she was rocking back and forth across her feet. no no no. she was tapping her toes. but only on her right foot. she was a little intoxicated but she was fully aware of where she was, in that she was at a bar and there was nothing doing. yea, the jukebox had recently picked up again and a minority of people had started swaying back and forth, cradling plastic cups full of mixed hard liquor, and yea, a lot of those people she recognized and could be described as acquaintances, but yea, there was nothing doing. she didn't know why most people walked into bars. she was here because she wanted to encourage small business and she was also an alcoholic. it made sense. why everyone else around her was there, she couldn't guess. get laid? get drunk? maybe the reverse. but still, what horrible goals to have for actually investing time and money to get all the way to this particular spot. it's not like it was amazing. it was regular. it had it's regular crowd. it had it's regular dart board. it's regular thirty-six inch television. the whole place was in no way special. this upset her, because unlike everyone else who had also chosen this bar as a site for continued debauchery and poor drink choices, she recognized the importance of making every day and every night count. she had at least one chronic disease (hint hint, it's asthma) and she wasn't going to live forever. she wanted this night to mean something to her years from now. but this was a pointless dream, and she recognized within a few moments of insobriety that she was a romantic, a dreamer, and that this would end up being a night like any other. she had arrived with her two friends--Amy and Clark. They sucked, really. They lived up to stereotypes and it killed her. Amy was a short white girl whose voice always upped a couple octaves when she talked to cute boys or phone operators. Clark, who was unfortunately named gender ambiguously, flirted with lesbians and had recently cut her hair short. She liked leather jackets and tried her very hardest not to look "girly."
She rolled her eyes at the thought. Her left hand was sinking into her face as her right hand rested on her knee and held up a glass of a mixed drink, perpendicular to the axis of her gravitational force. More importantly, she was in a corner. All the lights were shining on the bar, on the pool tables, along the windows. But there was no light shining over her, and she felt very much like a leopard or a lion or a panther--anything that sits and waits patiently for its prey, so that it can begin it's stalk. She knew very much what she wanted, but it wasn't likely to happen. She wanted to stalk the possibility though. She played around with the idea of texting in her head. But she couldn't think of a time when she had been pleased with a text sent from her phone while she was intoxicated. Still, she felt like she had a good enough reason to. Usually it was embarrassment or uncertainty that made her text. Today, she wasn't embarrassed and she was absolutely sure what she wanted to do. This wasn't embarrassing--this was amazing, inspiring. The most shocking thing that had ever happened to her. Her inspiration rate increased slightly, and she arched her back so that she sat a little higher in her plastic framed chair. She finished the Blue Moon she had let mellow in her glass, and placed it underneath her, then resumed her stalking position.
No, she wasn't embarrassed at all, though she could understand why she should be. She had a lot of other things in her life to worry about, to be hurt by, to be embarrassed about. But this guy, this one guy, he sucked. He was a failure. She wanted to believe she was empathetic. But that only happened sometimes. Most of the time she ended up in the corner of bars watching everyone with disgust. Even the people she endured for the majority of her life--she hated them. Not always, and not for very long. But she went through sustained periods of disgust with people she respected. She wasn't empathetic. She never would be. But this guy, she didn't know why she cared about him at all. She didn't pity him, but she didn't respect him either. Perhaps it was a weird amalgamation of helplessness and indifference that inspired her. Probably not. But then again... She didn't care much for over analysis. She had been down that road every single day of high school. And of college. Over analysis led nowhere and was fucking obnoxious. She had hoped that drinking another drink would kill the part of her brain, likely her frontal lobe, that produced the desire to analyze such things. But it looked as though she had failed again. She could, however, order something else--something much stronger. She could bring her lips to brimming shot glasses four or five more times to produce an effect strong enough to stop her from thinking. But that would be expensive. She could go home and drink from her own stash. Ah yes, the alcoholic's dilemma.
Or maybe she could analyze with him. Or just analyze him. The beer was making it's way into her bloodstream. She felt calmer, calm enough to lean back in her chair and stare at the ceiling, constructing herself into a pose that was both unflattering and painful--which she would know if she was sober. That's what she would end up doing, after all. Tomorrow morning, she already knew, she would wake up with an odd pain in her back, which she would associate with sleeping funny, and then spend five to ten minutes after her alarm's intrusion on her rest, thinking about him. Not anything particular. There were many things about him that she found amusing. She could think of any one of them. And perhaps one characteristic would lead her to an ever larger discussion with herself. Maybe she'd realize what a fool she had been for thinking that having an active social life would make her happy. It wouldn't. She could, and probably would, find many men in bars that would be both attractive and interesting to talk to. But they weren't people she could imagine herself spending nonsensical amounts of time thinking about. They didn't have the same qualities. They weren't nearly as bizarre.
It was then that she pulled out her phone and started preparing herself--emotionally--for a text. She tapped at some keys, scrolled over to the text box, found his name, and then sat staring at the screen. She didn't know what to say. She couldn't know. She would regret it. She would regret it like almost everything else she did. She wanted him, yes, but that would sound too wishy-washy. She needed him, but that was too frightening, and it couldn't be true, could it? She didn't give a fuck. And she wouldn't give a fuck two years from now. But she certainly cared quite a lot about it right now. But she was drunk. She put her phone away. What would she do? What could she say? Too much thinking was required of her, and it seemed a lot like over analysis. In an hour she'd be tucked underneath her sheets. She would be alone. But she would be asleep. She could be aloof as well, you know. She could be pitiable. She could be many things, just by herself. What did she want? What did she really want? She didn't want to fuck around with someone. She wanted to be asleep. She wanted to sleep longer than eight hours but much shorter than forever. Where the timer would end up, she didn't know. But she did know that she didn't have to stay awake any more. She wanted to spit in the face of every single guy she passed on her way out. You're not him, she wanted to say, but she realized that would sound horrific. Everybody's someone to somebody else. But she wasn't anyone to anyone, and so she would be anxious, heart beating until she could rest herself with eight odd hours of sleep.
She had a song stuck in her head as she walked home. It was a KOL, Kings of Leon song. It was pretty old. She had sung it to herself without really thinking about the lyrics when she was fourteen. Now it meant a whole lot more to her.
"I want you, exactly like I used to
and baby this is only bringing me down."
Fuck.
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