Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Some bearded person with undetermined pronouns who stunk of feminine soap and who was all goo-goo for phony social justice for anyone it thought less than itself, told me I had nice hair. He was sporting a pride patch on his pseudo-military jacket and made an awkward attempt at conversation with me following the vexatious comment. I sat next to him in the brewery bar because there were no other seats available at the time I arrived. In the back of the bar giant tanks of beer sat full of overpriced liquid that will course through people's digestive systems and become piss when it's all said and done. But between now and then they will make people optimistic, euphoric, delusional and lead to some very poor decisions. Yet, over and over, people drink it. Their stomach's pudgy and their wit's dulled. 

This marsupial's fat hairy hand pawed an IPA with some shitty slogan on the artsy can. An octopus or a walrus dressed as a man wearing a top hat, an oracle over a bulging eyeball. "In the Pursuit of Hoppiness," the can read. "Hoppiness," of course, is not a word, but there I was sitting next to him, observing this  pseudo-man-thing who I was sharing a moment of life with when I had absolutely no desire to do so. Whose breath became my breath and whose piss splashed the urinal with mine only minutes apart to form a communal liquid going wherever it is that piss goes. I was so bored I thought about it. I also recalled a history teacher saying that the American Revolution was a drunk conspiracy hatched in ale houses and bars. 

All because the bartender was cute and I thought maybe she was the love of my of my life because somewhere out there, a person exists who is. A matter I've stumbled over for over half my life, toppling ones I thought were this fabled and elusive she in one carefully orchestrated coup d'etat after another as though the CIA had control of my mind and they thrived in a state of chaotic heartbroken uncertainty where I mostly dwelled apart from the brief episodes of time where I lived, fooling myself that I was in love, and this vaunted "she" with me. One woman replaced another in appropriate self-serving succession. "Do not get too comfortable," ought to be embroidered on the throw pillows of my heart, a warning I never heed, or never give out to anyone prior to us dating. 

One night in this bar, weeks ago, Max said something in such a way to make me think of the possibility that she was more than just a passerby in my life. More than just that octopus or walrus on that beer can. And this bartender, Max, short for Maxine, a name she humorously said that she shares with only dead women, was pretty but not unattainable pretty. She had a beautiful but simple face. She had a larger nose but a perfect smile and pretty eyes. She looked like a displaced Bavarian girl in jeans rather than lederhosen. A lovely Gretel or one of those girls carved on a cuckoo clock that come out at such an hour and do a dance then spin around before disappearing back inside, to do it all over again in 60 minutes. 

She was shapely and desirable and she had a distinct laugh that made me smile everytime I heard it. More of an obnoxious but cute cackle than a laugh really. I don't ever think I considered what hearing fifty years of that sound might be like, presuming we both lived to 90. I wondered what I might have drowned out, what I am expected to overlook - sagging breasts and vericose veins and that inevitable neck meat which makes old women look like plucked gray turkeys. But so too did I wonder what she would think of me when I was a bony collection of liver spots and misplaced hairs, watery eyes and dentures. 

But I was soon disappointed that such inevitable outcomes were erased when suddenly there was no connection with her. Like a snuffed flame. As though someone had told her some dark secret about me that was so abhorrent she no longer found similar interest. She suddenly wasn't as charming as the last, as though our first meeting was simply a slick bartender maneuver to beguile the patron for a better tip, or maybe she sensed my interest after some careless flirtation I offered that landed awkwardly like a vaulting gymnast off the uneven bars, a bone snapping through the leg tragically on national TV. My gold medal finish erased just like that. 

Simply, I had expressed obvious interest and, thus, I was relegated to that heap of old perverts and strange single men of any age who had come before me with the same intention. A series of poor hunters on a likewise safari to have seen the lion but who had not got off a shot. To have had her in their sites, but to have lost her in this tragic way - to indifference and a bad mood. Or maybe, I reconsidered, she was on her period and a legal team inside me was frantically mitigating on her behalf, but to no avail. I wasn't having it and there was no chance I was pursuing anyone with any semblance of a bipolar mood disorder, being that the last two had been so afflcited. As much of a dog that returns to it's vomit I had been, I was determined to be more aware of past mistakes so not to repeat them. The plethora of crazy women I have dated, one way or another, could fill an asylum. And that asylum was no longer my duty or wish to fill. 

