The Friendly Hermit
The smallest puppy didn't make it over the open sewer grate. She watched her brothers flop across it with gamey jumps and followed suit, but her back legs didn't clear the chasm, and her front paws didn't have the grip to prevent a slip. She would grow to develop especially strong forearms, forelegs, thereafter, and could hang from a kitchen counter long enough to finish off a pie. Well into old age.
*****
It is a cozy bar. Aren't they all, though. Half the problem is that bars are cozy in ways not found anywhere else outside the confines of a happy early childhood. That's the common denominator, I think. Is it only those of us who didn't have the original version who seek these places out, or are some of these people trying to recapture what they had? Why doesn't Notepad wrap? WTF? There we go; found the function. Go Notepad. You are underrated little fontless friend. A one-font town, this place.
I'm not sure who I am, and that's the problem with trying to keep a journal. A travelogue, I like to call it. Sounds more purposeful than the desperate efforts to connect by a lost woman, which is more the case. All I know is today, and barely that. Sometimes by night, say nine or ten, I lose morning. Yeah, it's a real adventure, you could say. Amnesiacs never get bored, right? Ha ha ha. Fucking ha. Not true, though. It is very boring living in tiny blocks. There's no goddamned story, that's the problem with it, I think. I get flash fiction at best, maybe soundbytes here and there, but how satisfying are either of those? Good only for distractions in regular life, even I know that. I do know things, that is weird, huh? I mean, I might not have any idea how I know something, where I learned it or whatever, but there's a fairly strong knowledge base going on, from what I can tell. Either that, or I have landed in a land of dolts.
I am drinking a tall German beer. A "hefeweizen," it's called. Pretty good. In a sick way, there is kind of a moldy basement sock flavor to it, but squeeze a lemon in there and it makes you want that taste in your mouth. I wonder if I've ever had this before. Reminds me of a milkshake.
Hey, here's another thing about my situation: like, a song is on the jukebox right now, and I can't say I know the words or remember ever hearing it, but I feel things from it. It's like my body knows it. Quite intimately, actually. It is a rusty-throated guy singing, "tonight's the night, nothing's gonna stop us now." Makes my body feel warm and alive, and I have feelings or images of lying in wet grass at night, alongside little boat turned on its side.
Nobody ever tells me anything interesting. Correction: I never hear things that interest me. At least, not on the telling. It's weird. Because I'll think about it later and be very interested. But okay, fine. I am "telling" and not "showing." I have a book on writing that apparently I've had for a very long time by the looks of it, and that is what it warns of. That if I tell you, the reader, instead of showing, I will lose you. And reader, you are all I have. Literally. I cannot afford to lose you. Please, stay.
The light in here is red and thick. The air heavy and smoky. I have made a little friend at the next booth, a maybe six-year-old girl who just snuck a smile at me over the straw of her drink. A family, two medium-aged couples, all in the booths with me having a meal. AT the bar, mostly men of working breed, one with a chubby girl who slumps at him and speaks emphatically. Oh, she is mad now, and off she storms to the ladies room. He doesn't give a shit. In fact, he looks down the bar now that she's disappeared into the restroom, and he takes an index finger and swirls it around his ear at a guy way at the other end. Cuckoo, she is, it tells him, and they laugh. She may easily be the Other Woman, or a peace of ass he hangs with to drink and have fun, but she is holding out for more. She reads volumes into his every action and phrase. Here she comes. Scarf re-arranged around her neck, hair freshly fluffed. But still made. Leans right back into him on her bar stool, first putting her coat over her stomach. She looks okay standing up, but sitting, that's a bitch. The tummy has nowhere to go.
My little friend, she is a riot. Animated and striking sudene poses to the music on occasion. But the parents, they worry me for her. He his just back from a trip to Utah, where he stayed in a different hotel every night. She is drinking a hefeweizen and seems slightly grim. Tense.
The predominant shape of men in these parts seems to be very barrel-like in the torso, with a sturdy gut hanging over, and a brush cut to the point of scalp. They look a little uncomfortable.
I find myself wavering from the telling what is, instead of just talking. Why do I have such difficulty in describing? Is it because it further exacerbates my alienation from the reality of here? Or anywhere? These people have homes to go to, people to see that they knew yesterday. They are blinking cursors ever on the end of their storylines. I just blink. And float.
