“Got fired again didn’t you?”
My father’s voice, barking hatred at me through my cell phone, would seem angry to anyone else, but I’ve come to actually know this tone as calm. Years of berating and abuse have brought me to know when he’s truly upset and when he’s just venting. I know he’ll continue, and I know I thrive on his yelling for my own self-pity.
“Probably already at the bar. Aren’t you? Do you ever leave there?”
“Yes Pop, I’m at the bar. If you want, I’ll have a shot for you while I’m waiting to go to hell.” These words drip out of my mouth with a little bit of whiskey-flavored saliva and the disdain I feel for life.
A damp hole in the wall escape from reality that this bar meant to everyone who crossed its threshold had become home. An impressive mosaic of glass litters the wall behind the bartender, but all I can see is the half-empty bottle of Cutty that I am sure should just be hooked up to an IV and pumped straight into my veins.
“You’re never going to grow up, are you? You’ll live your whole life in that dark grave of a bar. I used to wonder when you were going to settle down, meet a nice girl and maybe have children, but now I have no hope for that. You’re a pathetic excuse for a human being, and I--”
“You what Pop? You wish I’d never been fucking born?” I could feel my words making the vain in his forehead bulge. Through his silence, I could hear his thin lips pressed together so tightly in anger that they would burst if not sewn together by better judgment.
“Can’t say it, can ya Pop?” I pushed my shot glass to the edge of the deep oak bar, but the bartender ignored me again. “Fine then, I’ll fucking say it. The world would be a better place if I had died instead of Mom.”
“I never said that!”
I’ve tried desperately my whole life to block his voice from my mind. I feel the pain from his words beating on my eardrums, and soon they fall into rhythm with the music that pained itself to fill the empty smoky air of this desolate bar. The ole’ jukebox gasped for breath as the song skipped and started over. Years of scratching due to people throwing each other against it made Led Zeppelin the constant theme music for this bar. My ears are begging me to only hear the notes of “Stairway to Heaven” as my father continues his speech of embarrassment.
“I’m just disappointed, that’s all. If I had known this would be what you’ve become—you’re right. I would’ve have rethought ever having you.”
“Fuck you, Pop. You hear me? Fuck you!”
“I should have killed you when you were born! You worthless, no-good, piece of –“ The sound of my father’s voice drowns in my draft Bud Light as the phone sinks to the bottom of the glass. Foam slides slyly down the side of the glass and forms a pool of despair on the bar.
Sometimes I wish he had killed me when I was born. It would have saved me the trouble of trying to do it with alcohol myself twenty-nine years later.
Cough
You can’t cough in this bar. I feel my own eyebrow raise at the sound of this lonely hack. The stagnant smell of dried hops, desperate cigar resin, and stale dreams is more appealing than a phlegm-filled cough in this bar. If you’re going to cough in this bar you might as well just lower your head beneath the cancer clouds and leave. You’ve given yourself away. Only true dedicated smokers belong in this bar.
“Another whiskey, double, neat.” I mutter, once the bartender looks at me. He gives me an odd look and pulls the cell phone out of my beer.
“Probably don’t get a decent signal in there.” I don’t find him amusing and I refuse to associate with my poison supplier. As he empties my ashtray, he continues in monotone as if reading from a script. “Cutty, I assume.”
I nodded and turn my attention back to the sullen man down the bar. The cougher. Perhaps he coughs to avoid vomiting on his mangled half-buttoned plaid shirt. Or perhaps he did it to ease the onset of tuberculosis that was breeding new members in the fleshy ash-filled cubicles of his lungs. Whatever it was, as the smoke escapes his mouth, his cough twists his entire face into an illustration of pain.
Through that pain I see him. He raises his ale to cracked lips, and as I watch the gulp that swallows his dreams day after day, foam crawls out of his mouth and trickles down five o’clock whiskers at nine a.m. Even lonely beer foam searches for an escape from this man. He feels my glance and smiles at me. As he hiccups a burp through his nose I know this man sees me too. He makes me shiver.
