The crushing heat this week has been like a vampire sucking Neverland dry of vigour. I sleep with no A/C. My mind has been full of static. Nostalgic snapshots percolate through my subconsciousness. In dreams, I can relive all that was repressed from the comfort of hindsight. Sometimes a wire crosses and I forget the distinction between reality and dreams. It has me acting cautiously in my sleep and reckless while awake. Other people are the litmus test. If they stop calling me crazy, that's the sign it's happened for real.
On the weekend I went home. The meaning of the word has become a farce to me. There, in the distant exurbs of the sprawling metropolis I went to a real dive located in a shoebox of a commercial unit in a typical, unmemorable strip mall. Except I couldn't forget it. I can never forget it. For years, I worked there. I drank there, smoked there, toked there, got laid there. I remember still how the concrete felt underhand and asphalt felt under foot. I remember the curbside, awash with the butts of hundreds of smoked cigarettes. It's unholy land -- bad land.
And yet, I was there again of my own free will. The bar where I was meeting an old mate was just as I remembered it, with chicken wire and old license plates on the walls, smell of hot grease and beer saturating the air. It was just as I remembered it, a small oasis of convenience. It's the sort of place you could take two steps into, turn around and if you take two more steps in any direction you're either standing in the toilet, kitchen or right back out in the parking lot. Taking the first two steps were customary, as it was the only way to get a view of all the seats and see if any familiar faces popped. So I did, and two faces popped, one of which was expected, the other which was not.
A day earlier, or well, a few days but maybe up to a week earlier, I had been getting bad vibes. Rarely, very rarely, I'll feel this crushing sense of dread. I'll go nuts trying to suss out the source. The feeling hounded me as the week worked me over like some medeival sadist would work a rabblerouser on a torture rack. By the end of the week, it was bad enough that I wanted to call off the whole weekend and spend it lying on the bathroom floor mumbling to oblivion. But instead, I drank some coffee, drank some cocoa, drank some chamomille and toked some herb. It's my special blend of just enough mildly psychoactive shite to simultaneously perk me up and calm me down enough that I can put on the everything-is-super-fine mask and casually feed white lies to those closest to me. I guess there's a good reason they say silence is golden. Heck, it's not just golden. It's a big, bright, blinking eject button painted gold. Finding the button welded in place while the plane accelerates without a pilot is an awful sensation. There's no telling whether the ride will crash into the side of a mountain or somehow glide smoothly back to terra firma.
Despite my most elaborate of preparations it was still a shot to the heart seeing the old colleague I may have loved waiting for me with my friend. Or maybe they just randomly ran into each other there. Was she still working in the plaza? Fuck, no way. My thoughts stratified the instant I saw her, with an upper layer flying through all possible explanations so fast that the other part controlling the puppet I use to wave at people was unable to keep up the pace and so I glitched out for a moment and the next I was sitting down ordering a drink like an abject dunce. It felt like the smarter parts of my brain suddenly formed a union and decided to strike from utter dissatisfaction with the dumb parts that voted for me to have a seat and become the unwitting ringleader of an emotional tightrope act. No part of me was ready for this.
Despite my brain attempting to back up through my cranium, then through the back door of the dingy bar, then way back to my comfy bed uptown, I somehow eased up (the alcohol helped) and pulled through and steered the conversation expertly back to safe topics like the past. I love talking about the past. There's always some dumb shite to look fondly back on and maybe throw in a where-have-the-years-gone, as if we were doddering geriatric with nothing left to look forward to. As I would discover, though, memories of the past are not a safe topic for frazzled minds.
We later parted ways with a promise to keep in touch, just like the last time we said goodbye. The drive home I couldn't stop thinking about her in that silver slip she used to rock. She looked sexy, and not just the sort of sexy that comes from having a lush bod and knowing how to flaunt it but the kind of sexy that spontaneously exposes itself in fleeting moments that make you want to be with a person as much as possible to not miss any more of those moments than you fear you already have. Sometimes I felt that way with her. Sometimes I could sense frustration radiating in my direction, knowing she sometimes had the same type of thoughts about me but struggled with being faithful in a relationship that she saw as the only stable, good thing in her life at the time.
It was complicated. That's a good catchphrase for the human race, huh? When we first met we were colleagues, and she was in a long-term relationship, and I was a fuck-up just trying my hardest not to elevate my status from bush league fuck-up to professional, major-league fuck-up. To compound matters, her papa was the big boss and they didn't get along. Well, that's all in the past. She's no longer in a relationship and doing well, meanwhile I got busted down to cleanup batter for JV fuck-up. That means things are alright. No regrets, but it still feels like I somehow lost at a zero-sum game. Well, I should catch some sleep. With any luck this heat wave will end soon.