The warmth of the last few visits was exchanged for a coldness which befuddled me so much that I drank several beers more thinking I must be wrong and that she would revert to her former self if only I conjured the right potion words. The right joke, maybe. Some clever line I suddenly couldn't muster. Then I thought, perhaps I was mistaken before and she was never interested at all. I had seen into her something that wasn't there and I played the optimistic romantic lead in a book of my own imagination. Sold the movie rights to myself and starred in that role as well between visits. Perhaps I had said something wrong. But the honeymoon was over and there she danced to hideous songs and rejected my flirtations as some insipid basketball game played and the State of the Union address was made by a man, as though to further depress my mood, who more resembled a puppet than any other person I had ever seen. The only question was whose hand was up his ass. 

And she said something fond of him, and I cringed. He reminded her of her grandfather, maybe. And she flirted with some other patron and I cringed. And she danced to some terrible pop song and I cringed. And she said she liked tequila and had a bottle in the back if we wanted to do shots and I cringed. And she expressed her displeasure for a favorite band of mine and I cringed. And finally I knew what it felt like to be on the Titanic. Minute by minute we grew further and further apart until there was nothing left of a connection at all and I was thinking in my head that she might be a lesbian and that none of it could be helped. And there I was, bobbing up and down in that old familiar icy ocean, drowning on my disillusionment as she survived on the door with no passion for me and no pity. 

That pseudo-man-thing scrolled through a universe on his cell phone, trolling people on Facebook, reacting to everything in the world as though it mattered what he thought of it. As though it were his duty and his calling in life to speak up on an issue when it was relevant, anyway. In 6 months the media moves on to something else and so too does he. And he understood everything in the world and championed all the right causes and was never wrong about anything because the proper media outlets told him what to think and reassured him through an army of basement-dwelling fact checkers and so he thought little at all for himself because it was already done for him. All he had to do was parrot words already spoken, thoughts already had. And those words and thoughts were expressed up and down any Google search, the media not in the least hiding their biases. He was indifferent to my malady and I was in the bottom of the Atlantic full of icy salt water. 

I desperately wanted to kill myself, but I was sure there was something I wanted to write about all this. It was all too absurd. And though another brief but promising light was extinguished, I was optimistic that I would find a light that would never go out. I cashed out and over-tipped, vowing to never return, or to return only when I was rid of that bad taste she left in my mouth, or perhaps when I moved on to another relationship and could come in like nothing bothered me and less like a displaced hunter who overpaid for a chance to kill something that wasn't his to kill. For that is what love was to me then. Killing everyone else besides yourself for however long it is agreed upon. Killing the individual to become the couple. But so many lovers lease, rather than buy. Nothing is permanent. Nothing lasts forever. So if you're in love with someone who is taken, just be patient. 

I left, disgruntled once more at life as though it helps to be so, or hopeless in my cause that "woe is me" will get me somewhere. This, I vowed, was the last time I would pursue someone with any sort of interest, once more revisiting what was and what I had thought there was. But as I was leaving, a beautiful blonde woman was walking in and smiled genuinely at me. She was with a lady friend who I hardly noticed at all in that she was in this Venus' shadow. My mouth opened and I said an awkward hello, all that I could muster, and she asked me if I was leaving so soon and I fumbled over my words for a moment and lied, saying that I was only going to my car for a minute. 

And when I returned, the undeterminable bearded marsupial was drinking another of those craft beers, this one had a dapper twenties male caricature on it and read "Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder." And he spoke profusely of how the beer was infused with an ounce of real absinthe and nauseatingly went on to tell everyone the difference between various kinds of absinthe, which parlayed itself into stories of his experiences across Europe. I could hardly get a word in edgewise to the beautiful lady who looked at me like I wished to be looked at. 

