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A Tribunal of Furies
Jun. 24th, 2011 03:29 amEver show up at the bar with a group of friends, grab a table, get yourself a few drinks deep, hit the head and come back to realize they’ve all abandoned you to sit at other tables? Not only that, but they’ve left you in the company of their jilted exes, current love interests and future mistresses to entertain in their absence? With some of them drunk, some of them pissed off, some of them both and all of them crazy?
Well if you have, then you know the only thing to do in this situation is to start ordering the drinks faster and ensure to remind the waitress that they’ll be placed on your buddies’ tab. In the meantime, until the whiskey numbs the sharp edges off the awkward silence, you ride it out as best you can.
This was a lesson I would have to learn the hard way: one drink at a time.
There were three of them, all huddled shoulder to shoulder along the wooden bench across the table. I sat solo, pariah style, with my back to the door. That was my first mistake. Every good gun-fighter keeps an eye on the door to see who’s gonna walk in and every bad one does so they can bolt for the exit without delay.
Left relative to me was a red-headed hand grenade – all freckles and laughs. The middle was an old friend’s grin and a melodic accent. To the right was the crow feathered hair and a mischievous smile charge with arcane wisdom.
They spoke amongst themselves in a private language whose words were the same as mine but seemingly referenced a vast store of cultural references beyond my humble experience. One of them would say a name and then the second would nod while the third laughed or snorted or coughed a warning with eyes darted my way. One of them would begin telling a story and the third would shout the ending and the second would begin narrating the prelude. Their voices went ventriloquist on me by drink number three, switching or overlapping or speaking as one . By four they no longer needed their lips to communicate – shit had gone telepathic.
One thing was clear. They were starting to get impatient and with good reason. Each and every one of them had been invited here by one of my AWOL friends.
The worst part was having to sit there while watching said friends scattered safely around the bar. One was chatting up Whassisface from ‘that’ show over at Who the Fuck Knows Where Theatre. Another, wolfing down a hamburger the size of a child’s head just to give the liquor something to wash down two booths down. Another, perched on the stool over at the bar blatantly hitting on some giggling young thing - all honey and electricity. Each one of them periodically glancing over at the Tribunal of Furies that surrounded me, popping a quick recon to see if the coast was clear, only to shudder at the palpable aura of judgment they emanated collectively and rabbited back to the harbors of less treacherous distractions.
It should also be noted that each of them was smart enough to be facing the nearest exit.
When I started drink number four they were discussing one of the Three’s upcoming performance piece. It involved her and her new (hissed in the direction of her ex) boyfriend. It was called something like “A Self Portrait in Menstrual Envy” and involved her ‘new’ boyfriend stripping naked, ritualistically slashing himself with a knife and then rolling around a white sheet. All while she would beat an overturned oil drum while shrieking. This reminded another one of the Three of the time she dated a Renny from Athens who painted with his own blood and the other of a similar piece she saw gypsy-roaming around Berlin.
By the end of drink number four I was completely lost. The Ariadne’s thread of the conversation led me through a narrative maze that seemingly ended at a door that opened up to a brick wall. A few hits snuck during a bathroom break dulled the dread down some and I headed back in flying suborbital over Planet Jack.
It was only when drink number five arrived that I realized one of them was talking to me.
I zoned back in quick –
“… bet he doesn’t even know we’re here.” One of them smiled while playfully waving her hand before me as if snapping me out of a trance. The other two snickered and snorted gray plumes of cigarette smoke.
“S’okay…,” with a dashing wink I gave my best impression of someone clever, “sometimes I don’t even know if I’m here.”
None of them laughed. None of them smiled. Tough room and getting tougher.
One began with a polite, “So…”
“… I hear you’re a writer?” The Middle asked and followed with a cursory, “Is that right?”
“It is.” The Third answered and lit my cigarette.
“What do you write?”
I inhaled my smoke, gave it some thought and replied: “Thoughts, reflections, parables, absurd anecdotes, neo-memoir, prose, fragments of short stories that together form a completely new…”
One cut me off short: “He writes a blog.”