"Go on," an aging Paul Bunyon says to a middle-aged woman in a business suit, "kick his ass!" A game of pool is raging. And I long to finish my beer and seek out ice cream. I likely do this a lot, judging by my own barrelled middle.
******
She doesn't know her name. It is Carol. She is thirty-six years old, and she's been wandering the plains states for seven years. It always feels like one day to her. Carol is an attractive woman. She looks younger than her thirty-six years, maybe from the amnesia and it's erasure of normal day-to-day stress accumulation, maybe from good genes. Possibly even the milkshakes she finds her way to most days.
Carol doesn't realize it, but she effectively lives as a prostitute. Some innate sense of survival, or coincidence, leads her most days to situations where intimacy comes with a care-taking package. Tonight, Carol's attention is drawn to a young guy at the bar, and his to her. Whatever mystery is behind the connection one person feels for another, Carol's signal is perhaps heightened by her amnesic state, where so many of the regular brain functions are dormat; no memories, no plans, no identity.
*****
He's getting up. Oh my god, he's smiling, and so am I, and I think he's coming over---yes, here he comes. Shit.
******
"Hi. Am I interrupting?"
"Oh god, no," Carol said. "I just doodle in here when I'm bored." She closed her notebook too hard and smiled with an overload of bubble.
"My name's Terry."
"Hi, Terry," Carol said and searched for a name. "I'm Corona." Carol stuck out her hand and blushed purple at her stupid name creation.
"Like the beer, then?"
"Ah, yeah. What can I say? My parents owned a bar." The lies came with amazing ease. She wondered if they always had, and was comforted by the idea that some part was learned, and hence remembered.
"Mind if I sit down?"
"Not at all." A famiar fluidity was taking hold.
"You writing a book?" He gestured to the notebook between them.
Carol slid the notebook to the side of the booth. "Sort of."
"Can I buy you another beer?"
She looked at her half empty pint, took three long swallows, and set it back down. "Sure."
He was young. It made her feel hopeful, even though the hope was really his and not hers. The hope of youth. Undetectable while it exists, except to outsiders looking in.
*****
It was the lifestyle she wanted; the human vehicle alongside was secondary. And replaceable.
*****
Carol looked at the titles she'd penned on various journal entries. The Friendly Hermit. The Social Amnesiac. The Lonely Barfly. Not so creative. But all, meaningful.
*****
It is a cozy bar. Aren't they all, though. Half the problem is that bars are cozy in ways not found anywhere else outside the confines of a happy early childhood. That's the common denominator, I think. Is it only those of us who didn't have the original version who seek these places out, or are some of these people trying to recapture what they had? Why doesn't Notepad wrap? WTF? There we go; found the function. Go Notepad. You are underrated little fontless friend. A one-font town, this place.
I'm not sure who I am, and that's the problem with trying to keep a journal. A travelogue, I like to call it. Sounds more purposeful than the desperate efforts to connect by a lost woman, which is more the case. All I know is today, and barely that. Sometimes by night, say nine or ten, I lose morning. Yeah, it's a real adventure, you could say. Amnesiacs never get bored, right? Ha ha ha. Fucking ha. Not true, though. It is very boring living in tiny blocks. There's no goddamned story, that's the problem with it, I think. I get flash fiction at best, maybe soundbytes here and there, but how satisfying are either of those? Good only for distractions in regular life, even I know that. I do know things, that is weird, huh? I mean, I might not have any idea how I know something, where I learned it or whatever, but there's a fairly strong knowledge base going on, from what I can tell. Either that, or I have landed in a land of dolts.
I am drinking a tall German beer. A "hefeweizen," it's called. Pretty good. In a sick way, there is kind of a moldy basement sock flavor to it, but squeeze a lemon in there and it makes you want that taste in your mouth. I wonder if I've ever had this before. Reminds me of a milkshake.
Hey, here's another thing about my situation: like, a song is on the jukebox right now, and I can't say I know the words or remember ever hearing it, but I feel things from it. It's like my body knows it. Quite intimately, actually. It is a rusty-throated guy singing, "tonight's the night, nothing's gonna stop us now." Makes my body feel warm and alive, and I have feelings or images of lying in wet grass at night, alongside little boat turned on its side.
