Nov 13
Of course it’s not
You’re sitting in this bar, this sad, smokey place where fuck ups go to forget that they’re fuck ups, at least for a few hours. You’re sitting at the bar proper, front and center. The lights above you are blue, making all the the liquor bottles shelved in front of you look soft and peaceful. You wonder if you look soft and peaceful, you doubt it.
You order another vodka shot, slam it back. It burns going down, it warms your face. You feel a little numb, you like the numb. Numb, the off-brand version of contentment. Numb, of course, leads to drunk, the off-brand version of happy. This shot makes seven dead shots, lined across the bar. Seven not so deadly sins.
There are maybe ten people in the whole place. It’s 1 AM on a Monday, odds are nobody has a job to go to in the morning. People are mostly sitting in the booths behind you, forest green leather, brown wood. There’s a candle on every table, neon signs on the walls, picking up the slack for the candles, telling people what poison to drink. A couple in the corner next to the door is making out like there’s no tomorrow. They’re all heat, and close, and immediacy. She’s got the guy up against the wall, holding his arms back, shoving him hard against the wall, her shoulder-length brown hair thrashing this way and that. She’s fucking the guy without actually fucking him. It’s kind of surreal, maybe they know something you don’t know. Maybe tomorrow isn’t coming, you just didn’t get the memo, or the e-mail, or the flyer. Or maybe you’re just lonely and somber-like. You wonder if you’ll ever feel anything like that again, that sort of intensity with another person.
You had this idea of what your life would be like by right now, and this sure as shit wasn’t it. Sitting here, alone in a crowd, getting shit-faced, this was not the plan. Getting shit-facd as often as you do was not part of the plan. Drunk is just so much easier anymore. Alcohol kills feelings, which is the idea, because everything you feel is dark, empty, lonely. You’ll sleep alone tonight, and you know it. Tonight, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, for you don’t know how long. No one will hold you close, no one will kiss you slow.
Drunk as you are, so drunk you can hardly feel your face, in that place between drunk and oblivion, you still feel time flying through you. You always feel it. Time is like this surprise amount of cash in your wallet. You can’t know how much you have to spend, you just know when it runs out. The wallet goes empty, and that’s it. This terrifies you.
You’re afraid you’re going to end so far away from everything you ever wanted. You’re afraid that the time you spend getting where you want to go is wasted time. You’re afraid that everywhere you go will keep feeling empty, empty even when you get to the last place. You drown yourself in liquor hoping to make time leave you be awhile, to make you forget your wants that feel so far away, but it never works. Not really.
You should get up, go for the door. You should breathe in the cool night air, get so far away from fixes that don’t fix. You order another shot, maybe this one is the one that will make it better, but it’s not. Of course it’s not.
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2 Comments so far
This one is great! I know that feeling of doing something destructive and not being able to stop.
“Numb, the off-brand version of contentment.”
I like that.
<3