Two inquired: “Oh is that him?”
Three confirmed: “Yeah.”
“Heh,” snorted Two.
I peacock bristled with wounded academic pride: “Actually, I see it more as an online writer’s notebook, a scrapbook of ideas and images if you will…”
“I’ve read some of your stuff… and some of it’s okay…”
“...sometimes.”
“Sometimes not.””
“Interesting though…”
“… but in all your stories how come you never write about us?”
“Yeah, how come the guys all have cool nicknames?"
“Magpie!”
“West!”
“Teddy Bear!”
“But you never mention us…”
“That’s because he only writes about the women who fuck him.”
Laughs all around on my tab.
I nodded politely and waited for the snickering to subside: “Well to be fair, if I wrote about the ones who wouldn’t I wouldn’t have time to write about anything else now would I?”
Their drunken laughs flattened with stern clarity into polite smiles.
One of them shook their head sadly, another sipped her drink, a third doused her cigarette.
“Oh Jack…”
“… hasn’t anyone ever told you?”
“There’s no worse fate that can befall a man…”
“… than to suffer pride without confidence.”
I blinked at them and felt the buzz evaporate off my senses.
“Sorry Jack…”
“… we can’t all be muses.”
“But it doesn’t mean we’re not here…”
“… just because we’re not here just for you.” .
And at that moment my buddies flocked back to the table, simultaneous through the midnight weekend din, seeking to settle up or get more fucked up. I vanished beneath the glare of their personalities. Withdrew watchful back into the shadow. The ladies reconciled with those who summoned them with kisses, curses and demands for a round on them.
I slipped out of the commotion unseen, leaving a few bucks on the table for my first two drinks and enough for a sizable tip for the rest. I got jostled by the foot traffic as I squirmed free of the claustrophobic scene. Night air struck the lungs with a gasp and no matter how hard I tried to shake their words off they just kept resettling over my thoughts. .
Rain started up, because that’s what happens to writers when they write about themselves being exiled… it pours. Slinking away, I made my way back up to the Witch House with all the grace of a half drowned cur. Their lesson soaked in. Deep. Pride without Confidence. Can’t Be Muses All. The verdict of the Tribunal of Furies spoken and delivered. The weight of their sentence would be mine to bear.
Well if you have, then you know the only thing to do in this situation is to start ordering the drinks faster and ensure to remind the waitress that they’ll be placed on your buddies’ tab. In the meantime, until the whiskey numbs the sharp edges off the awkward silence, you ride it out as best you can.
This was a lesson I would have to learn the hard way: one drink at a time.
There were three of them, all huddled shoulder to shoulder along the wooden bench across the table. I sat solo, pariah style, with my back to the door. That was my first mistake. Every good gun-fighter keeps an eye on the door to see who’s gonna walk in and every bad one does so they can bolt for the exit without delay.
Left relative to me was a red-headed hand grenade – all freckles and laughs. The middle was an old friend’s grin and a melodic accent. To the right was the crow feathered hair and a mischievous smile charge with arcane wisdom.
They spoke amongst themselves in a private language whose words were the same as mine but seemingly referenced a vast store of cultural references beyond my humble experience. One of them would say a name and then the second would nod while the third laughed or snorted or coughed a warning with eyes darted my way. One of them would begin telling a story and the third would shout the ending and the second would begin narrating the prelude. Their voices went ventriloquist on me by drink number three, switching or overlapping or speaking as one . By four they no longer needed their lips to communicate – shit had gone telepathic.
One thing was clear. They were starting to get impatient and with good reason. Each and every one of them had been invited here by one of my AWOL friends.
The worst part was having to sit there while watching said friends scattered safely around the bar. One was chatting up Whassisface from ‘that’ show over at Who the Fuck Knows Where Theatre. Another, wolfing down a hamburger the size of a child’s head just to give the liquor something to wash down two booths down. Another, perched on the stool over at the bar blatantly hitting on some giggling young thing - all honey and electricity. Each one of them periodically glancing over at the Tribunal of Furies that surrounded me, popping a quick recon to see if the coast was clear, only to shudder at the palpable aura of judgment they emanated collectively and rabbited back to the harbors of less treacherous distractions.