But when he, or it, at last relented, after proudly announcing that he had a real bottle of absinthe in the trunk of his car, I spoke to the woman whose name was Bella. Bella said that she was a hooker on sabbatical, only she didn't say hooker because it is an offensive term that dates back to when General Joseph Hooker of the Union Army who partied like the world was going to end allowed a band of prostitutes to follow his troops to keep up the moral of his men. Bella, of course, was not her real name and she kept the name secret because she could and she made an empathic case why all people should keep their names secret as though she was a plaintiff on People's Court and Max was Judge Wapner, who no one in the bar knew but me as they were of the Judge Judy generation. Millennials. Every single one of them. 

Bella said she was a Catholic, but she had washed the ash off her forehead after service because it makes her look ridiculous, adding every year for lent she gives up escorting and everyone sighed as though it were noble and she cried for a moment and then laughed about some bad joke her less attractive friend told her which involved 3 monkeys and a cop. I forgot the joke because it wasn't that funny and I wanted to kill myself again and was thinking of if I'd prefer to hang myself or to slit my wrists. And that gender fluid marsupial, who at last revealed his pronouns to be they/them, announced that he was asexual, much to the world's favor, and he invited us all to drink the absinthe with him at his house. The others declined, making good excuses, reactively adroit in such a way that us men are not. 

Normally, I would have said no and went home and killed myself, but the evening was so miserable that I wasn't quite ready to die yet and since I didn't have to work tomorrow, I said what the hell and agreed. I hadn't had absinthe before, after all. Before we left, the hooker's phone was blowing up on the bar, seizuring every minute or so, and she was reading aloud exactly what she texted back, "Not until after Easter! I'm on sabbatical!" she announced a little angrier each time in her sultry phone sex operator voice. I decided to have fun with her and to guess her name and I got it in three guesses. It was Kayla. When she asked how I knew, I said that I was a great prognosticator, similar to Punxsutawney Phil, but no one thought it was as clever as I did which disappointed me as much as I pretended it didn't. I was in love with the hooker for exactly 17 minutes and 22 seconds. I was in love with Max for 3 weeks and 5 days. Now I was a bachelor once more. 

I rode with "they/them" to "their" house, which might not have been a good idea being that he looked a little like Buffalo Bill, but sometimes I make wonderful choices drunk and to not drive while drunk is always a wonderful choice. But to ride along with a drunk driver was probably not wise, but at least, come my funeral, I would be remembered as an unfortunate passenger rather than a guilty drunk driver. I have always enjoyed being a person in the right rather than one in the wrong. 

They didn't live far. Only a few blocks, but all the while they were driving and they were babbling about some obscure thing, I was deep in thought and I realized how much of my life I ruined falling in love with the wrong people. The girl at Long John Silver's. The lady who sold me a mattress. The friend of the friend who was going through a divorce. The lifeguard at the pool. The real estate agent. Countless bartenders. The cashier at more places than I can remember. The waitress at that Cracker Barrel one time on vacation. I was never in love with any of them, of course, but I wanted to be. Or maybe, I just wanted them to love me. 

"Don't mind my roommate," they warned me parking along the old brick street in the historic neighborhood. They pulled the e-brake and I looked at the ridiculous lump of meat beside me, laughing about the absurdity of the entire choose-your-own pronoun thing. "She's a Nazi bitch, but she's a good roommate. Nazis make good roommates. She's clean and her share of rent is always on time. She's a fucking artist. I don't know if she will be awake, though. One can never tell." 

He got the absinthe out of the trunk and carried it like it was nitroglycerin. I am not calling him they anymore. It's annoying and stupid as hell. I am not falling in love with random women and I am not putting up with bullshit. If this Nazi roommate of his said any shit to me, or denied the Holocaust, I was prepared to Bear Jew her. 

His house was nice, on a quaint street. One of those old Victorian beauties who make you appreciate old craftsmanship. He said he inherited it from his grandmother and he was trying to keep it how he remembered it. He showed me a green glass candy dish that he said was always full of peanut M&Ms when he came over because they were his favorite candy. The dish was empty, however, which was sad to me for some reason. 

