Waking up Blank

I am too young to feel too old at a bar. I can still remember clearly the first time I went out to a bar. I was 14, with three friends, and I passed swimmingly. The bartender even bought me a few beers. I wasn’t old enough to really have pimples, so I wasn’t pimply-faced.
What I was, was confident.
A bar felt like home. Strangers gradually moving from being strangers to becoming new friends. Personas amplified and ego non-existent. The soundtrack always varies. Jukebox, record player, iPod, band, karaoke contest. They’re all variations of wallpaper. Some are brighter than others. A few are so esoteric you wonder where they were even found.
Then, very rarely, that moment happens.
The one inexplicable moment when an otherwise sullen girl lets out a scream so fierce that sound barriers are broken, earth shakes and hearts dissipate into little puddles within your chest.
Lindsay happens like this in my life.
It must have been a Monday morning. I didn’t have to work, but I had plenty of work to do at productively drinking enough to remind myself that I was more interesting than the job I had at the time. It must have been a Monday, as well, because the night before I had gone to Noir. This unfortunate decision was always made because Noir was the wasteland of zombie drunks needing just one more hour of alcohol after the rest of the bars in Cambridge had stopped serving.
Entering through that beaded curtain meant checking your coat and your dignity at the door. Can one finish 4 beers, 3 Jamesons, and 10 cigarettes in 47 minutes? Yes, yes you can.
Lindsay wasn’t with me this night. If she had been, what transpired would never have happened. She was still living on my futon at this point, and had recently been joined by Usman, her slightly charming but utterly useless rouge boyfriend at the time. They were now sharing the futon. I slept on my bed in my bedroom which had no door, no curtain, and consequently no shame. After all, of the three of us now living in the apartment, I was the only one paying rent.
I went to Noir because I had to. Had to because I had been at Charlie’s Kitchen right around the corner for an hour or so; and it was there that I met the conversation that wouldn’t end. His voice was gruff, something I’ve always been drawn to as my voice is so distinctly not straight. It’s not that I’m flamboyant, I’m just undeniably gay. So when a man sounds like what I would imagine a lumberjack might sound like, I am immediately drawn to him. When he turns out to be gay, I’m officially salivating. When he’s rude to me and slightly offensive to me and everyone else at the bar, I’m already picking out our song and wedding bands. This evening was already written. I wrote it. There were no words on it, but we were going to do it. Live.
Most people require a name when a new character is introduced. I knew his name, I have simply chosen to forget it. We apparently went to college together. He was in finance. I could give a fuck. I remember how I badly I wanted to emasculate him. When we were in bed, I began to acknowledge certain parts of him that he might not have tended to regularly: knee caps, armpits, other parts. When I returned to his mouth – the one part with which he was completely familiar – he tried to deny my kiss. So bold was he that he asked me to go brush my teeth before he would allow me access to his mouth again. I became the anger of so many Loretta Lynn tunes. I took my left hand to the nape of his neck, pulled him close and kissed him deep with the taste of his asshole on my lips. “From one ass to another _______. SWAK,” was my response before getting up to finally brush my teeth before bed.
I assumed that when I returned to bed, he would have already left. The whole time, Lindsay and Usman slept in the living room being anything but full of life, their snoring alternating perfectly to create the effect of an air conditioner’s white noise. I puttered in the bathroom a little longer than I would normally, debating whether or not to floss to give this idiot enough time to collect his clothes and leave me be. When I reentered the bedroom, he was still there. Now, he wanted to cuddle. This was not in the fantasy. He refused to leave. Apparently, his Marlboro Man rasp was nothing more than the pant of a breathy, doe-eyed Tiger Beat fanatic, and I was now David Cassidy. Kill me.
But I let him sleep over. It was late, and I wasn’t up to the fight. I had just brushed my teeth, but I could still taste the whiskey on my breath as we slept. Or maybe it was his breathing on me that I tasted. Regardless, his was a condition I would address in the morning when the ethanol had run its course.
Only recently have I fancied myself an early riser. That morning, however, I was up like a shot at 8:45 A.M. It was precisely at 8:46 A.M. when I took stock of my situation at hand: ________ nestled against the wall on the edge of my bed, Lindsay and Usman still sawing away on the futon, and a floor that once existed as carpet now riddled with accordion-like suits made me quickly realize that everyone needed to get out. By 8:47 A.M., I was a whirling dervish in the apartment putting on an epic performance surrounding my imperative need to make it to yoga by 9:00 A.M. 13 minutes to find shorts, fill a water bottle, and eject one of the three clingers-on from my place. The clock was ticking.
__________ sat up and started to tell me how he needed to call whatever blood-sucking financial institution that signed his paycheck to tell him he was going to be late. I didn’t have time to tell him I didn’t care, nor did I have time to explain to him the nature of cell phones. I only had 9 imaginary minutes until I had to be nowhere but alone. In all this commotion, as _______ was crossing the threshold so both of us could make our exit, Lindsay perked up from behind still sleeping Usman and cocked an eye and a tit at the scene unfolding at my front door. ________ apparently woke up hungry; not for food, but rather conversation. He turned back to look inside the apartment, noticed her half awake person squinting to understand what was going on with such urgency outside, and without skipping a beat uttered a nonsequitor of epic proportion:
“Where you from originally?”
Now, there were four eyes squinting: mine and Lindsay’s.
At this point, there remained only 4 imaginary minutes before my class was to begin. A two-minute conversation ensued between ________ and Lindsay that made me wonder if he had in fact confused me for the woman of his wildest dreams. His voice was back, and he had resumed his role as prick of the morning. If he hadn’t already exposed himself to me the night before, I might have fallen back into like with him. But Lindsay covered her breasts, I threw my bag into my car, and told _______ I would see him around. He wandered up my driveway still talking. To whom I may never know, but I spent the 30 seconds or so that it took him to make it to Prospect Street watching him jovially converse with no one.
When he rounded the corner heading toward Union Square, I reentered the apartment to find Lindsay and Usman sat up straight on the futon. It was already 3 minutes into my imaginary yoga class, so I decided to teach a class instead. A bottle of whiskey, a pack of cards, two packs of Parliaments lights, and a soundtrack of the Velvet Underground, Wilbert Harrison, and Islands were all we needed to put ourselves back to bed an hour later to forget this whole thing ever happened. We slept all three of us on the futon. I found the comfort of their touch so much more comforting than the man that had just left my apartment. It was almost like being 14 again, when the bar felt like home. Now, the inverse was true.