“I don’t like this part. Hollywood makes it seem so minor by making it a montage of short clips over a span of 3 minutes while a Sharon Van Etten song plays in the background. It’s bullshit. All of it. Those 3 minutes seem short, but they don’t explain to you that it could be a couple of days, weeks, or even years. Hell, decades if you’re lucky enough. Just 3 minutes. If only this part could last 3 minutes. By the time I finish this drink, all my problems should go away right? Doesn’t matter. None of it does.”
The bartender always looks at me with a face that both wishes he could ignore me yet not wanting to seem rude for the sake of getting a bigger tip if he pays attention. But I can see through his shit. Like always. He knows it, I know it. Doesn’t make the world any better. Certainly doesn’t make his tip any better. Rude, right? Why give him more money for simply listening to my agony? That’s what my therapist is for anyways.
1:16 right now. The night is barely getting started. What oh what could I do tonight? Drink till I forget maybe? How about another tattoo? God only knows how many I could remember getting. There’s also the obvious. I bet if my bed could speak it would tell me to use him more. Yeah, that’s right. My bed is a he.
No. My night is going to be the same as most nights have been lately. I might as well call this place my second home. Third actually. Rotating from job to bar to house. Never ending cycle of the American Dream. It isn’t so bad. At least I live in the greatest country in the world, according to my inbred neighbors.
My pen is starting to run out of ink. The pages on my notebook are getting that crusty kind of look and feel to it now. You know the one I’m talking about. Where every page is being used, front and back, to the point that it affects the entire notebook altogether. A little smudge here and there of spilled whiskey. I can always spot the alcoholics outside the bar when they find joy in the smell of it.
“You know, Gabriel Marcel was the first philosopher to coin the term existentialism. Sartre simply over analyzed it. You think either of those men were happy? Despite the breakthrough they gave to mankind, you think they would go home and be happy? Genuine happiness seems more like a myth rather than an actual emotion now. I mean, look at those three girls over there. You think they’re genuinely happy? You think Becky, Brittany, and Jennifer are having “one of those nights you never forget”? Cause their Instagram photos will probably say it is. Yet, here I sit, no more than 15 feet away from them, wanting to forget this night. I’ll probably forget it in a couple of hours, but it’ll still be written on these pages. Work in progress I suppose.”
I always hated bars. They just never made sense to me. But they have given me some great ideas. I should probably put that on the front of my book. “To my friend, barstool number 4 and 7 shots of Jameson. And everyone else.” Petty? Maybe, but it’s my book.
In a couple of months, hundreds of people will read my book and find meaning in it. I’ll have a book release on a hipster-based book store, where groups of millennials will sit there, watching me mumble pages of my book at them, as if they’re ever going to look at that video recording after tonight. Some will come talk to me after the reading is over and tell me how much they loved the book and how they wish there were “more people” out there like me. I have to seem mildly interested in whatever the fuck they’re telling me because Olivia wants to know how I find inspiration in this world because, she too is wanting to become an author. So, I’ll give her a few pointers and ideas on how to write, without sounding so pessimistic, even though I can feel the bullshit slipping through my teeth. A nod here and there in agreement of what I have to say, as if they’ve never heard this shit before. Then, before they go, they’ll ask to take a photo with me. Post it online a couple minutes later, maybe the next day and that’s it.
“Edgar Allan Poe tried to fuck his own cousin. Did you know that? Or something like that. One of the greatest writers in the world. His work lives on with the powerful imagery he created through his words and the theme that’s portrayed throughout all of his work. A borderline sociopath in some people’s eyes, yes. But a beautiful writer, nonetheless. Do you think a man like that could be happy? Do you think a man who has it made can be able to write such hauntingly passionate literature that can have such significance on the world itself? No. You need tragedy. You need misery. You need that darkness. For Poe, he needed to fuck his own cousin. Well, maybe not exactly that, but that had to affect him in some kind of way.”
2:09 now. The bar closes at 3 and yet I people are walking in with bright faces, as if the party barely started. I mean, what exactly are they going to do for 50 minutes? Catch up with old friends? Have a few overprized drinks to have a good time? Try to see if they can score with the opposite sex in that time? I just never found the point in that. Even when I hanged out with my friends. The bar opens around 7 and they serve the same drinks the whole time. It’s not like anything different happens within the last hour of the night.
It was always the same with my friends. We would do literally absolutely nothing for hours but wait. The girls would spend hours getting dressed, making sure they looked pretty enough to get men to want to fuck them but not actually do anything. Like cooking in front of a homeless man. The implication is that you’ll eventually give the man the food, but instead you go home and eat it yourself. But anyways, by the time everyone was set, there would be an hour and a half remaining at every single bar we went to, all of them packed for some reason. I always ordered just one drink. Not that I didn’t want to drink but I could tell that no one wanted to be the designated driver.
So, we would all find a table or a corner or any available space and just huddle in a circle, slowly sipping our drinks, some faster than others, while simply talking to each other, like we couldn’t fucking do so somewhere else. No, it must be here. This place has alcohol. Occasionally, one or two friends would separate and try to socialize with someone else, as if they hoped to make friends this way. Some of the girls would be approached by men, watching the food being cooked, hoping to take a nibble. Flattered they always seemed, accepting any free drink they were handed, but again, always taking the food home. One girl did let the guy eat off her plate once, but they don’t hang out with her anymore. I wonder why.
