The Last Wednesday:
11/22/06.
It’s a week before Christmas, and I’m passing by the Naughty
Pine, and the papers that have been plastered over the street-side windows are
now down, so you can actually see inside. Not only that, but the little alcove
seat just to the right of the door—the one with the L-shaped wooden bench and
the sloped shingled roof—now has a series of six lit candles in it. The place
looks totally warm and inviting, and as I get closer I can see Richie drawing a
Santa-with-his-reindeer picture on the inside window, a picture that’s framed
inside a frosted circle of snow and holly. I take two steps forward and lean
closer, and the picture disappears, but I can still see Richie moving around
inside the bar. And then he’s outside shaking my hand. “Work’s almost done,” he
says, and my heart leaps. Open in time for Christmas! Yes! “Want to see what it
looks like?” Do I! He pushes open the door, I walk in behind him, and I am
bathed in the glow from the bar and the overhead lamps and the light flares out
at me as I smile and open my eyes to sunlight streaming into my bedroom on the
morning before Thanksgiving, four weeks before Christmas, and a feeling in my
stomach like every steak I ate for the last week was rancid.
Either the
Second or the Third
Circle of Hell
The temperature is 55, so it feels more like the end of
April than the end of November as I hit Duane Reade and buy a jar of Planter’s
peanuts and two bags of Dove candy goodness for tonight’s marathon. When I drop
off a bag of Dove Milk Chocolates for the downstairs crew, Glynnis asks me if
I’m going to the Closing Party on Sunday. I barely answer yes when she adds:
“Allyson is counting on you to make her feel like she’s there.” I wonder if
Allyson has told Glynnis about the Closing Diary entries I’ve been sending her
in the mail; and, if so, whether she’s shared any of them.
It’s five minutes of six when I get upstairs, and Dave’s bar
is already totally packed with regulars. Besides John B and Marita, Trish is
there, Kerry Anne is showing Robert and DJ pictures from her trip to Niagara
Falls, and Elijah is talking to Warren. “Hollow Leg!” Warren says when he sees
me. It’s Dave’s nickname for me and it’s how he used to introduce me to people
at the bar in the first couple of years when I’d be upstairs scribbling away
between the two pillars of taps. “And that is Hollow Leg Wells,” Dave would
say. “He’s a Red Sox fan but we don’t hold that against him.” And then he’d
spray me with water or flick Hoegaarden at me. (This was back when they had
Hoegaarden, so this is probably around the time when Allyson and I were arguing
over which was the better Joss Whedon show, Buffy or Angel.
Those were the days.) I bring up stories like this one whenever people ask me
why I don’t bring a laptop to the bar. As far as I know, there are no
beer-proof laptops on the market. So I could probably make a fortune designing
one.
Mauri and Jynah are waitering tonight. Elijah moves to table
201 with Warren when their friend Jay shows up, but I promise to visit him on
Saturday afternoon for lunch while he’s tending the downstairs bar. British
Mike comes in, and for some reason he goes totally ballistic when Dave gives
him a bowl of soup instead of a cup of soup. DJ asks me about Dante translations.
She’s looking for one to give her brother for Christmas.
DJ: What
about the Ciardi?
ME: God
no.
DJ: How
about the Mandelbaum?
ME: The
Mandelbaum’s good. Also the Sayers, if you can still find it.
DJ:
Sayers? Dorothy L. Sayers?
ME: Yup.
The old Penguin edition. Rhymed ottava rima. She died while halfway through the
Paradiso, it was finished by Barbara Something –- Barbara Reynolds maybe?
Whoever she is, she also translated the Orlando Furioso. There’s also the
Hollander. He’s done the Inferno and the Purgatorio. Then there’s WS Merwin’s
version of the Purgatorio, which is very good. But the best Inferno is the 20
Poet Inferno. Everybody from Seamus Heaney to Jori Graham. Every now and then
it’s at Barnes and Noble. If I see a copy I’ll pick it up.