It should also be noted that each of them was smart enough to be facing the nearest exit.
When I started drink number four they were discussing one of the Three’s upcoming performance piece. It involved her and her new (hissed in the direction of her ex) boyfriend. It was called something like “A Self Portrait in Menstrual Envy” and involved her ‘new’ boyfriend stripping naked, ritualistically slashing himself with a knife and then rolling around a white sheet. All while she would beat an overturned oil drum while shrieking. This reminded another one of the Three of the time she dated a Renny from Athens who painted with his own blood and the other of a similar piece she saw gypsy-roaming around Berlin.
By the end of drink number four I was completely lost. The Ariadne’s thread of the conversation led me through a narrative maze that seemingly ended at a door that opened up to a brick wall. A few hits snuck during a bathroom break dulled the dread down some and I headed back in flying suborbital over Planet Jack.
It was only when drink number five arrived that I realized one of them was talking to me.
I zoned back in quick –
“… bet he doesn’t even know we’re here.” One of them smiled while playfully waving her hand before me as if snapping me out of a trance. The other two snickered and snorted gray plumes of cigarette smoke.
“S’okay…,” with a dashing wink I gave my best impression of someone clever, “sometimes I don’t even know if I’m here.”
None of them laughed. None of them smiled. Tough room and getting tougher.
One began with a polite, “So…”
“… I hear you’re a writer?” The Middle asked and followed with a cursory, “Is that right?”
“It is.” The Third answered and lit my cigarette.
“What do you write?”
I inhaled my smoke, gave it some thought and replied: “Thoughts, reflections, parables, absurd anecdotes, neo-memoir, prose, fragments of short stories that together form a completely new…”
One cut me off short: “He writes a blog.”
Two inquired: “Oh is that him?”
Three confirmed: “Yeah.”
“Heh,” snorted Two.
I peacock bristled with wounded academic pride: “Actually, I see it more as an online writer’s notebook, a scrapbook of ideas and images if you will…”
“I’ve read some of your stuff… and some of it’s okay…”
“...sometimes.”
“Sometimes not.””
“Interesting though…”
“… but in all your stories how come you never write about us?”
“Yeah, how come the guys all have cool nicknames?"
“Magpie!”
“West!”
“Teddy Bear!”
“But you never mention us…”
“That’s because he only writes about the women who fuck him.”
Laughs all around on my tab.
I nodded politely and waited for the snickering to subside: “Well to be fair, if I wrote about the ones who wouldn’t I wouldn’t have time to write about anything else now would I?”
Their drunken laughs flattened with stern clarity into polite smiles.
One of them shook their head sadly, another sipped her drink, a third doused her cigarette.
“Oh Jack…”
“… hasn’t anyone ever told you?”
“There’s no worse fate that can befall a man…”
“… than to suffer pride without confidence.”
I blinked at them and felt the buzz evaporate off my senses.
“Sorry Jack…”
“… we can’t all be muses.”
“But it doesn’t mean we’re not here…”
“… just because we’re not here just for you.” .
And at that moment my buddies flocked back to the table, simultaneous through the midnight weekend din, seeking to settle up or get more fucked up. I vanished beneath the glare of their personalities. Withdrew watchful back into the shadow. The ladies reconciled with those who summoned them with kisses, curses and demands for a round on them.
I slipped out of the commotion unseen, leaving a few bucks on the table for my first two drinks and enough for a sizable tip for the rest. I got jostled by the foot traffic as I squirmed free of the claustrophobic scene. Night air struck the lungs with a gasp and no matter how hard I tried to shake their words off they just kept resettling over my thoughts. .
Rain started up, because that’s what happens to writers when they write about themselves being exiled… it pours. Slinking away, I made my way back up to the Witch House with all the grace of a half drowned cur. Their lesson soaked in. Deep. Pride without Confidence. Can’t Be Muses All. The verdict of the Tribunal of Furies spoken and delivered. The weight of their sentence would be mine to bear.