Loop Back in Anger
Apr. 30th, 2013 01:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonThe Jack and Diet sits before me on the counter. Three ice cubes float still in a pool black as Styx with a lime crescent moon perched over its rim. Beads of condensation run down the surface of the glass, they refract back the ambient lighting of the bar, sparkling neon blue and emergency exit red. Unsullied by my lips, it waits silently to be breached. Waiting the way the bejeweled statue of a laughing monkey waits in a death-trap infested temple. Waiting the way the wrong thing to say waits for the right person to come along to say it to. Waiting the way a dream waits to be forgotten.
Just one sip. That's all I want really. A little splash to bleach out the timid stuck in my smile, a quick taste to wash the nerves down and maybe just one more after that so I can try out laughing again. Then, well, fuck it, maybe just one drink to be honest. Since I'm here and it's already paid for and don't you know there's winos out there who would literally brawl a man to be where I'm sitting right now. After that, who knows, one for all the friends I wish were with me now.
And that's a lot of friends.
But looking at it glimmer there, isolated dead center in a crisp white diamond napkin, it becomes the frozen shadow of a chakra. Perfect and menacing. A whirling pool of light collapsing upon itself sucking and grinding energy into raw mass. A dark Mandala woven out of black holes and labyrinthine threads. Holy as a box of nails with a crystal hammer on top, sacred as the carrion beetles in a high priest's tomb. Too perfect to touch, too perfect not to.
I'm a little boy at a gallery opening with my father in Manhattan. Along with the Planetarium and the Museum of Natural History, art galleries were as close to a thing like church as my folks would take me. The gallery was filled with mysteries beyond my comprehension, a revelation spoken to me through the eyes. There was silence the like of which I had never heard. A willed hush, born not of regret or duty like in school, but charging with reverence. Behold my virgin eyes wide stumbling across landscapes of explosions, juxtapositions of catalogues splattered with acrylic, the blood of winter dawns and clear blue afternoons slashed across the canvas. All of them just inches from me and my father's stern warning's to never, ever lay so much as a single finger on them.
A warning quickly swallowed by the serpent coiling up from the roots beneath my thoughts, slithering down the arm to spread wide the fingers at their side. Look around. All the adults lost in either conversation or contemplation of the works before them. Muffled assessments and studious grumblings. The sound of one hand clapping itself on the back. Look in front - a nude woman carved out of strokes of ultraviolet wrestles with a monstrous lion. No not wrestles... my arm lifts, hands pickpocket steady and reaching forward towards her. To make contact. Possessed of this unexplainable urge to have my touch press against her flesh, to know finally the secret of the mysteries before me, to rend down this veil of whispers and deliver truth. The inches close as both the violet woman and the lion's intimate battle grows larger. Consumes away my attention, blotting out the nervous periphery glances of occupied father and oblivious crowd.
The truth mine, the violet woman seems to be looking at me. Her lips move. She begins to speak...
"I don't care you're acting like a total bitch!" This young woman barks into her phone as she bursts through the bar's front doors. "No, I didn't say you were a bitch. I said you were acting like a bitch, don't put words in my mouth. You know I fucking hate that. Yeah, well, I really appreciate you being there when I need you."
She snaps the phone closed and growls. She storms over to the counter, grabs a seat, call the bartender over by name, tells him she doesn't even want to talk about it and doesn't order so much as demand a well whiskey on the rocks.
The bartender complies and she waits. She in denim Capri's, faded t-shirt with a band logo barely discernible, red low top Chucks and a tattoo of a Converse star inked on the ankle. The rest of her looked exactly like the type of person who would enter an otherwise empty bar shouting raw drama into the psychosphere.
The bartender for his part looked exactly like a man used to having such outbursts thrust upon him, in general yes, but also with this particular client before. He wore all black with a matching baseball cap so as to resemble what a baseball player on a team of all chimney sweeps would look like. Over this he wore a white apron with the air of a butcher.
The drink's served. She pulls a wallet out of a vinyl hand bag with a black and white photo of Lily Monster emblazoned across its surface. She pulls a twenty out of a leather wallet with a flaming eyeball staring back at me. Her last twenty. The bartender takes the money and stays by the cash register pretending to watch the movie broadcasted from the TV mounted in the corner of the bar. She pulls out her phone and I can hear her fingers pounding ruthless invectives to whomever it was she was just talking to.
