CHAPTER 1
It is another quiet night for me, sitting here at my favorite place to drown out my sorrows. I’m down at good old Bleachers; it’s a nice place to go for a few early evening drinks before the college kids come in later at night to live in their party world. That is a world that has passed me by and I’ll never be able to reclaim the glory of youth. The funny thing about youth is that it is a fleeting time. A time full of energy and life, yet it is time that one knows shit about life. You feel that those days will last forever, but before you know it those days are gone and gravity takes over and the sinking feeling of growing older sinks in.
I’m sorry, I suppose it is rather rude of me to be talking to you and not introduce myself. My name is Dave Stevens, but you can call me plain old Dave. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m not the greatest person in the world when it comes to dealing with the other members of the human collective. I’ve accepted that my life will not be extraordinary, so now I just try and get by working at a job that I hate to pay off the bills that I have. I don’t really know if there is much more out there for me, so I sit here at this bar and quietly sedate myself from the uneventfulness that is my life. I try to sit in the middle of the bar every time I come here. The main reason is that I know from here it’s easier to get served and it puts me away from the areas of the bar that get crowded. It keeps me away from the people off to my right who will be playing pool or foosball; it also puts me away from the dance floor area about 20 feet behind my ass. I have no desire to be bothered by the idiots who want to grind on each other as mindlessly as a horny dog humping your leg.
It seems like this day and age is heading to a larger emphasis on conformity. The goal of life was to be a person of high status, but the season changed and it became more important to be a person with high status items. It’s not about the character inside the soul of a person that counts anymore, but what kind of image you can present to the world. Perception has become stronger than reality and that is somewhat disturbing to me. Perception is limited to the point of view that we are fed by the news, the popular trends and whatever else can influence the mind of a person. Reality is the truth in nature; it is how things really are. You can alter people’s perception of the world or yourself, but you cannot alter the reality of your nature, not even from yourself. Like me, I can make people think I’m doing good, because I have a good job, but the ultimate reality that I can’t hide from myself is that I am far from good. That’s why I swallow down my perceptions to keep myself focused on the truth that I am a slave to my own nightmares. One drink at a time I can kill the belief that I am meant for anything good in this world, maybe that’s the reality or that could even be my own perceived notion of myself, but I know that I have failed at this thing called life.
So here I am once again in the same old place that I come to hide from the people of the world. It’s an old college dive bar, so I know here that I won’t run into anyone that I know. It’s here that I have my secret rendezvous with the one thing I have loved the most in this life. Yes, it is that warm buzz that always fills me up with happiness. I may hate the people who do come in here, because they remind me of the time when I had hope for the future; how fast I learned that you can flush hope down the toilet if you want to survive in this world. The young haven’t figured that belief in a better future is the equivalent of playing Russian roulette except the gun is fully loaded, but they still flock here to blow off the stress from their studies.
There are always the same types of people out and I hate to stereotype, but they make it so fucking easy to do. You always have to deal with the screaming girl or worse yet girls. You know who I’m talking about the group of girls or one girl who has to be the center of attention, so they just start randomly screaming; sometimes louder than the music that is playing in the bar. Of course one cannot forget about the vapid GQ wannabes, you know the guys I’m talking about; the ones that all dress the same, straight out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog with their Supercuts haircut. These are the douches that think that they can pick up any girl that crosses their paths. They buy the girls shots to get them drunk in the hopes of taking advantage of them later in the evening. Lastly, you have the guys who just want to hang out with their friends and shoot some pool or darts. Those guys don’t bother me. Of course, you can’t forget me. I’m the guy who never fit in anywhere and I sit here alone and watch the living live their lives.
I don’t even know why I still come to these places. It’s a sort of pathetic thing to just hang on to a part of your life that is gone and ain’t ever coming back. I never imagined that I would still be sitting in a place like this at this point in my life. Hanging out with the youth when you are not one of them is a sad thing for a grown man to do, but I do it anyway. I miss the energy and vitality that came with my younger days and I never really learned to let go of the past and look toward the future. I still find it awkward on how much the world has changed since my heyday of partying and living in the fake world that exists in the college world. It was a lot better living in that fake world than in the real world that I live in now. Maybe that’s why I choose to escape back to this world when I get out of work, but I know that I cannot walk down this path forever.
I keep searching for a way out of this fucked up way of life of mine, but I have not been successful in doing so. The questions abound in my mind as to how I got here and why I can’t escape the grasp of the choices that I made my whole life. All the roads to the future lead back to one night not that long ago when something different happened to me. I’m used to coming here and just getting comfortably numb and then going back to my shitty apartment, but on this night I felt a glimmer of hope that I hadn’t felt in a long time. It’s amazing how your thoughts and desires can change in a moment. I hadn’t experienced much with feeling in a long time until that one night a few months back.