Nobody ever tells me anything interesting. Correction: I never hear things that interest me. At least, not on the telling. It's weird. Because I'll think about it later and be very interested. But okay, fine. I am "telling" and not "showing." I have a book on writing that apparently I've had for a very long time by the looks of it, and that is what it warns of. That if I tell you, the reader, instead of showing, I will lose you. And reader, you are all I have. Literally. I cannot afford to lose you. Please, stay.
The light in here is red and thick. The air heavy and smoky. I have made a little friend at the next booth, a maybe six-year-old girl who just snuck a smile at me over the straw of her drink. A family, two medium-aged couples, all in the booths with me having a meal. AT the bar, mostly men of working breed, one with a chubby girl who slumps at him and speaks emphatically. Oh, she is mad now, and off she storms to the ladies room. He doesn't give a shit. In fact, he looks down the bar now that she's disappeared into the restroom, and he takes an index finger and swirls it around his ear at a guy way at the other end. Cuckoo, she is, it tells him, and they laugh. She may easily be the Other Woman, or a peace of ass he hangs with to drink and have fun, but she is holding out for more. She reads volumes into his every action and phrase. Here she comes. Scarf re-arranged around her neck, hair freshly fluffed. But still made. Leans right back into him on her bar stool, first putting her coat over her stomach. She looks okay standing up, but sitting, that's a bitch. The tummy has nowhere to go.
My little friend, she is a riot. Animated and striking sudene poses to the music on occasion. But the parents, they worry me for her. He his just back from a trip to Utah, where he stayed in a different hotel every night. She is drinking a hefeweizen and seems slightly grim. Tense.
The predominant shape of men in these parts seems to be very barrel-like in the torso, with a sturdy gut hanging over, and a brush cut to the point of scalp. They look a little uncomfortable.
I find myself wavering from the telling what is, instead of just talking. Why do I have such difficulty in describing? Is it because it further exacerbates my alienation from the reality of here? Or anywhere? These people have homes to go to, people to see that they knew yesterday. They are blinking cursors ever on the end of their storylines. I just blink. And float.
"Go on," an aging Paul Bunyon says to a middle-aged woman in a business suit, "kick his ass!" A game of pool is raging. And I long to finish my beer and seek out ice cream. I likely do this a lot, judging by my own barrelled middle.
******
She doesn't know her name. It is Carol. She is thirty-six years old, and she's been wandering the plains states for seven years. It always feels like one day to her. Carol is an attractive woman. She looks younger than her thirty-six years, maybe from the amnesia and it's erasure of normal day-to-day stress accumulation, maybe from good genes. Possibly even the milkshakes she finds her way to most days.
Carol doesn't realize it, but she effectively lives as a prostitute. Some innate sense of survival, or coincidence, leads her most days to situations where intimacy comes with a care-taking package. Tonight, Carol's attention is drawn to a young guy at the bar, and his to her. Whatever mystery is behind the connection one person feels for another, Carol's signal is perhaps heightened by her amnesic state, where so many of the regular brain functions are dormat; no memories, no plans, no identity.
*****
He's getting up. Oh my god, he's smiling, and so am I, and I think he's coming over---yes, here he comes. Shit.
******
"Hi. Am I interrupting?"
"Oh god, no," Carol said. "I just doodle in here when I'm bored." She closed her notebook too hard and smiled with an overload of bubble.
"My name's Terry."
"Hi, Terry," Carol said and searched for a name. "I'm Corona." Carol stuck out her hand and blushed purple at her stupid name creation.
"Like the beer, then?"
"Ah, yeah. What can I say? My parents owned a bar." The lies came with amazing ease. She wondered if they always had, and was comforted by the idea that some part was learned, and hence remembered.
"Mind if I sit down?"
"Not at all." A famiar fluidity was taking hold.
"You writing a book?" He gestured to the notebook between them.
Carol slid the notebook to the side of the booth. "Sort of."
"Can I buy you another beer?"
She looked at her half empty pint, took three long swallows, and set it back down. "Sure."
He was young. It made her feel hopeful, even though the hope was really his and not hers. The hope of youth. Undetectable while it exists, except to outsiders looking in.
*****
It was the lifestyle she wanted; the human vehicle alongside was secondary. And replaceable.
*****
Carol looked at the titles she'd penned on various journal entries. The Friendly Hermit. The Social Amnesiac. The Lonely Barfly. Not so creative. But all, meaningful.
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