I’ve been sitting at McClaren’s bar for a few hours and have had about six beers. I’ve been contemplating my life and what I’ve done with it. Mostly where I’ve gone, who I’ve met, loved, and lost. Most of all, I have been envisioning how it should end. A recent thought that’s taken the forefront of my mind. The thinking you do in a place like this, alone and with some influence. However, you’re never truly alone. Establishments like this are often crowded with lost ghosts from the past. Haunting their lives, they pissed away with the regrets that paled their faces in disappointment. I’m sure most of them have done what I am doing now. It’s probably why I’m feeling confined and claustrophobic in this empty room. Or maybe it’s the atmosphere of this bar.
Bars like this, or any bar in this fabulous home we call Earth, are where you come for comfort and clarity. To regain strength at the cost of an empty bottle and yourself at the bottom. It’s also the last place I want to find myself in. Specifically, the state of mind and emotions I’m in. Not to mention that the physical presence in this place exudes that. I’m sure others here are exempting the same as I am. At least I hope I’m not the only one lost in life’s queries. I guess I will never know the thoughts of others. I am only a spectator.
Looking around the room to see who’s joined me on this adventurous night to sobriety. A younger couple is in the booth against the wall to my right. They look to be in their early twenties. They have that exhausting youth about them that I remember forgetting about at my age. That ignorance, thinking other people’s opinions matter enough to mold the idea of a person they’re not meant to be. They put up a front because they don’t know who they are. They don’t see their potential within themselves. They continue to pride themselves on primping and peacocking until reality kicks their teeth in. But I’m in my early forties and despise, to no fault of their own, today’s youngsters for living in a different time.
They’re both staring at a picture above them depicting a black-and-white rocky shoreline. I wonder why the photographer chose black and white. I understand the significance artistically; That’s not what I don’t get. I don’t understand the point of taking the picture in the first place. I’m sure if they thought that this is where their photograph would be living its life on an ugly wood paneling wall fit to belong in a seventy’s porno, in a place that reeks of desperation and whisky, they may have reconsidered taking the picture in the first place. At least, maybe they would have reconsidered keeping it for themselves.
It was probably a gift to this fine establishment’s owner, who didn’t want it and probably would have felt bad for throwing it away. So, they hung the picture in their bar.
The couple feels differently about it than I do. They have been staring at it for several minutes now. They are probably discussing artistic views and how they evoke emotions or remind them of a childhood memory, providing something to discuss. Small talk, I hate small talk.
It must be their second or third date. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was their first. The joys of being young are that they have less baggage and are resilient. They can bounce back with less damage. They can still cut loose, feel free, and not resent the burdens of life’s demands and expectations.
There is an oddly comforting feeling about that thought: youth. Despite my bitterness toward today’s kids, I must admit that something about watching these two brings me reassurance. There’s a glow about them, and it’s not just the dimly lit yellow lights above either; they genuinely seem to be happy and enjoying themselves. A feeling that I find to be rare these days. Cheers to them, and more power to those little fuckers.
I chuckle to myself at the thought of my asinine cynicism. Or what my wife used to say, “asshole-ism.” Sometimes, I can let my pessimism get the best of me. That landed me here, washing up on these shores of a liquor-filled detriment of pessimism.
I look back at the glass in front of me and take another swig of my semi-warm beer. I cringe slightly at the bitter, flat taste that satisfies my numbed taste buds. The warmth of beer reminds me that the world can be a huge dick, and nothing stays the same for very long. Change is inevitable. A wiseass once said that those who resist change will perish. Or something like that. I stole it from the movie, but they made a good point.
I take another swig, which is getting warmer and flatter by the second. When the glass hits my lips, I see a woman sitting across the bar from me through the sudsy bottom. With uncertainty, she seemed to be gesturing a gentle smile my way through the depths of my almost empty glass. I put my glass down and reassured myself that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Lo and behold, she was indeed smiling at me. I give her a gentle smirk back. Guys give that kind of subtle, nonchalant grin to pretty girls when they are uncomfortable if the attention is being directed toward them. And can’t deal with the embarrassment if that said attention was not meant for them. Men are just children with worse insecurities than fragile eggshells.
To my unflattering luck, she acknowledges my attempt and turns her eyes toward the bar top. Her smile continues to linger while lifting and receding the creases of her face and accenting her high cheekbones. She must have been sitting here long enough to finish her drink because she’s fidgeting with a straw protruding from her iced-filled tumbler.
