Comparatives

 

The place had a good feel to it.  Swamp blues smoothed it out, not too loud, not too soft.  The bar stretched from the street-side windows all the way to the back wall.  There was a long string of tap handles, beers I’d never heard of—Andygator, Ponchartrain Porter, Lion’s Pride, Dixie Jazz—and the shelves were packed with more bottles of booze than I’ve ever seen in one place.  They were catching the yellowy-orange lights all around and glowing like ten-thousand dollar gemstones.

I found myself a seat at the bar next to three interesting looking men having a curious conversation.  They were in executive gear, had on dress pants, trendy shirts with ties loosed, belts and shoes that matched, except for one of them, whose dark tan belt fought madly with his burgundy shoes.  And this mismatched one’s hair, it was disheveled, like he’d run hands full of stress through it.  The other two, their hair was slicked back solid, unbreakable.

The bartender hurried over to me, put down a cocktail napkin like time was a-wastin’ until he found out I wanted a Sazerac cocktail.  He grinned and slowed down to fix me one in the traditional way, brought it to me.  I tipped him well and asked for a menu.  Then I sipped my drink, enjoyed the layers of flavor, the burn of the rye, the spice, the honey, the bite of the bitters, the sugar to smooth it out.  And I listened to the three men, watched them out of the far right corner of my eye.

One of the slick execs was built like a running back, made big, blank pronouncements about business and about life, while conspicuously drinking his Abita Amber.  The other slick exec was cut from the same cloth, just a smaller sized bolt of it.  He agreed with the majority of Mr. Big’s statements and when he did venture to disagree, it seemed it was only for the sake of appearing to have a few opinions of his own.  Similarly, he’d thought to order a Abita Golden. 

The mismatched one was more detached, brooding at times.  He listened more than he talked and took careless swigs off a Budweiser.  When he did speak, Mr. Big and his sidekick became silent and cocked their heads as if to get better reception, then raucously agreed or disagreed, but either way, would be sent off on a new tangent.

The bartender noticed I’d closed my menu and he rushed over, pad in hand.  I ordered the shrimp montage and another Sazerac cocktail.  He nodded and winked, took up my menu politely and was gone.  I tuned back into the Mr. Big show just in time to hear the mismatched one speaking a rare few of his words so quietly I couldn’t make them out.  But I did hear Mr. Big respond, “Where  in the world…”

And to this, they all somberly raised shot glasses of golden liquid to their mouths as if bidding a deceased friend farewell.  Mr. Big and his sidekick tossed their shots to the backs of their throats and Mr. Big was first to jerk his head back forward.  He slammed his empty shot glass down.  Thick glass met hard, resin-coated wood with a hurtful crack and he just stared at the empty glass, shaking his head.  The sidekick’s glass hit the bar with less force, but if it were possible for a glass to be emptier, his glass would be that.

The mismatched one drank his shot slow and drew the glass from his lips reluctantly.  He held the glass before his dark eyes, turning it around and around in his hand.  Lights from the outside—green, blue, red—streamed in through the window, through his fingers, and mixed in the facets of the glass with the yellowy-orange from inside, like it was the emptiest glass in the world.  He set the shot glass quietly down on the bar and ran his light-filled fingers through his disheveled hair.

 

PHOTO CREDIT

Jacques-imo’s Café http://www.jacquesimoscafe.com/imgs/restaurant.jpg

Sazerac Cocktail http://www.flickr.com/photos/sazerac/3286656997/From Chuck T’s Flickr Photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sazerac/

 

Missalister’s “Comparatives,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#173 – Where in the World?” and Paschal’s “Shrimp Montage” .

 

American dream

I realize one of my feet is sticking out of the sheets, too warm.  The sun is coming in, heating it through the dirty window at the end of the bed, making all of me uncomfortable.  Still, I keep my eyes closed, lie motionless, waiting for my head to clear.  I become aware of the smell of dried sweat on the skin of a working man, armpit smell, sex from the middle of the night.  I remember Wade’s back, fresh off the oil rig, assuming that I’ll drop everything and be all about him for the next twenty-one days until he has to leave again.  But I suppose I’m no better than him, just letting him expect it and not taking a stand if I don’t like it.  I do have my volunteer work at Children’s, after all. 

I look over at him lying on his side, his tanned chest, shoulder and left arm uncovered, his breathing heavy and even.  All but a corner of his pillow got stuffed between the wall and the bed during the night and his head ended up tilted at an odd angle.  His sandy blonde and grey hair is matted in places, sticking up funny in others.  I study his middle-aged face.  He’s losing his good looks.  They’re drying up in the sun.  He’s becoming someone else, someone leathery, brown except for white in the relaxed creases of his face.  Of course I’m no spring chicken, either, getting all soft and out of shape. 