The only other person in here, besides the cougher and me, is the bartender. I have nothing to distract me. I have no one. I swivel around on my stool and hide myself in my American Spirit. The smoke lingers on my lips and I can’t pull myself away from this man. This man, this pathetic mangled mess of self-pity at the opposite end of the bar has drawn me in. He’s captivated me, and I have to turn back around just to feel his presence.
His beer is half-empty, and I see the shot glass in front of him. I pull my whiskey double towards me and lift it to him. I toast to this man and he raises his fingerprinted glass to me. We down the shot in silence and out of the corner of my eyes I see that we are both drowning in our own failure.
I slam my money down on the bar and swallow the rest of my beer hoping to swallow the lump of desperation in my throat. I take one last look at the cougher and as he sets his empty beer down he winks a tear filled eye at me. I smile at him and I see that he’s playing with something. A matchbook twirls through his fingers like yarn through a spinster’s wheel. It flickers in the dungeon lighting and I question if that’s all he has left in the world. I snuff my cigarette in the barren ashtray and I leave.
My steps are heavy and full of dread as I leave the darkness of my sanctuary for the bright reality outside. The movement and finality of life makes me cringe and wince in the light of day. The traffic in the street flies by, as oblivious to me as I am to the world. The sounds overwhelm my mind and I pull my hands to my ears sheltering my brain from their harshness. A rush of wind hits me like a bus and as I step into the street I feel released. A woman screams.
I turn to see her but I only catch a glimpse before she melts into the blurred canvas of the sidewalk traffic behind her. She screams again but I still can’t see her and the scream can only be heard in my left ear.
I reach for my American Spirits and as I place one in my cracked lips, I feel something in my pocket. Where my lighter should be there’s a thin paper like object. I quickly pull it out and see it’s a matchbook.
I weave it through my fingers and realize it belongs to the cougher. I open the packet and see that there are no matches left.
“Figures.” Mumbling to myself, I shove it back into my pocket. I hear sirens but their only in my left ear and I’m beginning to wonder if I’m in a catacomb. Everything around me has faded in an eternal dark blur. Nothing makes sense anymore.
This old man’s fucking with me. I thought to myself. He did something to my beer. I oughta go back and kick the shit out of him.
I stumble back on to the sidewalk. I walk through the screaming woman. I can’t feel my legs but my anger is pulling me back into that bar. I fall into the doorway. The heavy oak door slams behind me like a coffin lid and the light from the outside world is swallowed.
“Where is he!?!?!” My voice is harsh and loud, I can hear it echo in my own head. But the bartender doesn’t even acknowledge me.
“Hey! I was talking to you! Where’s that guy?” Still he ignores my demands. The screaming woman screeches through the door and the daylight temporarily blinds the bartender.
“Someone got hit! Call 911!” She screams pleadingly, and runs back out into the street. The bartender turns and runs to the back room.
Oh so he hears her!
Furious at this point, I push stools out of my way as I fly to the end of bar where the cougher had been perched. Only before I can get there, I run smack into a mirror. Putting my hand to my head I feel blood rush over my fingers and down my arm. I don’t feel any pain. I look at the mirror and I see no crack, no mark on it whatsoever.
I see my reflection.
Blood is dripping from my brain, which is exposed from the right side of my forehead deep into my receding hairline. My right eyelid is sewn shut with blood and gravel is woven into the entire right side of my face. The left side seems to be smashed into the right side. My nose is defying all laws of nature and holding it’s own against the left side of my face melting into the right. Blood trickles from my dangling right ear into my unshaven neck, soaking my unbuttoned and torn flannel shirt where my left arm hangs limp and dislocated.
I must have hit it hard.
I’m horrified that I could survive such war wounds and yet the mirror shows no signs of battle scars.
I need a cigarette.
I pull out the empty matches and as they lie in my blood stained shaking palm I remember the cougher. He has messed with my mind. I look back to where I knew he would be. That man of a dying cough and dead dreams. All I see is the mirror. In that mirror I see, not the old man, not even myself, but rather my father.
I slam my fist into the mirror and it shatters into all the pieces of my life. The bartender reappears quickly looking shaken and bewildered at the shattered glass.
Here's to you, Pop!
“Another Whiskey neat, and make it a double.”
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