I look away from her and back down at the Jack and Diet. Perfection sparkles and confidence beckons. Sweet words dwelling at the bottom where only the straw can reach.
I pick the drink up in my hand and casually tell it: "Loop back in anger."
She pauses in her text, takes a good look at me and sums me up with an exhausted roll of her eyes before settling her concerns back into her phone.
"No, I get it." I continue, watching the cubes rattle across black waters and the vague distorted reflection of my face peering back at me. "Being pissed at your friends, your family, your loves for not giving you the respect you demand but can't give yourself. They don't know what we've been told. How it keeps repeating itself long after we want to stop hearing it and sometimes the only thing that shuts it up is the company of someone who cares. But sometimes they can't be there and it hurts and all you can do is... well, 'loop back in anger.'
The bartender looks over his shoulder and arches a brow before shaking his head to dive back into the movie. A very large man in guy-liner is mowing down a brigade of third world soldiers. Subtitles dutifully notes: "Primal scream and sound of large machine gun firing."
If she's heard a word I've said she gives no indication. She pounds away at the phone. Then turns it off and dumps it back in her handbag. She looks at her drink, picks it up and downs it with one gulp. She rummages back through the bag for a pack of cigarettes, lights one up and holds up the empty glass in the air until the bartender notices. Only when he takes her glass for a refill does she look over at me again.
"Okay, so like, I don't know you." She puffs a burst of rancid smoke between us, "And I really don't care about what you think I, much less 'we' have been through. Because you don't know me. You don't know what this about or why it's happening. But you need to unload all this crap on me in your head because you have no else to talk to here. Or anywhere else I'm guessing. Well, that's what he's for." She thrusts a finger at the bartender.
"Leave me out of this...," he sighs and pumps up the volume on the machine gun fest.
"So now that we've cleared that up, is there anything else you need to get off your chest?"
"Yeah." I get up and walk over to her. I lay the Jack and Diet down in front of her, carefully as if it would explode or come to life to bite me. My hand still, reaching for the violet woman. The danger burning on the back of my neck. The sense that any second someone will spot me. The alarm will sound. Chaos ensues. A patron faints. The painting bursts into flames. My father's disappointed hand settling across my shoulder. The violet woman's lips trembling to impart her secret...
"This one's on me." I say simply with a smile more at home at a funeral than a bar.
And that's that... I walk out and at least for one more night manage not to look back.
Just one sip. That's all I want really. A little splash to bleach out the timid stuck in my smile, a quick taste to wash the nerves down and maybe just one more after that so I can try out laughing again. Then, well, fuck it, maybe just one drink to be honest. Since I'm here and it's already paid for and don't you know there's winos out there who would literally brawl a man to be where I'm sitting right now. After that, who knows, one for all the friends I wish were with me now.
And that's a lot of friends.
But looking at it glimmer there, isolated dead center in a crisp white diamond napkin, it becomes the frozen shadow of a chakra. Perfect and menacing. A whirling pool of light collapsing upon itself sucking and grinding energy into raw mass. A dark Mandala woven out of black holes and labyrinthine threads. Holy as a box of nails with a crystal hammer on top, sacred as the carrion beetles in a high priest's tomb. Too perfect to touch, too perfect not to.
I'm a little boy at a gallery opening with my father in Manhattan. Along with the Planetarium and the Museum of Natural History, art galleries were as close to a thing like church as my folks would take me. The gallery was filled with mysteries beyond my comprehension, a revelation spoken to me through the eyes. There was silence the like of which I had never heard. A willed hush, born not of regret or duty like in school, but charging with reverence. Behold my virgin eyes wide stumbling across landscapes of explosions, juxtapositions of catalogues splattered with acrylic, the blood of winter dawns and clear blue afternoons slashed across the canvas. All of them just inches from me and my father's stern warning's to never, ever lay so much as a single finger on them.
A warning quickly swallowed by the serpent coiling up from the roots beneath my thoughts, slithering down the arm to spread wide the fingers at their side. Look around. All the adults lost in either conversation or contemplation of the works before them. Muffled assessments and studious grumblings. The sound of one hand clapping itself on the back. Look in front - a nude woman carved out of strokes of ultraviolet wrestles with a monstrous lion. No not wrestles... my arm lifts, hands pickpocket steady and reaching forward towards her. To make contact. Possessed of this unexplainable urge to have my touch press against her flesh, to know finally the secret of the mysteries before me, to rend down this veil of whispers and deliver truth. The inches close as both the violet woman and the lion's intimate battle grows larger. Consumes away my attention, blotting out the nervous periphery glances of occupied father and oblivious crowd.