I breathe out with a snuffing sound and sit up, disgusted.  Wade stirs, and I don’t care, don’t care if I disturb him or not.  He disturbs me plenty in all ways.  He’s like a wet dog that bounds into a room, his muddy feet tracking everywhere, smiling at everyone, tongue lolling, just happy to be a part of what’s going on.  I sit there for awhile thinking about how my life is working out, whether I like it or not, and I don’t think I do.  I feel dry, like my mouth is dry now, dry and bitter tasting, like unsweetened chocolate, like my regard for Wade.  I think about telling his messy self to get out and stay out, but there’s something that I like about him, something he gives me, only I can’t tell exactly what it is, and that is the most annoying thing of all. 

I scramble to get untangled from the sheets and throw them back on Wade, irritated.  I crawl down to the bottom of the bed to the window and beat on the sash to unstick it.  Wade could fix that but he never does, always puts it off until it’s too late and he has to go back to the rig.  He’ll get it next time, he always says.  I push and bang up on the sash just to get the window to budge open a couple of inches, then I flop back onto the bed, on my back.  The morning air is cold for summer, rushes in like a front changing out the air from stuffy to pleasant, pleasant with the smell of cool nothingness.  It feels good, makes me smile.  Then Wade opens his eyes.  He squints at me. 

“C’mere, Baby,” he says, all sleepy. 

I stay lying on my back looking at the ceiling.  “No,” I say. 

He reaches over and pulls me tight toward him anyway like he always does, and it makes me mad like it always does that he thinks he can just do that whenever he wants.  Of course I’m partly to blame, since I don’t stand up for myself.  I wiggle to make more space between us.  He lets me out a little and holds me there.  I frown at him. 

“Oh, here now!” he says.  “Cut that out.  You know you love me!” 

“No, I don’t,” I say, and turn my face away from him. 

“You do,” he says.  He pulls my face back toward him and he kisses me.  “And I been thinkin’  ’bout makin’ a plan for us, a plan for gettin’ out of this shack and buildin’ a big ol’ house together somewhere,” he says. 

I pull my face away.  “Plans,” I scoff. 

“Yeah, plans,” he says, looking hurt. 

We’ve been down this plans-for-a-house road before, and down the side streets of plans-for-a-business, plans-for-traveling, plans-for-plans.  I’ve been with Wade for what seems like forever and nothing has ever happened like he said it would.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve been happy and not happy with him, both at the same time, and he’s been happy with me, with anything, so long as he’s living.  But all that joie de vivre has just meant broken promises, dashed expectations, offenses and disappointments and grudges piling up on one another until we’re living at half mast.  And we go on half dead until what? 

Wade shakes me.  “Kimmy?” 

I turn toward him, focus my eyes on his.  I see concern, hope, and fun in them.  He really is a good guy.  I laugh. 

“That’s better,” he says, relieved. 

“Hey, let’s go down to Marple’s for coffee!” I say. 

 

 

PHOTO CREDIT

Photo http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3148/3077239115_b8dc1bcdae.jpg from blog site http://www.katyelliott.com/blog/archive/2008_12_01_index.html

 

 

Missalister’s “American dream,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#172 – The Plan”  Click here for more on prompt #172 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

Whatever

From the oneword.com prompt, “coin” 

 

 

Hands in my pockets, walking.  Beggar on the street asking for some change.  I pull out everything.  Coins, receipts, a couple of wadded-up bills, ticket stubs, a matchbox from Balthazar…  Pieces of my life.  I give it all to him and go on my way.  He can toss the parts of me he doesn’t need, keep the rest.  Like my ex did.  He can do it, put it toward his wildest dream.  Even it it’s just to buy a bottle of Thunderbird.  Whatever brings him joy in his moment on earth.

 

PHOTO CREDIT

Photo http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3125/3178434312_d9aae6d122.jpg from WashDCStreet’s photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/washdcgraff/

How to crack writer’s block

Photo Coal Train Graff © thosalumpagus

Click play for some coaltrain while you read, Blue Train Coltrane, that is…

  

First you whine and piss and moan about your sorry condition to everyone within earshot until the word gets around and folks avoid you and even your closest friends tell you to go fuck yourself.  Now, with only yourself to complain to, you see what they all mean.  You’re getting on your own nerves.  And since every worthwhile thing you ever thought you had to say has up and left your brain, your nerves are jangling and clanging inside your head like a multitude of railroad crossing bells going off in an empty warehouse.  Even though you’re not sure how to live now that you can’t write, you do know that you don’t want to live like this.  The nerves must be deadened, no question.  You must either find drugs or alcohol.

