I was at home on Friday night, trying to write, and failing miserably to do so. I found myself writing, over and over: “Go out.” I tried to resist this notion, because I knew from past experiences, “going out,” which actually just meant going to a bar by myself, always ended in a feeling of abject humiliation and despair. But I told myself, finally, that I needed to go out and “act a fool” because I needed fuel for my writing. Not to mention the fact that I was in need of cigarettes. With these two excuses in my possession, I told my dad I was leaving, called an Uber, and went up to Ludlow. It was around eleven o’clock.
After buying two packs of cigarettes at the UDF, I walked over to Arlins bar. I could tell as I walked there that all was not right within me. I don’t know. Maybe there was just something about that part of town. I grew up there, and had many adventures there. It was too familiar, like a used-up prostitute. It felt diseased. I felt diseased. I should have trusted that feeling, but I told myself that I had to give it a go. Why? Because I was simply incapable of going anywhere else. It was as if I felt the need to penetrate to the heart of my past, as if I could somehow dig my way to the core of all my problems and, once there, fix them, make them right. But what I really did, I think, by going down there, was open up old wounds. Old wounds that were better left untouched. In any event, I went to the bar, convincing myself that I was doing good, that I was “facing my fears.”
When I got there, it was pretty crowded. I sat at the end of the bar and ordered a beer. I drank for a while, then moved down to the other end of the bar, which was less populated. I was looking around. There was one particularly attractive young woman who I noticed. She came up right beside me and ordered a drink. Naturally, I misinterpreted this as her being interested in me, though I said nothing. She sat down with another young woman behind me at a table. I continued to drink. Then I saw a man I knew—Peter, an older man I’d met in an art class I had taken a couple years prior. He was now a practicing artist, and we talked shop for a while. I got bored with him and went outside. The deck was crowded. Two young women were talking with two young men. One of the women was very attractive—a sophisticated type, with short, stylish blonde hair and a pronounced jaw—and she was talking with a young man who was somewhat “artsy.” He had tattoos and piercings (his piercings were the subject of their conversation) and he seemed to be charming her. This angered me. I sat in a chair and smoked, feeling bitter as they talked on and on without a hitch, leaving me no room to interject, fool that I was. After a while, I went back inside and ordered another beer. I stood around, sheepishly, until I felt drunk, then went back outside. I approached one of the young men, the one who was less attractive—actually, he was quite the donkey-faced schmuck—and I pounded my hand on his shoulder and yelled: “This machine does not stop, my brother!” Naturally, they all looked at me like I was insane, which, of course, I was. The young man made some snide comment like, “How low can you go?” “Oh, I can go low!” I shouted, looking at the less attractive of the two women. “I can go lower than anyone you’ve ever seen!”
“Prove it,” said the attractive woman.
The donkey-faced man said something about doing the limbo. “How low can you go?” He repeated. So I did a little dance where I crouched to the ground. I stood up, feeling utterly humiliated. The attractive woman said it was time to go, and she said goodbye to the attractive man. It seemed that they were made for each other, the way they looked into each other’s eyes. When they left, the donkey-faced man said something about how I knew how to make an entrance, and I actually apologized like a damn fool for “making the women leave.” They asked each other if they knew me, and, both coming to the understanding that neither of them did, they went inside. I sat down on a chair and smoked, and talked to some dumbstruck Indian guy, poking him as if with a stick like the piece of shit that he was. Finally, I got bored again and went back inside. I spotted the attractive women who I had noticed earlier and began clandestinely following her around the place, trying to think of something to say. Finally, after she had sat down near the front window with her friend, I made my move. She was enjoying her conversation with her friend, but I didn’t care. I would interrupt their conversation, because what I had to say was so very important.
“Excuse me,” I said. The woman looked at me, taking a sip of her beer. “I just wanted to say that you are by far the most beautiful woman here tonight.”
She almost spat out her beer.
“What about me?” Said her friend.
I laid my hand on her back and said, by way of appeasement: “You’re not bad either.”
They both let out sarcastic sighs, as if to say, “Yes, you have dug your own grave well!”
“She’s my girlfriend,” said the less attractive one.
I looked at her. She was smiling, but dead serious. “Really?” I said, and looked at the pretty one. She too was smiling, and she nodded. “Well,” I said. “Cheers to that, then.”
“Cheers.”
I walked away. I finished my beer and left, making sure that the beautiful woman didn't see me. When I got home, I was depressed. I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. I finally got to sleep near dawn, and woke up at three in the afternoon. I was depressed. My parents could tell. My father asked me whether something had happened at the bar. I told him that something had happened, but I didn’t want to go into details. The next couple of nights were very long, and I wasn’t able to write. I eventually decided that it would have been smarter to have called my friend Chris rather than go to the bar by myself. Crazy people should not be left to their own devices.
