**TW** Writing includes themes of alcohol, alcoholism, and bars.
It’s rare to get a night out alone, but when I do, it’s usually because I was too lazy to ask anyone to come along. For someone who’s always lamenting about needing more friend time, you could easily mistake me for being socially satiated...
I blame it on my brain. Once you’ve had a parent determine you’re no longer essential business, just some collateral in their line of careless fire, you tend to keep rolling that “beautiful bean footage” for years to come. It’s a slow burn with an even slower remediation. You end up accidentally believing that maybe (probably?) everyone feels that way about you. Passive abandonment can leave it’s mark on just about everything: Accept a simple gift? Suspect! Asking someone for help? Please kill me. Someone doing something nice for me? I’m ready for that hidden catch. Then there was my childhood best friend. One day while I was walking through the mall, we crossed paths and she introduced me to her new friend. Out of left field an insult about my sweater quickly followed and I stood stunned as it hurled past my duped face. A cataclysmic event. A hit and run amongst bffs. In an act of survival she had ridiculed me in front of her brand new, very rich friend, as if we lived in a Nickelodeon movie. It was like some sort of very lame preparatory day school gang initiation... and I still hadn’t forgotten.
These moments are strung together like a fart charm necklace that I wear around my neck at all times. It’s wild how quickly a couple of bad times can become ground zero, as far as skills to build friendships go. Even when I’ve had enough and can recognize that this “pattern” of feeling unworthy is just a nasty reoccurring bug, it can still be very difficult to course correct, even with therapy. My brain has forever since had its little “never forget!!” campaign chugging right along, especially when starting a new friendship.
This time though, I really did want to be alone. I used to show up to bars all the time with no real agenda and what I thought at the time was a wide open landscape of possibilities. In the end there would usually be hell to pay by way of an ice pick to the head and a foggy sense of having maybe used the wrong words, but before the retribution there was at least a little freedom and some semblance of mystery. Who would I run into? Would it be fun? The sweet smoke of earlier years still floats in the rear view and sometimes I can tap into that breeze when I’m out alone. It’s not so much the youth that I miss as it is the simplicity. The ability to show up to the world completely untethered and naive. A freedom you can’t even realize you have.
I pick a seat at the sprawling bar, of which bears little resemblance to the bars of my early twenties. This bar was actually nice and sensually lit. The building is a renovated train depot that used to receive grain, bricks, gravel, and cattle feed. Now it receives the hard earned money of Senior Analytics Gurus donning fashion mullets and pronouns. How would these old train conductors perceive this scene? I wondered. Are there ghosts still fulfilling their jobly duties, or had they floated on? Do ghosts perceive pop culture evermore, and do they like Palomas?
I awkwardly place my overpacked tote bag onto the bar and wiggle my way into the stool. One nice thing about age is that you don’t care if you’re that person that brings a book or two to the bar. Much like the ghosts, the general clientele of a hip bar is not perceiving me. So I guess you could say in some ways I am still free. I pull out ‘All Fours’ by Miranda July and I could not feel more 40 years old. I had barely cracked the spine when the bartender places a rocks glass near my hand.
“Margarita?” She asks.
“Yes! Thank you.” I say with gushing gratitude. Once in the industry, always in the industry.
I size up the glass and it’s…small. $14 used to get you the entire glass. I had forgotten where I was and apparently the decade too. After a moment to recalibrate and justify my indulgence, I graze a small bit of the Tajin salt landscape that adorned the rim like a rigid moss. Pretty darn good. I take a split second to tally up the cost of that experience. Still $12.30 left to go.
I settle into my seat and dig into my book. The bliss of a fresh page, a new perspective. The smell of a new book trails through my senses even as the pull of my phone squeaks from my purse. What a strange age we are in. I wonder again about the train conductor ghosts and if they have any thoughts about this. They too experienced technological advancements and societal calamities that were difficult to fully perceive in their lifetime, surely. While I was enjoying my moment with my inflation cocktail and mid-life crisis novel, I couldn’t help but also be distracted by the undercurrent of bummer vibes all around the hipster train stop bar.
There’s a man 3 seats away. Not that I’m looking, but I’d say he’s on his 4th drink. Polo shirt, khaki pants, 60ish, iPhone on 12%. In my peripheral there is a smoke radiating from the top of his bald head. I can spot a down in the dumps drinking man from a mile away. They used to be a revenue channel. He was sad, and now he was going to get drunk. The bartender starts their loop of checking in occasionally. Let the dollars flow. I find myself missing this type of work sometimes. The labor is real, but so is the ease of the job description at hand. Showing up and knowing exactly what needs to be done and for how long. I will always appreciate my bartending years as the time I put myself through college, met my husband, countless surface friends, and fantasized about life’s future possibilities - all while slopping together some sad guy’s drink.