The bartender would yell that it’s closing time, and everyone would yell ‘aww’, as if they didn’t know this was going to happen. Everyone would hug each other, say their last goodbyes, only to hang out together again in a couple of days. I would always wait outside by the door, looking at everyone else get into their cars and go their separate ways. My friends would finally come out and get into the car. The ride home was always quiet, with my choice of music in the background. The ones in the back seat would be asleep while the one in front would try to stay awake, I guess for my benefit. And that was it. Another successful night that “only brought us closer.”
“3 pages. I gotta say, that ain’t too bad. And I only hated myself twice tonight. I’m crossing my fingers for just once tomorrow. I really gotta learn how not to spill my stupid drink.”
2:57. The bartender has already yelled last call. Half the crowd has already left. The others are finishing up their goodbyes and drinks. The trifecta is still there, all looking down on their phones while simultaneously telling each other how much fun they had, and how they should do this much more often. If this is their definition of fun, then I don’t want to know what exactly they do on their own time.
One bartender is putting up the chairs while the other is cleaning up the bar that I’m still writing on. He never tells me to fuck off, but if those eyes could talk. He already took my glass and is cleaning around me in such a passively aggressive way. “One more for the road?”, I jokingly say. He looks at me for a split second, giving me a forced chuckle, anxiously waiting for me to finish writing down my tip on the receipt, which he knows he’s going to be disappointed in. But I know he’s more concerned in me just getting out. That’s always my trick. Make him focus on closing that the tip simply seems meaningless. But it never works. I get a laugh about it. Him, not so much.
“You know, you should thank me. When this book gets picked up to be a movie, I’m going to force the executives to film in this bar. It must be genuine. It must be where it all started. And you’re going to be thanking me for bringing in all this fame and glory to you.”
He mumbles “fuck you” underneath his breath, like as if it’s going to offend me if he actually tells it to my face. Frankly I’m more offended that he doesn’t trust me enough to say it to my face.
“Tell your mom I said hi from me. You gotta treat her right. She’s one of the good ones. Just like you. Goodnight.”
I blame my father for my high tolerance of alcohol. For once I wish I couldn’t make out the road in front of me. I know, how selfish of me to drive drunk. I know I’m not going to. I’m depressed, not arrogant. Still, for once I wish I could forget the night. I know what I said earlier, but I’m a writer. Do you really think I’m ever going to be completely honest?
The roads always look quiet this time of night. As if I’m the first person to ever drive on them. Radiohead is playing in my car, like a broken record of pure self-loathing. My publisher tells me to get rid of that CD, but I always tell him that as long as I keep writing, that disc stays. He doesn’t say much after that. He is, after all, making money off of me. I know right? We’re all assholes, one way or another.
I can hear my bed crying my name the minute I enter my house. I don’t know why I keep my house so clean all the time. Nobody ever comes in. My publisher was surprised the first time he stopped by. I don’t blame him. He probably imagined it was as dysfunctional as my writing. “Usually you can tell the inspiration behind someone’s writing based on their home”, he tells me.
I do have inspiration. The same inspiration that motivates the paraplegic to enter a 5K. Or that pushes a mother of 3 to finish school to get a better job. Hell, even the same inspiration that gave Jim Jones the idea to start a cult to commit a mass murder/suicide.
It’s hope that I don’t have. There’s no reason to sugarcoat things. It’s not like I’m going to kill myself. God no. I have a deadline and I just know that my publisher will be pissed and refuse to hand out the invitations to my funeral.
The moonlight is shining through my bedroom window, creating a setting in my room that’s only missing a poor, old miserable man who never amounted to anything in his life. Besides the old part, I would say it’s right on the money. That’s why it’s my house.
It was never my intention to get a house that had a backyard. I knew I was never going to use it, but it’s still nice to lay on the grass once in a while. Seeing the sky on a night like this always gives me a type of goosebumps that I felt once before, not so long ago. Only there was someone else lying beside me.
That’s about as depressing as I’ll get tonight. No point in bringing down the mood, as if it wasn’t already. But I’ll lay down here for a bit. Orion is the constellation I can always see in the sky, no matter what the night is like. A warrior. There’s irony there somewhere, I’m just way too exhausted to figure it out right now.
Why do I always come back to the same feeling, the same state of mind, every single night before bed? I used to think it was so I could remember. Remember everything. My family. My friends. And her. Now, I think it helps reset the brain to continue writing tomorrow. If I take too long of a break, I know I’m going to fuck this book up.
There’s no point in trying, I always say. No point in asking for forgiveness. I missed the boat for that a long time ago. Still, here I stand on the shore, hoping it’ll return one day.
Oh well. Now I’m getting tired. Here’s to hoping that this year will be better than all the ones before. And crossing my fingers that tomorrow’s a new. Maybe I’ll do something exciting. Maybe I’ll sit on barstool number 5 and drink Jägermeister instead. Who knows? All I know is that every night is one of those nights I never forget.