Thank God
You were mostly next door, glaring at the mass of nondescript sports-club-people, perched high above their matching neon t-shirts in your glue-studded platforms.
A few things happened after you spit in some guy’s drink when he didn’t remember your name.
In the most immediate sense, utterly embarrassed, you slid the cup from his hands, apologized profusely, and promised to buy his next. He cashed in at a bar at the end of the block, the one that didn’t have $2 rails or karaoke. Later that night, you pulled loose bills out of the nearby pretzel shack’s tip jar because, though their garlic pretzels were divine, they didn’t justify charging drunks double. 12 hours later, you woke up petrified. You brought extra cash next time.
That was the year of the Irish-ish bar on the corner. Not to be confused with the cowboy-ish bar next door, the upstairs a loose-toothed cylinder dropping shots in your range, courtesy of having “the sexiest elbows” some guy had ever seen. At the witching hour, you were wobbly enough to hit dead-center the clay pigeon of “Facebook message your college roommate and tell her you’re sorry.”
But that was a rare occasion. You were mostly next door, glaring at the mass of nondescript sports-club-people, perched high above their matching neon t-shirts in your glue-studded platforms.
It isn’t hard enough to remember yet. It’s beginning to flake around the edges, but you can still astral-project into that bar on some empty Thursday, out with just one of your housemates. It was weird, being one-on-one with him. The bartender never asked for his card. Where was your girlfriend? The dance floor was dusty. You were pushed to take the mic before you were drunk enough, crowing “Accidentally in Love” and sitting stationary at the bartop. Some guy around your father’s age clapped your roommate on the shoulder, told him he was a lucky man. Hinging his gaze on you, the guy waited, waited for you to accept his friend request and receive the flier for his dock party. With music and edibles and hydroponic grow kits, he chatted, waiting for his friend-slash-landlord to finish withering in the bathroom. He and the bouncer heaved her outside by the shoulders, her feet barely scraping the orange-glo floors. The lights were not on. No one was home.
Was that the night some guy lit a joint in front of the pretzel shack? You, shivering anxious, scraped palms, desperately cool? Your body ceased to function when it had more than one thing in it, like the time you slid ass-first down a flight of steps, platforms clunking at each impact. You woke up with a headache and a galaxy blooming on your right ass cheek. You flashed yourself for weeks, impressed at the loose blood cells converging under your skin and the community they had with each other. It was the coolest thing your body had done yet.
So maybe you knew that smoking with strangers on the street wasn’t a great idea, but maybe you wanted to see what happened next. That guy was so tall that you still had to look up at him while he raveled and unraveled about astrology and the universe and our value on this Earth, free-floating in his fantastical omnipresent love. You took a hit and pulled your long skirt up to your thigh, thin trail of blood trickling down your knee. Amazing, his friend said. You still found a way to surprise me.
A few years later, you read a book about corrupt police departments. Right before the sergeant gets caught, he gets piss-drunk in that same fucking corner bar, written in by name, maybe getting trashed on rail drinks while some twenty-something moonlights as Carrie Underwood. Maybe he was on a first-name basis with the bartender, too. Maybe the pretzel dog was his favorite. You do quick math. You never would have seen him there. Right?
Moored to your couch, sunbeams honeying the carpet, you close the book on your finger, unfold your legs from under you, and tell your haunted house: Thank God they closed that fucking place.
Stephanie Anderson (she/they) is a library worker, union organizer, and MS Professional Writing student in Baltimore, Maryland. They can be found in in Genrepunk, MIDLVLMAG, Silly Goose Press, and more. They're @whoastanderson everywhere, but they desperately want you to sign their guestbook at whoastanderson.neocities.org.