DJ and I talk about Vertical Hour. As always
with David Hare plays, the discussion begins with a single question: how would
you rewrite the play so it works? My beef: in the first act Bill Nighy is set
up as a bad guy and Julianne Moore is well rid of her past as a war
correspondent. In the second act, the bad guy turns into a good guy after all,
and (because the play demands it) the main female character returns to the
past, like being a witness everyone ignores is better than being a teacher no
one listens to. And because Julianne Moore can’t sell her character’s
conflicted soul, the choice at the end feels schematic and frankly so escapist
as to be virtually pointless. Which makes me wonder if this play is at heart
Hare’s comment on Americans? Or just American actors?
We drink a toast to Robert Altman, who died two days ago. I
sing the praises of Long Goodbye and McCabe & Mrs.
Miller, and scourge the hatred of women that seems to be in every frame
of Short Cuts; DJ bows down before Gosford Park and
bemoans the lost opportunity of Buffalo Bill and the Indians.
(Read Kopit’s Indians instead.) We both remark on how it will be
impossible from now on to watch Prairie Home Companion and not
think of it as one long premonition. Talk of Gosford Park
leads to talk of Clive Owen (“The best thing in Bourne Identity,”
says Deej, and don’t you dare argue with her) and then the new Bond. “Which
should be him,” says DJ. End of discussion.
Henry comes in with his wife Michelle. They haven’t been in
the bar for ages, and they just happen to come in tonight. When they find out
the place is closing, they call as many friends as they can and tell them to
come upstairs. In less than 30 minutes their corner of the bar has eight people
leaning over it, and Dave is in his element.
From my notebook: Dave is playing all my birthday
compilations tonight; so many birthdays I’ve spent up here. There’s a
discussion about waxing going on at the other end of the bar [TRISH: I’ve never done it. MARITA: It hurts like hell.] Somebody
(okay—me) reflects on how ordering beers is like yelling for a woman. [ME:
Stella! Ho!] Trish’s roommates Hession and Stacy come in, and they all end up
sitting at one of the middle tables with some of their friends. Elijah leaves
at 7:30. At 8:45, Dave pours me my fourth Jameson shot of the night. Fifteen
minutes later I have a shot of tequila in front of me. I write down the words:
“We. Are. DOOMED!”
A little after nine o’clock, I put my sweater on because
it’s getting chilly up here, and find myself in the middle of an Old Time’s
Sake gag, because Dave turns around and immediately raises the heat and Mauri
says “Thank God”!” and throws on her sweater till the place warms up. This gag
dates back to a night three years ago, a winter night that was (if I remember
correctly) a Thursday, during which Dave kept raising and lowering the heat in
the upstairs, just to watch me take my sweater off, and put my sweater on. He
let everyone else at the bar in on it, and I was either so drunk or so involved
in conversation that I was totally oblivious to DJ sniggering beside me and
Allyson and Aaron giggling in the service area as I put my sweater on, and took
it off, and put it on again, once every half hour, then once every fifteen
minutes, then once every five minutes, until I finally figured out what was
going on (Dave’s shit-eating grin was a dead giveaway) and the entire bar
erupted in laughter. I still blush thinking about it.
At 9:45 it feels like
midnight. Because Dave’s been bugging me all week, and because Trish has never
heard it, I do my impression of Bob Dylan singing the Gillian’s Island Theme Song for everyone. I sit for a
while at Table 201 with Warren and Jay; Warren is reading The Glass Palace by
Amitav Ghosh, which I read a couple of years ago. Seeing a familiar book in a
buddy’s hands is like unexpectedly bumping into a friend on the street –- it
gives you that feeling of connection, of order beneath the surface of
Coincidence Ocean. So we talk Indian novels for a while, and then I talk to Jay
about his travels in South and Central America. They leave around 11, and Mauri
gives them the store, charging them only for their food and not their four
rounds of drinks.