The truth mine, the violet woman seems to be looking at me. Her lips move. She begins to speak...
"I don't care you're acting like a total bitch!" This young woman barks into her phone as she bursts through the bar's front doors. "No, I didn't say you were a bitch. I said you were acting like a bitch, don't put words in my mouth. You know I fucking hate that. Yeah, well, I really appreciate you being there when I need you."
She snaps the phone closed and growls. She storms over to the counter, grabs a seat, call the bartender over by name, tells him she doesn't even want to talk about it and doesn't order so much as demand a well whiskey on the rocks.
The bartender complies and she waits. She in denim Capri's, faded t-shirt with a band logo barely discernible, red low top Chucks and a tattoo of a Converse star inked on the ankle. The rest of her looked exactly like the type of person who would enter an otherwise empty bar shouting raw drama into the psychosphere.
The bartender for his part looked exactly like a man used to having such outbursts thrust upon him, in general yes, but also with this particular client before. He wore all black with a matching baseball cap so as to resemble what a baseball player on a team of all chimney sweeps would look like. Over this he wore a white apron with the air of a butcher.
The drink's served. She pulls a wallet out of a vinyl hand bag with a black and white photo of Lily Monster emblazoned across its surface. She pulls a twenty out of a leather wallet with a flaming eyeball staring back at me. Her last twenty. The bartender takes the money and stays by the cash register pretending to watch the movie broadcasted from the TV mounted in the corner of the bar. She pulls out her phone and I can hear her fingers pounding ruthless invectives to whomever it was she was just talking to.
I look away from her and back down at the Jack and Diet. Perfection sparkles and confidence beckons. Sweet words dwelling at the bottom where only the straw can reach.
I pick the drink up in my hand and casually tell it: "Loop back in anger."
She pauses in her text, takes a good look at me and sums me up with an exhausted roll of her eyes before settling her concerns back into her phone.
"No, I get it." I continue, watching the cubes rattle across black waters and the vague distorted reflection of my face peering back at me. "Being pissed at your friends, your family, your loves for not giving you the respect you demand but can't give yourself. They don't know what we've been told. How it keeps repeating itself long after we want to stop hearing it and sometimes the only thing that shuts it up is the company of someone who cares. But sometimes they can't be there and it hurts and all you can do is... well, 'loop back in anger.'
The bartender looks over his shoulder and arches a brow before shaking his head to dive back into the movie. A very large man in guy-liner is mowing down a brigade of third world soldiers. Subtitles dutifully notes: "Primal scream and sound of large machine gun firing."
If she's heard a word I've said she gives no indication. She pounds away at the phone. Then turns it off and dumps it back in her handbag. She looks at her drink, picks it up and downs it with one gulp. She rummages back through the bag for a pack of cigarettes, lights one up and holds up the empty glass in the air until the bartender notices. Only when he takes her glass for a refill does she look over at me again.
"Okay, so like, I don't know you." She puffs a burst of rancid smoke between us, "And I really don't care about what you think I, much less 'we' have been through. Because you don't know me. You don't know what this about or why it's happening. But you need to unload all this crap on me in your head because you have no else to talk to here. Or anywhere else I'm guessing. Well, that's what he's for." She thrusts a finger at the bartender.
"Leave me out of this...," he sighs and pumps up the volume on the machine gun fest.
"So now that we've cleared that up, is there anything else you need to get off your chest?"
"Yeah." I get up and walk over to her. I lay the Jack and Diet down in front of her, carefully as if it would explode or come to life to bite me. My hand still, reaching for the violet woman. The danger burning on the back of my neck. The sense that any second someone will spot me. The alarm will sound. Chaos ensues. A patron faints. The painting bursts into flames. My father's disappointed hand settling across my shoulder. The violet woman's lips trembling to impart her secret...
"This one's on me." I say simply with a smile more at home at a funeral than a bar.
And that's that... I walk out and at least for one more night manage not to look back.