Days without Women (A short story of a young man's drinking life)

Days without Women


It wasn’t any serious conversation, nothing much at all, mostly about not seeing him for a long time, and then he sat down by her in the Monetary Bar, off the corners of Sycamore street and Acker, the Jackson Street bridge in the front of the bar, a few hundred feet away, that cross the railroad track underneath it, he sat on a stood, hadn’t seen Jennifer St. Clair, for a very long time, perhaps 15-years he being thirty-eight years old now, she about thirty-five.
Everybody else around the bar was too drunk to notice him at first, someone was hammering on the bar for another drink, an old friend he noticed; then he noticed another old friend, who hadn’t noticed him yet, was bragging how he was a Black Belt now in karate. Then he ordered a coke. The girl looked at him strangely, but she had heard he had quite drinking some five-years back, his brother had said it to someone, and someone mentioned it in passing to someone else, and she picked up on it, someplace along the line.
“All right,” said Jennifer, “what’s up, what brought you back to this corner bar?”
“You mean, why I am here if I don’t drink anymore?” said Lee.
“I guess that’s what I mean. You got out of the neighborhood, you’re one of the few, and if you stick around here you’ll be like us again, drunks, busybodies, and gossipers.”
“I did stay away for a long time; I guess I wanted to simply say hello, and goodbye.”
It was early evening, Friday, and the counter of the bar was full of people, at the far-end of the counter, to his right, was a group of people, they looked familiar to Lee, but older of course, he stared at them, they looked out of place to his mind, his new world of sobriety. The girl next to him, her husband waved, his name was Johnny, and kept on talking to the folks at the end of the bar, then the karate man, waved, but kept a serious look, his hair was cut short, Lee knew him when he was a kid, they hung around together, his sister always had a crush on him, and Jennifer looked away from them, she was more lovely then he had remembered her.
“They’ll wanting you to go over there in a few minutes and drink with them, you know how they get,” she said, then hesitated, adding, “please Lee get out of here.”
Her hands were slim and brown and lovely, she was of the Chippewa race of Indians, like Johnny her husband.
“I will, I swear I will go after I finish my coke, Ok?”
“It won’t make you happy staying here,” she commented with a half smile, her puerperal vision, catching her husband’s eye looking at Lee, as if to try and persuade him to join the guys.
“If they want you to join them, what you going to do about it?” asked the girl.
“I told you, leave after I drink my coke.”
“No: I mean what really are you going to do, go join them, or what?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “They can join me I suppose.”
She glanced at him, and put out her hand, and he held it lightly, then let go quickly (as she picked up her glass of beer and drank it half down), “I always liked you Lee,” she said, adding “you were always different.”
“Want a beer Lee?” said Johnny from afar.
“No, thanks,” said Lee.
“It doesn’t do any good to stay, they’ll keep on needling you until you have a drink with them,” said Jennifer.
“Yes,” responded Lee, “I know how it is, I suppose this proves it.”
“I’m sorry Lee, but nothing has changed here since you’ve been gone traveling around the world I hear? Although it’s nice you haven’t forgotten us. I care for you very much, I’m stuck here, and you aren’t.”
“I understand.” He said.
“Yaw, that’s the trouble, you do understand,” she said with a sigh, and finishing off the other part of the glass of beer, then yelling at the barman to bring her another.