On the weekend I went home. The meaning of the word has become a farce to me. There, in the distant exurbs of the sprawling metropolis I went to a real dive located in a shoebox of a commercial unit in a typical, unmemorable strip mall. Except I couldn't forget it. I can never forget it. For years, I worked there. I drank there, smoked there, toked there, got laid there. I remember still how the concrete felt underhand and asphalt felt under foot. I remember the curbside, awash with the butts of hundreds of smoked cigarettes. It's unholy land -- bad land.
And yet, I was there again of my own free will. The bar where I was meeting an old mate was just as I remembered it, with chicken wire and old license plates on the walls, smell of hot grease and beer saturating the air. It was just as I remembered it, a small oasis of convenience. It's the sort of place you could take two steps into, turn around and if you take two more steps in any direction you're either standing in the toilet, kitchen or right back out in the parking lot. Taking the first two steps were customary, as it was the only way to get a view of all the seats and see if any familiar faces popped. So I did, and two faces popped, one of which was expected, the other which was not.
A day earlier, or well, a few days but maybe up to a week earlier, I had been getting bad vibes. Rarely, very rarely, I'll feel this crushing sense of dread. I'll go nuts trying to suss out the source. The feeling hounded me as the week worked me over like some medeival sadist would work a rabblerouser on a torture rack. By the end of the week, it was bad enough that I wanted to call off the whole weekend and spend it lying on the bathroom floor mumbling to oblivion. But instead, I drank some coffee, drank some cocoa, drank some chamomille and toked some herb. It's my special blend of just enough mildly psychoactive shite to simultaneously perk me up and calm me down enough that I can put on the everything-is-super-fine mask and casually feed white lies to those closest to me. I guess there's a good reason they say silence is golden. Heck, it's not just golden. It's a big, bright, blinking eject button painted gold. Finding the button welded in place while the plane accelerates without a pilot is an awful sensation. There's no telling whether the ride will crash into the side of a mountain or somehow glide smoothly back to terra firma.
Despite my most elaborate of preparations it was still a shot to the heart seeing the old colleague I may have loved waiting for me with my friend. Or maybe they just randomly ran into each other there. Was she still working in the plaza? Fuck, no way. My thoughts stratified the instant I saw her, with an upper layer flying through all possible explanations so fast that the other part controlling the puppet I use to wave at people was unable to keep up the pace and so I glitched out for a moment and the next I was sitting down ordering a drink like an abject dunce. It felt like the smarter parts of my brain suddenly formed a union and decided to strike from utter dissatisfaction with the dumb parts that voted for me to have a seat and become the unwitting ringleader of an emotional tightrope act. No part of me was ready for this.
Despite my brain attempting to back up through my cranium, then through the back door of the dingy bar, then way back to my comfy bed uptown, I somehow eased up (the alcohol helped) and pulled through and steered the conversation expertly back to safe topics like the past. I love talking about the past. There's always some dumb shite to look fondly back on and maybe throw in a where-have-the-years-gone, as if we were doddering geriatric with nothing left to look forward to. As I would discover, though, memories of the past are not a safe topic for frazzled minds.
We later parted ways with a promise to keep in touch, just like the last time we said goodbye. The drive home I couldn't stop thinking about her in that silver slip she used to rock. She looked sexy, and not just the sort of sexy that comes from having a lush bod and knowing how to flaunt it but the kind of sexy that spontaneously exposes itself in fleeting moments that make you want to be with a person as much as possible to not miss any more of those moments than you fear you already have. Sometimes I felt that way with her. Sometimes I could sense frustration radiating in my direction, knowing she sometimes had the same type of thoughts about me but struggled with being faithful in a relationship that she saw as the only stable, good thing in her life at the time.
It was complicated. That's a good catchphrase for the human race, huh? When we first met we were colleagues, and she was in a long-term relationship, and I was a fuck-up just trying my hardest not to elevate my status from bush league fuck-up to professional, major-league fuck-up. To compound matters, her papa was the big boss and they didn't get along. Well, that's all in the past. She's no longer in a relationship and doing well, meanwhile I got busted down to cleanup batter for JV fuck-up. That means things are alright. No regrets, but it still feels like I somehow lost at a zero-sum game. Well, I should catch some sleep. With any luck this heat wave will end soon.