. The early man gives him all the time he needs and unfocuses his eyes.
"I can't believe I'm actually givin' a shit about which beer to drink. Man, we used to drink piss.”
Another round of perfunctory laughter bubbles out of the men. The late man extends his right hand from his crossed arms and the bartender walks over.
"I'll have the lager."
The bartender nods, but before he turns away--
"You want another? Hate to keep ya waitin'."
The early man measures his drink visually. The glass is literally half empty.
"Nah, that's alright. Still working."
Both men watch the bartender walk to the tap and lean onto the handle. The beer forms an almost-trapezoid in the glass, and both men nod with approval as the bartender expertly rotates his wrist back so that no beer spills and barely any foam puffs up.
"Hey, it's good to see ya, buddy."
Their glasses clink and they each swig their beer. Both men resist the urge to peel back their lips into a grimace.
Mercifully, a TV is on in a visible spot. Both men hunker over their beers and peer upwards, rocking back and forth.
"This guy's unreal. Scorin' like fifteen, twenty a quarter."
"I know. Imagine what he could do on a real team."
"We're a real team! Just gotta fire that loser Hoblansky."
"If only it were that simple."
Both men parrot thinly disguised opinions they had heard on TV. It would be beyond impossible for either to admit their unfamiliarity with coach Dean Hoblansky; whether or not he had done a good job is for others to decide.
The men fixate on the TV, waiting for a moment that deviates from the ambient average of basketball.
"There we go!"
Minutes later, the third quarter ends and a commercial begins. Then men unplug themselves from the screen and face each other again. An inkling of dread springs up in both of their hearts. One stimulus gone; one conversation-starter gone.
"Man, do you remember that night where that girl's cousin came to the dorm?"
"Oh, uh, ... Kimberly?"
"All I remember was that she was a redhead. And those--"
The early man's lips fold inward at the same time his eyebrows and chin both lower. His look suggests an "Oh, please."
The late man's elbows move out to the sides. Just before he completes a breast-holding motion, he hesitates, realizing how dumb and old he must look.
"She was so hot, dude."
"You know what they say."
Neither man knows what they say.
"You ended up--"
The early man cracks a toothy, impish grin, putting on a guilty face. At the same moment, a hazy memory of that night enters his head. The redheaded cousin had vodka-stumbled into his dorm room and stirred his penis around while moaning in order to emulate pornography. He had tilted his head backwards and upwards to signal ecstasy. The rest of the memory starts to disintegrate and slip away. He cannot remember a single word she ever spoke.
The late man raises his glass to his old friend, who clinks it while masking the banality and directionlessness of his memory.
"Wasn't that the same night that Murph puked out of the window and hit some girl?"
Both men begin to laugh but then recoil in disgust, mildly ashamed to find any humor in the situation at all.
"Crazy times."
They were not crazy times. The men's college experience could have been easily transposed to any of the tens of thousands of matching experiences that had happened at the exact same time. Their lives had unfolded in parallel -- details differing, but essences indistinguishable. They are two tiny organisms in a huge, flat colony. There are no individual corals.
A flare of mirth across the bar distracts both men and twists them towards the action. The early man notices the ellipse of thinning hair on the back of his old friend's head and instinctively reaches to the back of his own head. At that moment, he feels that his nipples are are at least as large as his friend's bald spot, and growing rapidly. The terror of this image dilates his eyes until he realizes he is absently staring directly at a woman's ear. She is thankfully preoccupied with a stirring straw.
The woman, in the middle of the bar, seems to be at an age exactly halfway between the man's current age and his age during his college memories. She does not lean one way or other; he cannot claim her for either side. She looks at nothing in particular.
The late man spins back around, looking almost disappointed that no trouble had stirred.
"Let's get another round."
"If you say so," says the early man, who feels only the vaguest intimation of alcohol in his system.
Each man extends his outer arm for a menu -- a piece of paper sandwiched between two thin panes of plastic resting on a rectangular base -- and semi-reads the list of beers and their prices.
"Man, do you remember when five bucks could get you a beer and a hot dog at Shimmy's?"
"Oh, I know."
"Just don't ask where the hot dog came from!"
The men desperately need to laugh. Only the late man's laugh is audible; a lopsided smile rolls across the early man's face.
The bartender's internal clock correctly nudges him back towards the men. The late man flashes two fingers, intercepting the bartender, who wheels around back towards the tap.
"I'm gonna hit the restroom."
The late man walks away. On the TV, the basketball resumes. The remaining man balances his weight evenly between his elbows and folds his arms, praying that some breeze will wick away the residual moisture just outside the holes of his vest. His neck tilts forwards and his eyes roll up, centering on the TV screen.
The bartender returns. The man begins to reach for a dollar, trying not to compromise any airflow past his armpit, but then pauses and returns to his previous position. The debit card will take care of this. The bartender retreats.
"Thanks."
~ ~ ~
Alcohol is a poison that shrivels the space between people. Other rituals build bridges -- strong, clear, proud -- that connect human beings through shared memories. New experiences flow through these nodes and get absorbed, a little bit at a time, until they cohere with the rest of the network. But people only get closer when they drink because the world around them wilts and dies. If it screams out, no one hears it. You latch on to someone -- can you maintain that grip as the world rehydrates and expands? Or does the memory snap, like a rubber band trying to do two things at once?