I was out real late one night and the crowd had cleared out. It’s very rare that I stay out until closing time, but for reasons unknown I stayed out and drank with the masses. They can be quite annoying from time to time. It’s different from when I was their age back in the late 90’s when we went out to socialize with friends, get drunk and possibly get laid. Now, you see these kids go out and are more concerned with their cellular phones than mingling with the living. I can’t even begin to imagine what these kids would do if they lost their phones for a few hours and actually had to communicate with the flesh and blood instead of interfacing with a handheld device. But I digress; so on this particular night I broke from my normal routine and stayed until the bar closed and on this particular night the beautiful, young bartender named Tara decided she was going to stay and have a few drinks after the close. Tara has been working here for about a year now and she definitely helps bring in the male bodies into the bar. Tara is 23 and she should be in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue instead of this dive. She’s the type of woman that you can only dream about with her auburn hair flowing past her shoulders and her blue eyes that you can swim in as you get lost in her gaze. Then there’s the pearly white smile that would brighten the darkest night; when she smiles I can actually feel my mood get better.
Back to that amazing night though, as I said for some reason I stayed all the way to close and Tara had said that she was in the mood to have a couple drinks after work and I decided to stick around with her. Not the brightest idea on my part considering I had work at 8AM and it was already 2:30 in the morning when she got done with her work and the bouncer for the evening had left, but one does not always make the best decisions when they are a little less than sober.
“So now you get to see what it’s like after we close,” says Tara as she placed a bottle of my favorite, Jack Daniels, in front of me and a bottle of Grey Goose vodka in front of her.
“Do you do this often, stay after and drink that is?” I clumsily ask her.
“Not really,” she responds as she raised her glass for a toast, “I usually have a drink or a quick beer as I’m cleaning up, but tonight I wanted to have a few more and now I have company.”
“If I’m good for anything it is drinking company,” I declare as I raise my glass to share the toast with her.
“Cheers,” she says to me as we clink our glasses together for the toast. She then walked around the bar and sat down on the bar stool next to me. I can’t help but stare at her long, smooth legs in her semi-short jean mini-skirt. I say semi-short, because it covered up everything, but still gave a nice view of her legs. She has a job to look sexy, which isn’t hard for her, yet she still remains in good taste with her dress. She catches my eyes looking down at her legs and I look back up at her to see her smile at me.
We sat there for a while drinking our drinks and having a few lemon drop shots. I must have lost track of time as we were just bullshitting and laughing while she was getting a little drunk and I was getting drunker, not knowing that in a few short moments I was going to get a surge of life that I didn’t even think was possible anymore.
I had become so sedated with life and my drinking that I hadn’t even thought of the possibility that I could share a beautiful moment with a beautiful woman. I wouldn’t have ever expected that I would even have a moment with her, because it would be quite obvious to anyone with working eyes that to get her would mean that I would have to be fighting someone in a higher class than me. Some fights are worth the knockout, I guess was the thought running through my mind.
“Wow! I think I’m fucked up!” Tara exclaims as she put her glass down after taking a drink.
“You think you’re fucked up; I know I’m fucked up” I say laughingly to her. “Christ, its 4:30 in the fucking morning. Looks like I’m calling in sick for work.”
“Oh, don’t be such a pussy, Dave. I’m going to class in the morning,” she says laughing at me.
“Class is one thing; work is a totally different animal. I ain’t about to sit at my desk and detox all day,” I say in a semi-serious tone.
“C’mon, do one more shot of vodka with me,” Tara says to me in an almost begging manner and I know I cannot refuse her feminine charms or another shot of free alcohol. She then proceeds to pour some sugar on two lemon slices and pour two more healthy shots of vodka for us. “Here you go,” she says as she hands me one of the shots. We both down the shot of vodka then she picks up one of the lemon slices. “Here’s some sugar and lemon to finish off your lemon drop,” she says as she put the slice in her mouth as she was biting down on the rind of the lemon slice. I am slightly confused by this for a second, but I move in to take the sugary lemon from her mouth and just as my lips closed down on the lemon I can feel her release the lemon from her mouth just moments before our lips touched. I suck the lemon dry and took it out of my mouth.
“That was nice. Different, but nice just the same,” I say to her.
“I thought you might like that,” Tara replies to me.
“I have no complaints, but I must admit that it would’ve been nicer without the lemon in your mouth,” I respond with a laugh.
“Are you saying that you want to kiss me, Dave?” Tara asks me with a hint of coyness in her voice.