You snap into action and action feels good.  At least you’re on a mission.  You find nothing but Nexium, Zelnorm, and Nitrofurantoin in the house so you begin to take inventory of all possible sources of alcohol.  Even though you know the two bottles of rum—the Old Boston Virgin Islands and the Bacardi—in the dining room cabinet have been there for at least seven years, you make a mental note for later.  Same thing with the leftover Penguin Shiraz that gave you a ferocious headache—you make a note.  There’s more ice cold Bud in the mini-fridge downstairs than you thought.  This is good.  Even better, you remember there’s a case of it, warm, in the garage next to the lawnmower.  You’re going to need refrigerator space, which means you’d better indulge in the numbing bliss of a few of the cold beers right away.  You can be tossing out passé food in the upstairs refrigerator in between swigs.

You’re on your knees in front of the fridge feeling no pain, sniffing containers of fuzzy food and giggling and gagging when your boyfriend calls.  He’s brilliant, begins by asking, “Are you still in a pissy mood?”

          “Since you put it that way…” you slur.

          “Are you drunk?” he asks.

          “Maybe.”

          Then he yells into the phone something about rehab and psychological instability and inability to deal with normal everyday problems without drowning in alcohol and he’s fed up with this whole mess and it’s over and he hangs up.  You shrug and go back to your refrigerator project.

          The next day you wake up and your head is throbbing so badly that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to be dead.  You look at the clock.  Shit!  What ever happened to the alarm?!  You scramble to get out of bed, get tangled in the sheets, fall smack onto the floor.  You can hear the dog, still on the bed, laughing his furry ass off.

“Forget it, just call in sick,” you think you hear him say.  “Take me for a walk, why doncha!  Grab your flask and let’s go!”

“Yeah, alright, that sounds good,” you mumble into the carpet.  “Just let me get some Aleve and I’ll be right with ya.”

You do this a few more days of drinking and soon you lose your job.  You have no job, no boyfriend, no money to pay rent or buy more of the bourbon you’ve found works stupendously, far more efficiently than beer.  You get kicked out of your house.  You learn the ways of the homeless, get bored, decide to travel, to do something with your life.  So you join the hobo set, hop freight trains coast to coast for a few years.  And being one who has the tendency to want to write things down, you’ve filled a few little ratty notebooks with all your adventures, keep them with you in your beat rucksack.

          Then one night when you’re sitting in the dirt with your dog and Manny and Denver Joe leaned up against a bridge headwall and you’re drinking a bagful of some rotgut that Joe’s got the grace to share, and you’re looking across the tracks at the falling sun pricking up points into the gray clouds and gilding their undersides, it sets down onto your mind to make something nearly as beautiful out of all those notes you made.  Why now, after all these years, you don’t know but you know it doesn’t matter.  There’s no stopping it sinking down into your head all golden and hot, down through your scalp, skull, bones and muscles and tissues, and on down into your gut, a glowing ball stuck in your gut, burning so bad you just want to belch it out.  And that’d be sure cause for concern but for the fact that you see a vast coolness of midnight lavender chasing down the grey onto the fiery orange and yellow of the downed sun, and you’re feeling nothing but lyrical and timeless and rolling with chaos, letting it roll you good.

 

Give me one reason to keep writing for you

 

PHOTO CREDITS:

 

“Coal Train Graff”  http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1349/1400103562_8baeac9900.jpg?v=0

from thosalumpagus’ photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/thos/1400103562/

 

Hobo train sunset from  http://www.americanhoboproject.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/img_8614.jpg

 

 

 

Click here for more on prompt “#171 – Indulgence” from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

Home

Some of my friends have been giving this oneword thing a go.  Dee, Professor P , MichaelO , Thom G …  Quinn Browne  has been especially prolific, has turned out some real beauties.  So call me a lemming.  Anyway, the word was “surround” and I was typing like a fiend and the dang bell went off when I was on “…you should find…” and I wondered what to do.  I looked around, no one was watching, so I just finished, ha!

  

Photo © Substreet.net  

He was just a kid, 20 or so.  I’d known him for a month or two.  I knew his dreams, he knew a little of me.  He confronted me in the hallway.  I had stuff to do.  He said they can’t help me here.  I said I know, they’re doing nothing for me either.  He asked me what I thought he should do.  I told him I’ve heard tell that you should surround yourself with the people who do what you love to do, live how you want to live, and soon you become that.  I said you should find a community of people, leave this place.  He nodded, head down.  I know that, he said, but I can’t.  Me either, I said, and continued down the hall.  I had stuff to do.

 

 

PHOTO CREDIT:

Photo from http://substreet.net/silvercrest/