The house smelled nice. We went back outside to check out the yard. He said he was landscaper of some renown. The yard was manicured. I could see where flowers would be in a few months and there were several decorative cherry trees that were full of new buds and burgeoning flowers. I was freezing and went back inside as he smoked on the porch, still looking over his yard. He said his grandmother would shit if he smoked inside, as though she was still living and sitting in a rocking chair in the parlor. He struck me as a kind of Norman Bates and briefly I wondered what happened to his parents, but I quickly lost interest.

I stood there in the foyer and there was a light upstairs creeping down the hallway, which I presumed to be that of the aforementioned Nazi and I prepared myself for her and her unibrow and her hate to come down the stairs, but the light was a soft, warm and comforting  glow like that of one inside a rotisserie oven. And as I stood there I remembered it was my birthday. I hadn't heard from anyone and I suppose being as old as I am, it hardly matters anymore. I remember being young when birthdays meant something and everyone made a big deal to celebrate your life. I hadn't anyone left that would care, I realized. But reaching into my pocket I had a tea bag that some pretty lawyer in my office gave me. I was in love with her for one month and 17 days. The tea bag was a memento. 

My host came in behind me, stinking of cigarettes and holding that bottle of absinthe like a newborn baby. And he turned on the dining room lights and got some glasses out of the china hutch, which I assumed he inherited with the house from his grandmother for it was very grandmotherly, the glass shelves having doilies on them and the glasses being of fine crystal. He acted like a God in his home and I thought that is how most people act when they have guests over. Like they are God and this is their Heaven. Then he called up the stairs to his roommate whose name was Natasha, I found out, inviting her down for a drink. And I sat at the dining table resigning myself to my fate of drinking absinthe with a gender-fluid ambiguous man and a Nazi in a grandmother's house on a weekday night, all because I was bored and didn't have to work in the morning. 

Natasha appeared in the open doorway and smiled at me, thanking her roommate for the invite. Very un-Nazi-like, I thought. I wouldn't imagine that Nazis ever said thank you. There wasn't a thing about her that seemed out of sorts or objectionable. Not a thing about her that seemed to evoke a thought of Nazism or hate so I was perplexed. She hadn't the look of someone who would invade Poland and kill six million Jews. And our mutual host, whose name was Matt, poured us each a drink and we all cheered and drank several more in good spirits. She was a perfectly lovely woman. And when I asked about the Nazism, Matt laughed and said it was because she voted for Trump, the fascist. The was the entirety of the comparison. Natasha said she had it with fake ineffectual leaders. And I agreed and Natasha shrugged and grinned clearly not wanting to engage in political conversation with her landlord, but looking at me in such a way that I knew our host was what one would call an instigator. 

The absinthe was harsh as we had it. Straight in a glass with no ice or sugar. I couldn't imagine who enjoys drinking it, not even sweetened or chilled. Natasha wasn't wearing shoes or socks and she had remarkably beautiful feet, which were drizzled with paint. I imagine it was aided by the absinthe, but she was a stunning woman. A blistering beauty the likes of which I've not seen before. Drunk or sober, that much was obvious. Matt went on and on about something political, and I did my best not to look at Natasha, but I slowly began to realize she was the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. But aware that I so easily fall in love, that I think too highly of beautiful strangers, I refused to accept this as anything more than just another fleeting infatuation. 

After our third drink she mentioned her art. She did mostly portraits, but really, whatever struck her. Whatever face or body or thing might be curious and inspire her, that is what she painted. Ugly, beautiful, alluring, appalling, it mattered not so long as it was interesting. I wondered if I might have inspired her and if so, in what way. If later when I leave, might she paint a portrait of me drinking in my chair, a doily for a coaster on that English oak table. My legs crossed. Smiling. Or was I too obvious. Too ordinary. 