I’m a pretty simple man and this moment is turning out to be the moment where my wildest dreams might come to fruition. It has been a long time for me since the last time I had kissed a girl, but that’s another story that I’m sure I will get to later.
“I guess I am trying to say that I would like to kiss you,” I somehow find the courage to say.
She looks at me for a moment, but that moment seems like forever as I wonder what she will say. She completely stuns me when she finally says, “I guess we could have one little kiss; what else is there to do right now.”
“We could do a whole lot more than just kiss,” I respond with obvious intentions of wanting something more to happen.
“Yeah, I guess I just walked into that one,” she says with a laugh. “Sorry Dave, I don’t sleep with just anyone,” she finishes with the phrase that would kill me for that evening.
“I figured that was true, but I had to try,” I respond trying hard to not sound completely dejected.
“Yeah, I imagine you had to try,” she says with a smile. “If you want, we could still have that kiss,” she says which gives me a feeling of relief.
I catch myself looking at her with a smile on my face that I’m sure is making me look like a complete idiot, but I don’t care. This girl is my Everest. There were far too many nights that I left the bar only dreaming what it would be like to kiss the beautiful Tara Bellusio. This moment is indeed a dream come true as I respond to her, “A kiss would be nice.” I can feel parts of my body begin to sweat as I was move in to give her what I would only hope be the most amazing kiss that she has ever had. That’s the funny thing about dreams; there always seems to be that moment when the dream is within arm’s reach to obtain, the only question is are you willing to step into that moment and make it come to life. Most of the time, us losers, don’t realize the moment that is presenting itself, but luckily for me on this night I know what is standing in front of me and there is no way that I am going to let this moment pass by and have a permanent place in the land of regret. This is what I am thinking as I move into the moment of destiny and then magic happened as our lips touch gently at first, and then we slowly increase the level of passion and strength that we both put into that kiss. I can feel her hand running through the hair on the back of my head as she was pulls me further into her, when suddenly she pulls away to end the kiss.
“Ok, that’s enough of that,” she says as she exhales deeply. “You’re a good kisser, Dave.”
“It helps to have a good kisser to share the kiss with,” I say in an attempted moment of trying to act cool so she wouldn’t notice how up my emotions were after that kiss. I decide that it is time to end this moment as I say to her, “Well, I think I need to go home and get some sleep. You need any help cleaning up?”
“Yeah, it’s definitely sleepy time. Thanks for offering to help, but I’ll be out of here in a few minutes,” she responds.
“You want me to wait for you and walk you home?” I ask in a second desperate attempt to keep this night going.
“Thanks again, Dave, but I only live two houses down from here, so I feel safe,” Tara says with a big smile on her face.
“Ok, well good night Tara,” I say as I start to head to the doors to leave.
“Night Dave,” Tara had said to me and that was the end of that beautiful moment in time when I got to feel what it must be like to be the king of the world. Now, I stare at this glass of Jack and Coke and wonder what that night even meant. We never spoke of that evening again. Can’t say that I blame her; she’s beautiful, young and vibrant and I’m none of the above. I’m just a guy in his 30’s that just sits here and drinks to excess. I’m sure that’s what she thinks of me. That’s the sad part to me and why I try to not think of that night with her, because I was probably someone for her to pass the time with for those few hours; whereas being alone with her was the defining moment of my life so far. Yes, I realize how pathetic that sounds, but I already admitted that I was pathetic, so back off.
On this night, I was about to go home when out of nowhere a new girl came in and went behind the bar. She’s a young blonde in her early 20’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt. She goes right over to Tara and they appear to talk for a brief moment. Tara looks over to me and I merely point to my glass and in a few seconds this new girl comes strolling up to me.
“Hi, what are you drinking tonight?” asks the new girl.
“Hello. What’s your name?” I ask her out of sheer curiosity.
“I’m Kristi. What can I get you?” she responds with a nervous tone as if she doesn’t know how to take me.
“Jack and Coke,” I respond so she can get to work and not be bothered by the likes of me.
“One Jack and Coke coming up,” she responds as she walks away from me to make me the one thing in this life that has loved me and never left me. I watch her as she comes back with my glass that is filled to the brim with the only hope that I know of getting by in this world.
“Thank you Kristi,” I respond as she places the glistening glass in front of me.
“No problem. Do you have a tab?” Kristi asks me with a smile.
“Yep, Tara usually runs a tab for me. It’s just easier that way.”