At about 11:00, as Dave is trying to get the upstairs
closed, Andrew comes up and goes into Get Away From Me contortions whenever I
take his picture. As Andrew drinks his
Guinness and flinches whenever I make a move for my camera, DJ cries “Oh my
God, listen, it’s my June song!” And yes, we’re listening to the Stones sing
“What a drag it is getting old,” which was going to be DJ’s theme song from a
play I conceived at McQuaid’s, the bar we made our local exactly 15 years ago
now. (November of ’91, when we did The Mildred Piece.) It was called “April Mai
& June” and it was conceived as a series of four 90-minute one-acts, chronicling
the events surrounding three sisters returning home to bury their mother. The
idea was to do a play a night Thursday through Saturday (Thursday would be the
night they all arrive, Friday the first wake, Saturday the second wake) and
then a matinee on Sunday after the funeral. Their mother would be onstage as
well, as a ghost/memory character, and each sister would be the main subject of
one of the evening plays, with the funeral play being the ensemble piece. It
was originally conceived to be acted by my friends Elizabeth and Laura as well
as DJ, but it never made it out of the early draft stage. Fifteen years ago.
And now Elizabeth is married in LA, Laura is divorced in New Jersey, and DJ is
about to be made a Vice President at Goldman Sachs. There’s something ineffably
sad about all that . . .
When the door is finally closed, it’s just the core
die-hards upstairs, and Dave puts on Sergeant Pepper. We all sing along. Not
for the first time, I shake my head at how high all their voices are. Paul’s
especially. “She’s Leaving Home” is pure soprano. And while it’s playing, Dave
leans over between the taps and stares at DJ and me.
DAVE: You guys have been my anchors up
here. And that’s all I’m going to say.
That’s as sentimental as he gets. When the album is
finished, between midnight and 1, DJ leaves and Kerry Anne, Trish, Dave and I
head downstairs. Bernie is there and he buys KA and me a drink.
KERRY ANNE:
I seem to remember you—I’m sorry, this is going to sound awfully rude, but I
remember you being . . . heavier.
BERNIE: I
lost 110 pounds.
KERRY ANNE: (aside,
to me) I hope he wasn’t embarrassed
ME: Are
you kidding? He’s proud of it. He looks great.
Bernie takes my camera and snaps pictures of me and Kerry
Anne. “You’re always behind the camera,” he says, snapping off six quick shots.
I don’t even get to see what they look like –- Kerry Anne snags the camera and
junks all but one of the pix because she doesn’t like the way they make her
look.
This to me is one of the seven deadly sins of digital
photography. You never erase anything, even the bad stuff, because sometimes
bad portraits are good pictures. And you never, ever, erase pictures from
somebody else’s camera. It’s like ripping pages out of another writer’s
notebook. You just don’t do it. Or I don’t anyway. Something else I try not to
do, as much as I’d like to, is force the world to live by my rules. Whenever I
do it, the world usually laughs.
And that sound you hear? Universal chortling, as Kerry Anne
bids me goodnight and Emma Lee, who has been observing all this from three
seats away, sidles up to my side and sits down next to me. We hug and cheek
kiss, and catch up, during which I say very little and watch Emma Lee down
three Stoli O’s on the rocks until she is not only plastered, she is spackled
and shellacked. Which gives her the courage to look me in the eye and say out
loud what she’s probably been thinking since she started talking.
EMMA LEE: You know, Mr. Wells, you’re
the reason I come here. Not Dave. Not DJ. You. You’re sweet, you’re funny, I
think you’re incredibly talented and a fantastic person, and I don’t know what
happened, but we haven’t been as close as we were a few months ago.
ME: (thinking it but not saying it:)
Well, I can tell you why. It’s because I saw you leaning forward and I pulled
back.
EMMA LEE: And I know I haven’t been
keeping in touch as much as I’ve wanted to, and I don’t come in here as much as
I used to, but I miss that. I miss you.
ME: (because what else can I say and
not sound like a heel) I miss you too.