That smile wraps around her cheeks, framing her beautiful, slim face and pushing her eyes into an innocent squint. This kind of hypnotizing beauty makes me want to search for her soul. Her beauty reminds me of my love.
I caught myself gazing a little too long and began to feel awkward. I look down quickly at my phone to check the time: a quarter after nine. Damn, I have been here for over four hours.
I placed my phone back on the bar, looked up to where the woman was sitting, and found she had company. A rugged, good-looking gentleman in his early thirties had approached her. He was dressed in what I presume was an eight-hundred-dollar business suit. He had a short, neatly trimmed beard and looked to be a spokesperson for Men’s Warehouse.
The gaze the woman gave him spoke volumes. They were the only ones in the room. She giggled, childlike, as if everything he said was a punch line to a bad joke. His response was mutual. He stared into her eyes as if she were the embodiment of heaven. The kind of regard I wanted to give to her a second ago. They stared at each other like the world could explode around them, and they wouldn’t even notice the blast.
I was flushed with envy. I disliked those thoughts and feelings. I felt like I was betraying my love because I drunkenly looked at a beautiful woman and felt jealous. This doesn’t mean anything; she loves this man. What right do I have to feel this way? It’s bullshit. It’s total bullshit, it’s all drunken sad bullshit, and it’s all my pathetic and desperate drunken bullshit. That’s why I am here, isn’t it? To mask the bullshit I wear as my skin. I guess it’s not working very well. I should’ve tried harder to conceal it, but it’s hard to staple forgiveness to a sweaty body of regret and guilt.
The gentleman commented to the angel before him and gestured to the door. She got up from her seat and reached out to grab her purse from on top of the bar. I noticed a brilliance on the woman’s left ring finger. The gentleman had raised his hand and placed it on her lower back, and I saw the same shine on his ring finger. Wedding rings, they’re a married couple and, from the looks of their happiness, probably newlyweds.
As they walked away from the bar toward the door, she never took another glance my way. I calmed as I told myself that her smile wasn’t for me. It was for her, and she was incredibly happy with him. I meant nothing, just a blip. It was a five-second memory shared by the same air in the same infused proximity that only the dust and stains in this place would ever remember. She was in love, and nothing would come between them, especially a man at a bar trying to find answers to unasked questions within an empty glass. No, when you have someone you love who can make you forget about the world around you, you hold on to that as humanly possible. There’s no greater feeling than the ecstasy of love. Some people will never get the chance to reach their hand in that cookie jar, let alone taste the unearthly delicious cookie that is love. For most, it’s the torment that haunts us when we lose that feeling and want it back more than ever, but never get the same high from another drug. They would kill for another fix of Love’s cocktail. Those two were on cloud nine and never looked down. They walked out the door into the vast world and disappeared from my existence.
I take a breath in through my nose. I catch the smell of mixed liquors collected within the drip mats on top of the bar before me. The scent makes me think of morality and the filth it dredges up. It reminds me that we all become a mat that’s covered in poisonous bullshit for someone else’s needs or, even worst, pleasures.
Anybody who can plunder money at ease and not care about the repercussions it can cause to anyone around them enrages and disgusts me. But in all fairness, not all those being plundered are always the victims. Some don’t need to be in a place like this if they’re nickel and diming their way through life, but it happens. No sorrows go unsung without a little liquid courage to loosen up the vocal cords and relax their lack of ambition. To those I feel less sympathetic for. But hey, I’ve yet to walk a mile in their shoes, so what do I know, and who am I to judge? I have my demons and my rap sheet of disgruntled issues and regrets to deal with. We’re all victims of circumstance in life. Our strengths come from learning how to whack those curveballs out of the park whenever life throws them at us. Our determination to progress in life gets us out of the mud and into a nice hot shower in a lovely, cozy home where you can sit back, relax, and have a few drinks to unwind. And if we’re even luckier, there might be a family there too.
If you work and bust your ass off to earn something, you gain more appreciation for it, and you feel more accomplishments in life. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always reward those who work to the bone to get somewhere in life. Sometimes, that curveball is a heat-seeking missile, and that mud is concrete. That is why we look for love and lust for love, and we will continue to have heartbreak after heartbreak until we feel hope and optimism come naturally to us. Until we can think confidently that the world doesn’t suck that bad. But until we feel that way, we’ll just be sitting here at the bar with a couple of liquid friends that know how to comfort us without ever saying a GODDAMN thing. And we’ll be slurring sea shanties loud and proud with the demons next to us by the night’s end. Hallelujah and Merry fucking Christmas.