I asked her about her art and she invited me up to her room for an impromptu showing. Matt asked me to lock the door when I leave as he was tired and going to bed. He seemed to have forgotten that he drove me and somewhat disappointed that my interest favored his roommate, over him, and I realized then that he was a narcissist. He was bored listening to our conversation, yet he was polite and hospitable all the while, the way one who adopts the "c'est la vie" mantra is. Perhaps, he had a tattoo to the effect, or had it stitched on some throw pillows in the sitting room. 

Natasha said she lived in the attic, so I followed her up. My eyes level with her backside in tight worn jeans with the back pocket fortuitously ripped leaving a hole as wondrous as that which Alice fell through. She was unlike any other person I had ever met and it was like ascending the stairway to Heaven, each step creaking a portent groan but in a language I didn't understand. She was contumacious, it was evident. She was to TV as a vampire is to a cross. She drank wine from the bottle and she rejected pop culture and political correctness for being for the feeble-minded and the weak-willed. She hardly smiled as though she couldn't or didn't want to so not to give anything of herself away. Reveal what she pleasured in or let you know that you had the ability to amuse her. 

Her attic room was full of her art and I regarded it with immediate and sincere reverence. The fact that it was hidden in an attic and not seen by anyone other than an invited guest made me feel special, a feeling I hadn't felt in years. A feeling I had avoided feeling identifying it as a thinking error. There was a row of four pendulous Edison bulb lights that radiated a caramel color ambience which made everything in the room look antique, cascading over all, shrouding the entirety of the room in a vintage patina. And at the end of that row of lights there was her old white-painted iron-framed bed, unmade with a pile of covers and pillows invitingly messy, flanked by two nightstands equal in every way including the tall twin lamps with the burgundy shades fringed with black flapper-like tassels. Above the bed that I imagined hosted a parade of lovers not worthy the host, there was a single octagonal window open to the outside world.

I must have looked for hours at the faces of people I've never met, nor will ever meet other than through the oils of her paintings. She had enough guns to arm a small army lying around, stashed in corners and likely more in trunks. She had hundreds of books on various shelves; paints in old crates sporadically placed; and brushes sticking out of mason jars of paint thinner like dead flowers. Antique rugs covered the floor and she played my favorite band, the band the bartender I loved only an hour ago scoffed at. She said she had seen them seven times. I had some strange desire to take off my shoes and socks and to be barefoot, so I did and she didn't think the least of it, passing a warm bottle of cheap merlot to me to drink. Then she invited me to look at a painting she had behind a curtain. She stripped the cover off and there I was, much to my astonishment, regarding myself as she had painted me. 

"I saw you in that brewery bar about a month ago. You didn't see me because it was obvious you were in love with the bartender. Or maybe you thought Matt and I were a couple, so you paid me no mind, which is chivalrous in a way. How striking you were to me, loyally looking at her as though she were the only person who existed. Seeing no one at all but her. I hope I captured you adequately. Needless to say, when I walked down for a drink, I was pleasantly surprised to see you."

"As was I that you were not in fact a Nazi."

She chuckled. "Are you in love with that bartender still? And if so, have you any room in that love for me?"

"It - didn't work out. Now, I suppose, I know why." 

I stared at the picture of myself. Never having seen myself in such a state. She might say loyal, yet I say I blind. Never seeing myself depicted through someone else's eyes, preserved forever in oil on canvas. A dog after its own perpetual vomit. But at last, happily disentangled from that ubiquitous octopus which dictated every facet of my life. Everyone says they are free, but few are in reality. 

We made love until we were too sore to continue, surrounded by floor fans and being watched by an audience of strange oil faces, climaxing around 6:30am when the birds began to sing of their secrets, and the sun peaked through that octagon that revealed itself to be a stained-glass window. An oracle of sorts. 

"However, temporary I am to be, know that I am obliged forever, and this night will stand alone, comparable to no other."

She smiled back at me, her face masked in a prismatic blend of color from the sun intruding through that sole window. "It will be comparable to tomorrow, and the next night, and the one after, and the one after that, and so on. For this is that ever after part that everyone talks about."

And so it was, as it was meant to be.