My Place

I was over at the watering hole again yesterday evening after work. I'm seriously not considering any detoxification program anytime sooner. The urge is too much to ignore sometimes, you know. I like to describe myself as a social drinker, if there's any truth in that. But that is what I like to believe.

I will call this place 'my place' because I have morphed into a resident furniture. I love the place. The barman, having me patronizing their establishment for the past couple of months, found it strange that a person is able to do an 8 hour sitting at a time. Alone. Thats what he said to me recently. He recalls seeing me entering the place for the very first time to find my now designated usual seat at the bar. I averaged 10 or 11 mugs at the end of each nights I was there. On some nights it was more. No one spoke to me. However, after a whole four weeks or so of visitation, barman himself took courage and approached me to say 'Hello'. I obliged and the rest is history as they say. But it took barman 4 weeks to get there and when I asked why, he said I didn't look the 'approachable' type. He decribed me as constantly staring at nothing and was too quiet. He said I had this 'look'. I looked like I had issues. So best everyone left me alone which was fine by me becuase thats the whole reason why I was there in the first place.

I don't know. I may be all of that.

I dare say, I'm fast becoming one of their favourite drunk at the bar and it is not unusual to find me actually pulling down the shutters at the end of certain nights. I leave it to your imagination as to the state of my composure on those nights. Its not very pretty. But I digress.

So there was this one evening after dinner that I was walking to my ride when I heard an old 70's number being played. Yes, from a pub. I walked in and took a seat as usual at the bar.

And there she stood. How beautiful she looked, how unearthly, when she said 'Hi!...first time?'. I said, 'Yes'.

Cool and clear, there swam in her eyes a conscious sadness. These eyes of hers seemed to have suffered all imaginable sufferings and to have acquiesced in it. I can tell.

Her lips spoke with difficulty and as though something hindered them. As though a keen coldness had numbed her face. But between her lips at the corners of her mouth where the tip of her tongue showed at rare intervals, there was a sweet sensuality and inward delight that contradicted the expression of her face and the tone of her voice.

A short lock hung down over the smooth expanse of her forehead, and from this corner of her forehead where the lock of hair brushed her cheeks, her boyish welled up time to time like a breath of life and cast the spell of hermaphrodite. I listened to her speak.

And thats when I fell.