Uh, God, I must be drunk. I need to leave. I thought I had a purpose for coming here tonight, but now I’m unsure. Whatever that purpose, I am too drunk to realize it. I just found myself winding up here at a bar I’ve never been to because my wife, Amelia, always said she would like to check it out every time we drove by. Oh, Amelia, I say under my breath. It hurts when her name leaves the tip of my tongue.
I pick up my glass and finish the beer I have left. It’s mostly backwash at this point, but I’m paying for that backwash, so I won’t let it go to waste. I set the empty glass down and slid it to the edge of the rail with my index finger. I grabbed my wallet and opened it up. A woman with beautiful, dark, wavy hair was lying in the middle, protected by a plastic sheath. She has A smile that could blind the sun and a pair of green eyes that pierce the soul. I thumbed over her face as if somehow, through this picture, I could touch her skin. A tiny sting forms from the corner of my left eye. I turned over the wallet to its side and grabbed the four twenties between the leather folds. I threw the cash by the empty glass and stood up from my stool, wiping the tears away from my face. I probably gave the bartender more than the tab, but I’m sure he’ll appreciate the tip. Besides, what use do I have for the material anymore?
Unsteadiness surfaces as I stand. I take another deep breath to gain composure and glance around the room one last time. I spot an older man, who I presume is in his eighties, sitting at a table in the back corner next to the jukebox. He was perched in the chair with his hands overlapping on the top of his cane. His eyes looked closed as if he was sleeping, but I noticed he was tapping one of his fingers against the cane. He’s not asleep; he’s enjoying the music. I recognized the song. It’s Somewhere over the Rainbow, not the Louie Armstrong version; this was the ukulele-playing Hawaiian guy. I take a moment to listen to it myself. I close my eyes and sync in with the music. I hear the lyrics being sung.
I feel warm and flushed from the emotions growing within me. I’ve heard this song a thousand times before, and it has never had any significance to me. This time, it hits a nerve. I opened my eyes and saw an older woman about the same age walk up to the man. She bent over and wrapped her delicate little arms around him. She kisses his wrinkly cheek. With pure surprise and joy, he leans in and returns the kiss. The smile on the older man’s face is incredible. His smile speaks with clarity. He tells me that he could die this very instant and never lose that bliss. The sign of true happiness. These two are the kind of people who have been together for over forty years. They’re the kind that set up grave plots next to each other, so even in death, they’ll rot next to each other while their souls are bound together in heaven. It paints a pretty picture, and I hope it’s true for their sake.
I turn away and walk toward the back hallway leading to the restrooms. I turn to push open the men’s room door, but stop when the bright fluorescent lights sneak through the crack and accost my eyes. My only defense is to squint and look away as quickly as possible. I stood there, closing my eyes from the sudden paralyzing attack. The sting galvanized the dizziness from earlier. I feel nauseated, but I’m not sure if it’s the effects of the drinks or the emotions I felt arising from the song. It’s all harshly blending. I take a few deep breaths to regain my senses. I release the door, letting it shut on its own.
I open my eyes and continue to the end of the hallway to the backdoor exit. The exit sign’s red luminescence acts like a beacon in the dark, flickering on and off chaotically before resting to black. I ignored the now-shaded signal and walked into the back parking lot, where it had started raining. The cool, wet air against my face feels good and helps sober me up. I scout in the static rain, looking for my vehicle. I spot it and dash directly to my car, dodging every raindrop I can. I know it was an attempt that was futile, but I tried anyway. As I approach my car door, I reach into my pocket and grab my keys; as I struggle to pull them free, I slip, losing my balance on the wet pavement. I curse as I hit the ground and immediately push myself up onto my hands and knees. I look down, keys still in my hand. My wallet had fallen out and lay open in front of me. That beautiful woman stares at me as the raindrop magnifies her face. I grab her and stand up. I use the car as a crutch to stabilize myself. Quickly sliding the key into the lock, I unlock the door and fall in, slamming the car door behind me. Trying to collect myself by wiping away the droplets from my face, I silently sit for a minute. Nothing more than fiercely pouring rain, pounding like a hammer on the rooftop of my car.