“Cool. I’ll be around if you need anything,” she says as she walks away from me as quickly as she walked into my life. Women are good at that; they walk in your life and light up your insides with the thought that maybe this is the one that could bring you happiness, but I’ve found that as quickly that they give you that happiness they walk away leaving you all by yourself. It’s all I’ve ever known of love, how quickly it will turn to shit. People don’t want to stay with one person by nature, it’s our nature to be free and conquer our surroundings, but we are forced into this socially constructed thing that is called love. We are told from our youth that there is someone out there somewhere that is meant for you. It’s one of the lies that our parents tell us as children to give us that hope in the world. It’s a ridiculous notion that out of 7 billion people aimlessly walking this planet that there is that one special person out there just for me. It is totally preposterous to believe in that fairy tale. There are so many factors and variables involved that the probability of finding one true person out there that is truly meant just for you seem moronic to believe in the idea in the first place. One wrong turn, one second that you look away or the harsh reality that if you do think you find such a person they are already with someone else are all things that happen to prevent you from finding such a nonsensical belief, but still people buy into the concept. We are all suckers for the happy ending and wish that we can have that happy ending, but the truth is there is no happy ending. In the end, we are all going to leave this life; therefore, we all have bad endings to this life.
I guess that’s why we all want to find that special someone just to have someone to spend the fleeting moments of this transitory life. You may want to ask me why I am so bitter, but that’s what life can do to some of us. Some people always seem to get everything they want without even trying, while people like me try so hard and always seem to fall short of happiness. So, I found my mistress in the bottom of a bottle of Jack. I guess I am somewhat hypocritical, because I too searched for something to make me happy and I found it. Maybe I do hope that one day I’ll find someone who is stupid enough to want to spend a lot of time with me, but I will never buy into the lie that that person is the only person out there who is perfect for me. There are people who we are more compatible with, I will not argue that point, but to believe that there is only one person out there for me I refuse to do. I’ve seen too much to know that is not the case. There are always circumstances that lead two people to share moments with and true love is not one of them. Loneliness and desperation are two much more valid reasons that will make people come together than the blind search for a soul mate. Seriously, give me a fucking break. Before that night with Tara, I hadn’t kissed a girl in a long time and here I am still living. Did I like kissing her? Of course I fucking did; that’s a biological urge to find sexual pleasure. Ah, fuck it, I need a drink.
I take down the rest of my drink with one big gulp and as I start to put the glass back down on the bar I notice Kristi heading my way. “How’s it going?” she asks me with a smile that is somewhat disarming, mostly because she is new and I haven’t a clue to her personality.
“It’s going good,” I respond with a smile. “However, I think I may be joining the rest of the people and head out of here.”
“Now why would you want to leave?” she asks me and suddenly I’m intrigued by why she is wondering why I would want to leave.
“I don’t know why I would want to leave, after all I am in the company of two beautiful girls,” I say somewhat flirtatiously.
That’s when Tara responds from the other end of the bar, “Don’t you fall for any of his fucking charms.”
“Well, fuck you too,” I respond to Tara with a laugh.
Tara laughs back at me and says, “You wish you could.”
“A guy can always wish,” I say with a smile.
“Yep, you can wish in one hand,” Kristi says as she makes the hand motion that is consistent with a guy masturbating.
I stand up and applaud Kristi for this simple gesture. “That’s the spirit, Kristi. Tara, I think she’ll fit in quite perfectly here.”
“Yeah, it’s her first day and she can put up with your shit and throw it right back at you. I think I may have to take her under my wing,” Tara responds.
I laugh loudly at this for a moment and then I point to my empty glass and say, “Hey, don’t you two have some work to do.”
“There’s a shock, your glass is fucking empty,” says Tara with a smile.
“It’s not totally empty, there’s still ice in it,” I respond.
“And let me guess, you would like some Jack and Coke to go with that ice,” Kristi responds in a smartass voice.
“You fucking betcha,” I say with a wide grin on my face like I just came up with the solution to all the world’s problems.
“You always gotta swear so much,” Kristi says as she takes my glass in her hand.
“Sorry. Don’t take it to personally; it just slips out a lot when I drink,” I say to her as I watch her walk away for the few moments that it takes her to pour me my drink.
“Yeah, he always swears too fucking much,” Tara laughingly says.
“Oh, what the fuck, you aren’t going to give her any shit for swearing. Hell, she swears as much as I do,” I say as Kristi returns with my drink.
“I do have to work with her and since she is technically my boss, I have to put up with it, but with you I can at least try to keep your mouth in check,” Kristi replies.
“Key word there is try,” I say to her as I take a drink and then reach for my pack of cigarettes and pop in one of my Camel menthol wides and take a deep inhale and exhale a cloud of smoke up into the air, so not to blow any in Kristi’s face.
