The type of work I used to do, I have highly developed dread-sense and the kind that hits you after last calls are made and the owners are serious about wanting to go home is no joke.
They turn those lights all the way up to "real life" and you can see your whole world change right before your eyes. All that glitters may not be gold, but it sure looked like it twenty minutes ago.
With the lights set to "harsh," you can watch as the truth breaks across the professionals seated around the bar, their shoulders jammed into their ears and their eyes locked on the bottom of their glass.
Time to move. Time to leave the oasis and its swaying bar stools. Time to return to the sow's ear of a life that didn't look so bad, not so many hours before.
Not only do the customers have to leave, but so too does all sense of nuance, of interpretation, of context. What had earlier been a declaration of personal philosophy becomes a statement of resignation, of defeat.
What the fuck becomes what the fuck.
Back in the day, I closed more than a few bars. That was different. That was work.
Now, I find that I am closing bars because I don't have anything else to do, no place else to go.
I'm out there in the open, a civilian.
Tonight, I'm at The Bamboo Schemer. The menu says it used to be the supper club of choice, but that was when people went to supper clubs and didn't choose where to eat based on whether or not it had "drive-thru." Now,it's a tired old joint. The kind of place where the Christmas decorations stay up all year round and the staff thinks nothing about prepping their vegetables at one of the tables in the dining room.
I'm here because there was no place else that was open. I'm here because I couldn't spend another second in the house. I'm here because any sound would be better than deafening scream of my own thoughts.
Until they turned the lights on, I had been engaged in a battle of wills with a worthy opponent. They had one of those cat figures with the hand that rocks back and forth like it's waving at you. I used to know what they were called, but I forget.
I was trying to stop the arm from waving with my mind. If I lost, I had to buy the next round. God damned thing went undefeated all night.
Until they turned the lights on, it seemed like I could almost make it, almost forget.
But, like the bullshit food they serve, any comfort I might have found, was quickly lost and I was just as empty.
For a lot of years, I could avoid this by working. I always volunteered for work during this time of the year because, however much it might have sucked, not working was worse. When I was in the service I would trade details; when I was on assignment with the team, I would take the surveillance shifts, even volunteer to clean equipment.
Anything.
If I didn't keep my head down, if I didn't keep busy, then I would remember and I would relive.
I don't blame myself. I never did. I blame those guys and every time that scene un-spools in my brain, I want to hunt them down and kill them all over again.
Seems like I was seven, but it was so long ago that I don't really remember. What I do remember was being at home. It was daytime and right before Christmas.
All the visual cues were there. There was a tree and there were presents and, somewhere in the pantry, were the cookies and fruit balls and other treats that made this one of my most favorite times of the year.
The phone rang.
To this day, I still maintain that there must have been a time when finding out a call was for you was pretty exciting: something to look forward to, to get excited about. It hasn't been like that for a long time.
My mom took the call.
It went on for a while and, at some point, I recall being aware that she was crying.
I'm going to get the timing all wrong here, so don't quote me, or anything.
When I found out what had happened, it became part of a series of deaths that I associate with the holidays.
A good friend of my mother's had just moved into the neighborhood, as in they were unpacking the truck when it happened.
This wasn't one of those do-it-yourself moving jobs that are so popular these days, they were using a professional moving company: the kind that puts blankets over your stuff so it doesn't get scratched.
If only they had taken the same care with their trucks....
Peter was so excited about the whole experience and couldn't wait to get his bed set up so he could start building a fort in his new "big boy" room. He would meet each of the movers as they came into the house and ask them if the boxes they were carrying were for his room.
Finally, his mother got so tired of calling him away from the movers that she suggested he go and play outside.
Peter's new house was built into the side of a hill. This was very different from the flat street that he had grown up on.
Gravity was less of an abstract concept.
Much less.
There was lots to explore and certainly there were snow forts to build, but those things could wait. Right now, there was a parade of boxes going into his house and that parade needed a grand marshal.
At first, Peter simply moved his interview of each of the movers and their loads to the driveway. What box were they carrying now and where did it belong? Was it for his room? Why not? When were they going to get more boxes for his room?
Again, his mother called him off and told him to stop bothering the men. She suggested that his time would be better spent building a snowman, or something.
To Peter, this new project seemed, at first, to be interesting, but then he found that the snow wasn't wet enough to roll and so he had to find something else to do.
He tried to make snowballs to throw at the inviting target that was the side of the moving truck, but, again, his mother called to him from the living room window and told him to cut it out.
It was only a matter of time, before he was drawn to the open doors of the truck and just a few minutes more before he was issuing orders about which boxes should next be carried into the house.
More calls from his mother.
Peter stopped giving instructions and stood to the side of the truck.
What happened next is open to conjecture, but apparently, one of the crew guys moved a hand truck against the side wall of the truck and it dislodged the clip that had been holding the door open for unloading.
Before anyone knew it happened, it had stopped happening and was done.
The door swung closed and caught Peter fatally on the side of the head.
My mom's friend was not prepared for the next load that the mover's delivered to the front door. Not prepared at all.
It's easily forty years since this happened and it's not like Peter and I were really friends, but I remember the call, I remember the sense that another holiday season was going to be associated with a funeral. I remember thinking that gift giving and gift taking were closely linked.
Over the years, the Yin and Yang quality of this time of year played itself out again and again. There were illnesses and hospitalizations, separations and divorces and always more funerals.
Bittersweet was not just a type of chocolate anymore.
There was a point, and I just won't get very specific about the details--I won't--when I thought that I had to do something to restore the balance, make things right.
It took a couple of years but I found all of them--the whole moving crew--and I made some deliveries of my own.
I don't know what I was thinking.
Of course it didn't work. How could it?
All I did was add to the list. All I did was make it harder for some more families to celebrate Christmas. All I did was give a gift that keeps on giving.
I spent tonight in a staring contest with a plastic toy because I didn't want to think about all of this and yet, with one selfish flip of the switch, all of it--every face, every fight, every tortured silence and forced smile was delivered again, for the first time.
I pushed my glass toward the inside edge of the bar as I pushed my stool away from its outside. From my pocket, I threw too much money on the bar because I didn't want to admit to anyone--myself included--that I couldn't make out the denominations.
It was quiet when I got to the parking lot. That wasn't normal for this part of town at this time of night, but then again this wasn't a regular night.
Everyone with any sense was home, nestled all snug in their beds. It was only those of us with more memories than sense who were on the streets at this hour.
I wrestled the car to the curb and took what must have been an eternity to decide if I was going to pull into traffic.
Across the street, there were a handful of teenagers obsessed with trying to pull down one of the shitty decorations that the City puts up every year.
Giant electric snowflakes have about as much relevance to this town as an art museum: something to aspire to, but something that was never going to happen.
They eventually gave up, but not before they left it swinging by its cable and blinking intermittently like a patient on life support.
I took a deep breath and pulled out. I needed to get home. It was long past time to let the dog out.
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