Nobody Leered.
After months of living and drinking in Swissvale, I discovered a bar with an electronic darts game. To me, this was the ultimate fun: drinking and playing darts. It reminded me of college and The One, who taught me how to play. Even better, the machine kept score so I didn’t have to try to remember numbers when I was too wasted to think.
I’ll call the bar Fannie’s, because I can’t remember its name. Drinking at Fannie’s meant that I could play darts all evening and – drum roll, please – not have to pay for my fun with sex. When I went to Fannie’s, I paid for my own drinks and always went home alone.
The real reason for this is it seemed to be a guy’s bar – a place where groups of guys congregated. And I don’t mean “grabbed a drink after work” groups of guys. I mean “retired ten or twenty years ago” groups of guys.
Nobody bothered me at Fannie’s. They watched me run back and forth from the bar to the dart machine, but only in a vague sort of way. Nobody leered at me. Occasionally people bought me a drink, but we didn’t hold court over it. I thanked them and went back to being alone.
After many years of drinking to the point of losing complete control of my decision-making power, and after latching on to so many, many men who took advantage of my powerlessness, I finally recognized that the only safe thing for me to do was to drink alone.
My dream was to buy two, three, maybe four cases of beer and hole up in my own home. With a couple of cartons of cigarettes, I figured this would allow me to do what I truly wanted to do: listen to my albums. I wanted to lose myself in music, chain-smoke without judgment from onlookers, and sing as loud as I wanted to sing without anyone telling me to “turn it down.”
That was the dream.
I had already forgotten that I’d lived exactly like that with Larry, during those hours after the bars closed. I had already forgotten that it had been the loneliest time of my life.
Somehow, though, I never bought cases of beer. Somehow I ended up hanging out alone at Fannie’s.
I regularly saw a guy who intrigued me – a gray-haired fellow who could have been 45 or 95. He looked so sad, sitting at his regular table, his eyes both vacant and longing. I would smile at him as I passed on my way to refill my glass, and he would lift the corners of his lips in return. Every time I went to Fannie’s I saw him, and every time I saw him, he seemed sad.
He broke my heart in a new and different way. I wanted to help.
So one night as I strode past the sad old guy, I stopped.
I smiled directly at him and he looked up, his eyes momentarily bright. Then I leaned down and kissed him. I kissed him for a solid minute, then two, maybe three. Finally I rested my forehead against his forehead, my left hand on his neck, my eyes still closed, vaguely aware of a murmur from the other old guys at his table.
Then I stood and smiled again. He beamed at me with a true, happy smile. I blew him a kiss and walked away.
Standing at the bar, I hesitated.
Then I put down my empty glass and I walked out the front door. I never went back.