Kristi smiles at me as she says, “Yeah, but you see I have the ultimate advantage around here and it is a tool that all good bartenders around the world use.”
“Oh yeah and what advantage would you have over me, water down my drink, not give me a full pour don’t forget I have an advantage with the tip card,” I say as I look her square in the eyes still trying to get a read on this new girl.
“I guess you do hold the tip in your favor, but you don’t seem like the guy that would play that card. And I would never do those tricks that you mentioned I just have the famous last words that you won’t want to hear and that is you’re shut off,” Kristi says as she gives off an almost childlike laugh at me.
I laugh as I put both hands over my heart as if pretending I’m having a heart attack, “Now, what fun would it be if you did that?”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t be fun for you, but I’m sure I would laugh my butt off if I did that to you sometime just to see the reaction that I would get,” she says to me.
“Please don’t do that, we don’t need to see an old man cry,” Tara says as she walks over to join in on the fun.
I laugh as I respond, “Worse than that, you don’t want to see an old, fat man crying,” I grab my little pouch of a beer belly as I say this to them.
“I guess you guys are right, we don’t need to see the old, fat man get all blubbery with tears,” Kristi says with that laugh of hers.
“Hey, I got a beer belly and the effects of many years of gravity’s pull on me, but I am not a beached whale,” I respond with a smile.
“If you don’t switch to Jack and Diet, you may soon become a beached whale,” Tara chimes in with her lovely smartass personality kicking in.
“Yeah, yeah, we all can’t be young and beautiful,” I say as I take another drink.
“Hey, it is a curse to be young and beautiful,” Tara says.
“It’s not a curse, it’s wonderful,” Kristi says as she does a little dance behind the bar to rub it in. There’s no sadness that I have ever experienced in my life that couldn’t have been erased by the moment of brevity that her little dance created, if only for a second; however, all I look for in life are the few fleeting moments where the world doesn’t seem so bad.
“No, the curse is being old and ugly like me,” I say in a tone that was almost begging for some kind of pity.
For a second both Tara and Kristi look at each other and laugh together as the turn back to me and say, “Exactly,” at the same time.
My mouth dropped open at this as I laugh at the two of them and say, “Wow, it’s her first night and you already got her ganging up on me with you, Tara.”
Tara put her arm around Kristi’s shoulders and says, “What can I say, I know how to train them. Kristi and I have bonded together like peanut butter and jelly.”
“Now, if only we were gay we could hook up,” Kristi says with a smile.
“We don’t have to be gay for that,” Tara responds which immediately gets my attention and my mind wandering to the thought of watching these two lovely ladies going at one another in the throes of passion. This is one of those moments where any a single heterosexual man has to make the following statement, “Can I watch?”
“NO!” they both yell in unison at me.
“Lend a hand?” I fire right back in the hopes of catching a moment that would definitely sustain my sexual appetite, maybe even for the rest of my life. What can I say I have quite a good imagination and memory and that would be an image that would last me until my grave.
“NO!” they both scream in unison once again.
“Aww, you two are no fun,” I say as I wave my hands in disgust at them in a joking manner.
“Yeah, but we’ll be having more fun than you will be having tonight,” Tara says as her Kristi both laugh at this.
“Go fuck yourselves,” I say as I laugh right back at them.
“I think that has been established for later tonight, but thanks for giving us your permission,” Kristi fires back at me and the both laugh at this.
“That’s it, I’m out of here. What do I owe?” I say to them.
Tara walks back to the cash register where she has a written bill of how much I had for the evening. Bleachers hasn’t got with the times and have advanced POS cash registers to help them keep track of their inventory and make life easier for their employees, but you can tell this isn’t the type of place where the owner isn’t concerned about the small details. You can tell this place is open because for some reason it makes a profit and that’s all that matters.
Tara comes back over and says, “$33 tonight.”
“Thirty-three dollars, what a bargain,” I say as I reach into my pocket for my money and I pull out two twenties and a five dollar bill and hand them to Tara. “You ladies keep the change.”
“Thanks Dave. You go straight home now,” Tara says.
“Yes Mom, I’m going straight home. It was nice meeting you, Kristi,” I say as I get up from my barstool and take the moment pause to gain my balance to prepare myself for the walk home. That’s one thing about drinking too much and if you are sitting down for a long time you have to have the momentary pause when you stand up, just to regain your sense of inner balance.
“It was nice meeting you, Dave. Get home safe,” Kristi says to me as I smile back at her and start heading to the front door. I pause for a second before I leave to light up another cigarette, now I am ready for short walk home as I push open the glass door and head out onto the cold city streets.
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