I take a $2.45 sip.
“I lost $30,000 today.” The sad man say to the air, or me and the woman eating tacos next to him, I can’t exactly tell. He was looking for a safe landing. He keeps his eyes locked to his phone while he shakes his head in disbelief.
“Oh damn…” tumbles out of my mouth.
“I’ll never forgive the people who voted for this psycho.”
I nod in agreeance along with my friend eating tacos across the way. We shoot each other a look that only women know when bearing witness of a man in need of attention. It's a look of “here we go again” and also, “If this gets weird, I got you”.
“Yeah, this is a really shitty time. I’m sorry about your 401K” I reply awkwardly.
“Gone. Just like that.”
I start to scan over all the incidents of pure upheaval happening since the Dump took office and it is an overwhelming thought to grapple with. The anger comes first. Everyone is wondering what will be next, and each one of us has a different pressing list of concerns. As a person trying to make a living through their creative juices, work can feel impossible most days right now. This is the bummer vibe moving through this adorable, superbly branded bar. There are well kept plants hanging from the ceiling, orange and yellow saturated stripes painted down the wall, little illustrated tacos and cocktail glasses with happy faces giddily tap dancing across the menus. Yet the outside world feels hot and dank. While we continue to live our western pay-to-play lifestyle it’s impossible to avoid the overhanging dread of what’s happening right in front of us and abroad. For some, it’s been right up in their face, not some distant pondering. I wondered what wisdom the train depot ghosts could offer us now, if any at all. I could feel the air get tighter.
Damn, already down to $6.23. Almost as much as a margarita used to be.
Small talk ensues between myself, the sad man, and the woman enjoying her tacos. In spite of the outside horrors, I wanted to soak up this rare moment of sweet solitude by also trying to remain open to something new. The constant awareness of all the things I can’t control was taking its toll on my wellbeing lately, and the scrolling had made each day redundant. I may have shown up anonymous, but I could feel a bridge amongst like minded peers as we commiserate yet again over a massive shift in our common environment. Like fish gathering around the water filter, we are all wondering when the giant omnipotent hand is going to come down and clean this filthy ass tank. I reflect back on how much we had already been through together while not even knowing each other, and how much these two people must’ve changed in the last 5 years. Each of us has seen different losses, but had hopefully gained something too. Maybe my friend eating tacos lost her mother. Maybe she quit her toxic job and finally started baking macrons. Maybe 401k man finally connected with his distant daughter. Maybe his son finally said “leave me alone”. So many different lives all plopped together in a chaotic slurry, and somehow, we are all just sitting together.
I could feel my heart leaping for a more inspiring and productive time where we all feel safe from systemic harms. A mystical time where we can each dive deep into our purpose with full care for each other and what’s around us. I have been feeling especially unsure of where to focus my creative gifts lately, and truthfully I’ve been spinning. I took two more swigs of my now briny, watery beverage and cashed it in. I leaned back into my chair and took in the bustling activity of this well oiled establishment. A part of me wished I was one of the train conductor ghosts simply loading the engine with more, and more coal, pushing ahead on a clearly marked path. Unlike the ghosts though, my new friends and I were still quite fleshy and enjoying ourselves, in spite of the obvious fires that threatened our paths. There was something about being out at night alone that reminded me of this duality. It will feel as if the apocalypse is happening right outside the door, or in this case, on the other side of my phone screen. While at the exact same time, a baby is born, a cashier tells a great joke, or you taste a perfectly ripe strawberry that changes your life. Two or more things are always happening at once.
My phone starts to jiggle in my purse. A newer friendship that had recently started to bud wants me to stop by to hang before I head home. My head chatters as I weigh the pros and cons, and I sift through the familiar excuses. Just some emotional debris leftover from ground zero, and possibly a little guilt. Could it be that I’m having a fun night?
I close my book and nod farewell to my new comrads. I had shown up for alone time but I suppose I was leaving with some good ol’ fashioned human connection. I would likely never see them again, and I knew in the days ahead we would all still be feeling uneasy and unsure on how much worse things could get. I took whatever inspiration I could glean from this spontaneous interaction and pulled it in a little closer. It was our common worries of the future that had brought us together, and we continued to carry them back into our personal lives. Surely the ghosts were free from worries, and for that I was jealous. But much like the ghosts of my past, their stories had already been written. A time that’s gone by does not get another chance.
As I step out of the building the air is thicker than I expected. Summer’s wild landscape would be here soon. I text my husband that I would be a little late as I sit in the car and watch spring’s final breeze.
Channeling the headfirst energy of my friend on his 4th shot, I send an “OMW” and head out into the night.
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Thank you for reading this little rag of mine! I look forward to bringing on more regular essays and new resources for all my creative entrepreneurs and artists trying to make it during rough times <3