Drenched in my seat, I put my wallet on the dashboard on its side to see my beautiful lady. I stare at the picture before pulling a folded-up piece of paper from behind it. A few drops of water fall from my hair onto the paper. The dry, inky words soak up each water drop as they fall and hit their marks, swelling the letters as I read them. Water droplets run down my cheeks, leaving me uncertain whether it’s rain or tears. The truth became clear as my vision blurred as if I were staring at a smeared Van Gogh painting. Teardrops thudded upon the letter as hastily as the rain outside. I couldn’t control myself anymore; I couldn’t hold it in any longer as a tidal wave of emotions crashed into me, pulling me into the cold, dark undertow. I tried my best to regain my sight enough to read the letter, but after the first sentence, I shattered like an asteroid penetrating a star made of glass.
Nathaniel,
My dearest husband. Our love is as strong as the tightest rope aboard a large wooden ship sailing the deadliest of seas. Our passion has been incredible, and you have helped me fulfill my life in places I never thought needed to be filled. You’ve always cared for, understood, and supported me more than anyone. I could not ask for anything more than when you continued to do the same for our family, no matter what it cost you. But things aren’t the same anymore. I’m afraid, and no matter how hard you try or how far you go out of your way, it’s just not enough anymore. After our beautiful Ellie was cruelly taken away from us, I couldn’t stay as strong as you. She was only sixteen years old and had an entire life ahead of her, and in the blink of an eye, she was gone. I know you were just as enraged and broken as I, but I didn’t just break; I disintegrated. I am too empty. I have been wandering the path, hopelessly lost without our daughter. I don’t feel the warmth of the sun anymore. I don’t see colors as bright as I used to when she was here. I know you’ve tried your damnedest, and that may have been your best, and I love you even more for that; I sincerely do. But it just wasn’t enough, and I am sorry for this letter I am writing you. I have no pieces to be put back together in the same way. Too much of me would still be missing. I will not let you continue to strive to carry us both. That is too much weight and guilt that no man should ever shoulder, no matter how powerful they are. Please know, this is not your fault. The pain and hollowness need to end. I have become nothing more than an empty vessel. Please don’t hate me, but this is my goodbye, Love. I wish I knew another way: my dearest Nathaniel, my true love.
– Amelia
Finding her in the bathroom with an empty bottle of painkillers and a razor blade was as bad as me flipping the car that took the life of our sweet little girl.
I tried to wipe away the tears, but the floodgates were open. There was no stopping the juggernaut of pain and despair I’ve endured. So, I’m giving up. I stop trying to wipe the tears. I stopped looking at the letter. I stopped trying to hold any inch of composure I thought I had left inside of me, mind, body, and soul, and I collapsed into it all. I’ve lost everything that meant anything to me and am done without them both. The two loves of my life are gone, and I am here to bask in the pain for the rest of my life. I can’t do that. I can’t live that way. They made me whole and gave my life meaning. They made my dreams come true, and now they have become torturous memories of a beautiful, loving past I called my life. I was a wonderful father and a wonderful husband.
Why?
Why did this have to happen? I miss them both so much.
I lean over and open the glove box. My hand shook uncontrollably while retrieving and pulling out a black 9mm hand pistol—the color melds within the darkness of the car. The weight feels so heavy in my shaking hands, but the weight of the gun isn’t as heavy as the guilt and sorrow I’ve been living with, and the color is as black and bleak as any future of mine may hold.
It’s time to end this.
I point the cold barrel at my wet right temple. I continue to shed tears as I look at my wife. Like a running river, more tears flow as I look down at my daughter, my Ellie, sitting in front of Amelia, her arms wrapped around her, protecting her from the world’s ill intent and holding onto her from her unthinkable fate.
My breathing becomes overwhelmingly harder, making it impossible to catch my breath. I pull the hammer back on the pistol until I hear a click, and it stays. I feel my heart race and my blood boil as the adrenaline courses through my veins. Part of me is excited and scared, but I can’t tell what drives me tonight. All I feel is a sense of hopelessness and sadness. Rage and anger are beyond this point. A waterfall of tears persists in forcing its malice down my face; as I squeeze the trigger, I stare directly into both of their eyes. Finding no protest from them, I pull a little tighter as their smiles look inviting, pleading for me to join them again. I feel the emptiness that has become my life slip into silence as fear rears its ugly head.
CLICK…BOOM!
I feel nothing.