A Bar

The guy sitting next to me at the bar has the patchy, aspiring beard of a 21 year-old. Exuberant and happy, he’s ready to talk, to see what’s out there to discover on this Wednesday night, quickly learning that the bartender, a middle-aged woman who wears glasses and tight jeans, loves to drum. He thinks drumming is absolutely fantastic, he plays the trumpet, you see, and at this moment he and the bartender become fast friends.

Every once in awhile a loud, guttural exclamation emerges from the poker table. Everybody looks back at the older men playing cards, trying to see if anything dramatic has happened. A short, stocky man in a satin Twin Dragons Kick Boxing jacket just won a big hand on a bluff.

It’s probably his lucky jacket, the one he wears out for cards, the one that reminds him of his days ascending, a jacket that he imagines still commands respect from all the gathered on this winter night. He’s standing up in victory, like he just knocked somebody down, like he just knocked the entire goddamn table down.

The waitress wears a clinging, striped dress and has short, blonde hair but for a long thin strand at the back that she’s braided. She talks quickly, does everything quickly, in fact, and likes to express herself through the flamboyant use of her body. Her body is the central component of any conversation she’s having, and it is her that the young man has come to see.

They sit together and do a shot, firing the empty glasses across the bar like the cowboys they know themselves to be. Boxing is on the TV, and the fighter the two of them have agreed, “Looks too nice to fight,” gets punched in the head. This repeats in slow motion, his sweat exploding into the air around him like fireworks, beautiful stars now lifting free from gravity.

The young man has his hand on her back, moving it softly, slowly around, and he is so happy, so proud to be the guy going out with her, alive in these days he will one day look back on with a disbelieving, hazy longing, while the man to the other side of them, still in his FedEx uniform, dozes on his stool, his dreams unknown.