♦

Lee started thinking about his drinking days, his Army travels, there were many of them, twenty-years of drinking, eight-years in the Army, he stopped drinking back in ’84, he told himself he ought to get whatever there was out of life, sober now, instead of bar after bar life. Women were plentiful, but he was too drunk to do anything with them half the time. He had come a long way. He saw the bar he used to drink in, while stationed at Fort Rucker, Alabama, back in ’78, the vision was clear, there was this girl kind of sticking on him—or trying to, every time he came into the bar she’d sit by him and say, “Why is a nice looking soldier like you getting drunk every night here?”
She was a good looker, fine shape, some years younger than him, but a pest he thought, trying to reform him, when he didn’t want to be transformed or reformed or taken apart and put back together.
He had come close to telling her off many times, but this one night he did, all drunk eyed and under a dark cloud, he said in so many words, “Why is a nice girl like you lying about here waiting for me, drinking beer only to insult me, you’re a glass fixture in here just like me, just not so drunk. Shut up and beat it.”
She left, not sure if she was hurt, or wounded because of the words, but he added as she walked away, “You’re no saint baby!” And she never looked back, matter of fact; she drank her drink slowly, and disappeared, never to return.
Then there was the girl in the bar downtown Minneapolis, back in 1982, that one sat by him all night trying to tell him to go home with her—to bed with her, pretty as a peacock, but he sculled back in his chair, as if it was a boat, and lashed out at her like a viper, looking though his beer glass, she must have been rich he thought, but he wanted his drinking time, and he didn’t want to be uncomfortable, her hair was floating as the fan overhead circulated the warm air in the bar.
She left confused, her charms didn’t work, alcohol won, her face looked hard, her head and noise up in the air, dingily like, and there were a handful of more girls, in a hundred more bars, but it was all the same: you bumped in to one, was like bumping into the all, he told himself, one was just like another, but he wasn’t looking for girls, he was looking to get drunk and if a girl wanted to be quiet and submit to his style, ok, if not adios.
There was even a time when he went home with a girl, and they were in bed, and he said wait a minute, and vomited all over her bed and floor, that completed the night, and he passed out in his car.
It was a hell of a thing all right, to get drunk daily, and chase the women off nightly, and pass out, wake up, it was a hurricane hit, each twenty-four hours.


“Come back Lee wherever you are,” said Jennifer.
They hadn’t said a word for a while, Lee had zoned out of the present, and she noticed that.
Johnny had yelled for Lee to have a beer with him, and so did Mr. Karate man, and Big Ace, and a few of the others, of the one time gang members that were now aging, said Jeninifer back to them, “What do you want with him?”
“Have him come and have a drink with us,” said a voice from the group.
“No,” she said, “Were talking about old times, you know that.”
“All right,” said the unnamed voice.
“This place is all wrong for you Lee.”
“Yes, I got to go, but I’ll come back visit you folks again,” said Lee.
“No, you won’t, and I don’t blame you.” She said.
“No, really, I’ll come back.”
“We’ll see,” she commented.
“Yes,” he said, “That’s the hell of it, my curiosity: it will probably entice me to do so. I like to see how every one is.”
“Really.” She could not believe he said that, her voice was happy and sad at the same time.
“You better go then,” her voice sounded hurt, and yet, undamaged.
He looked at her, the shape of her face, there was still youth in her eyes, she had three children now, so she had said, her cheek bones curved outward, in another five years, she’d be unable to find her beauty, he knew that, funny she still had some he thought. She had a thick head of dark hair, and a nice forehead he thought.
“Oh, you’re too sweet,” he said.
“And when you come back, you can tell me of all the travels you done since then.”
Her voice sounded stranger, not recognizable, yet settled in the fact it was as it had to be.
“Yes,” he said ominously, “if the good Lord’s willing.” Adding, “you’re right, I’m a different man, and at times I’m even a stranger to myself.”
He looked at the door, at her, he saw that she was a tinge uncomfortable with him now, the forth glass of beer in front of her, half gone, and he was to her likewise, a different looking man. The group down at the corner of the bar moved a little ways closer to them, as if working their way down. Then looking into her beer glass, it was like a mirror, he saw his past it was all quite true, he was out of place here.
Next, he started to leave the bar, she said, as he passed her,
“You look very well, Lee; you must be living a very good life.”
He never looked back, he knew if he would he’d see the group, and then have to have that drink, and it just wasn’t worth it.


Written in Lima, Peru 1-2-2009