I don’t know what else to say. I don’t want to be
encouraging but I can’t be silent either. I could pretend to be drunker than I
am, and either ignore what Kerry Anne is saying or stagger over to talk to
someone else like I was under the influence of some drunken idea that just
can’t be denied, but that would only get me out of tonight, it wouldn’t get me
out of the corner I feel like I’m in. And it’s a definite backed-into-a-corner
sensation. It’s tense, it’s claustrophobic and it’s aggravating. Is this what
all those women felt when I was pressuring them with my oh-so unpressuring
attentions?
I try to get beyond the aggravation, and what comes to mind
is, I make so many jokes about nobody Liking me with a capital L; and here’s
somebody who does, so what’s the problem?
MY INNER SOBER SELF: You mean,
besides the fact that you don’t feel the same way about her?
DRUNK ME: (duh) Oh yeah.
Here’s the deal. I
don’t know whether I’m closed off from a real feeling or I just don’t really
feel anything. But I do know that there are moments in the past year when I have
felt things for people, non-neurotic things for people, believe it or not, and
those feelings are nothing like this one. It’s taken me five decades to figure
out the difference between a product of domestic manufacture and something
imported, Never mind something thrown together by cheap foreign labor or
illegal immigrants, and not even alcohol is going to make me blur that
difference. Which is the absolute wrong thing to think, because that is when
Alcohol rears his foamy head, puts his arm around my shoulder, and starts
whispering in my ear.
KING ALCOHOL: Go ahead, stick your
tongue down her throat.
ME: What?
KING ALCOHOL: Stick your tongue down
her throat -- you know I want to do it.
ME: Excuse me?
KING ALCOHOL: (Whoops!) I mean you know
you want to do it.
ME: So is it me or you that wants to do
this?
KING ALCOHOL: Uhm . . . you?
ME: (making a buzzer noise) Wrong
answer.
KING ALCOHOL: Bagged!
So I don’t stick my tongue down her throat. I meet her lips,
keep my own lips closed, and get a kiss that tastes of carbonated Jack Daniels.
I give Kerry Anne a hug (but not a Matthew hug) and break away without doing
anything stupid. But I could have done something stupid. I could have done it
quite easily. And King Alcohol just laughs.
KING ALCOHOL: (laughing) And when you
do something stupid? The truth now. Is it me or is it you who wants to do it?
So I do the one thing I know that King Alcohol hates. I tell
the truth.
ME: Emma.
If I'm wrong about this, let me know. But I get the feeling that you want more
than friendship from me, and that when you say the word like, there's a capital
L on it. And if anybody can hear that capital letter, it's me. I do this all
the time. So I need to tell you, up front, that yes, I like you as a friend,
and yes, I miss you as a friend, but I do not feel anything more than
friendship for you.
I stop myself from saying two things—(1) “That doesn't mean
it couldn't happen at some point,” because that's keeping a door open, and I
hate it when someone does that to me, it's the worst kind of tease, a tease
with thorns. And I don't say (2) “The fact that I'm not attracted to you is
actually a good thing, that means you're a decent person and not somebody who I
can be neurotically generous too and convince myself that it's Lurv when you
accept it.” Because while that may be true, it’s also an open door. No open
doors. King Alcohol loves opens doors.
So I don’t say any of that. What I do say is what Cheryl
Peyton said to me twenty-five years ago, back when I was in Boston.
ME: So if
it is more than friendship that you feel, and if you ever need to talk about it
with anyone, I would be offended if you didn't come to me first. Because,
believe me, I am the best person in the world to talk to about this. I've been
on both sides of it, so I know. Plus
I'm an idiot, so I can always learn.
That gets a laugh out of her. But when I hear the words I've
just spoken, I wonder if I've opened that door a crack. By admitting that I'm an
idiot, she might get it into her head
to educate me about the charms of Emma Lee. If you can't find a straw to
grab at, you'll make one. Is EL doing that? I have to confess: I’m too drunk to
tell, which pisses me off right now. I really wish we were having this
conversation sober, so I could read what she’s writing accurately, and not see
it through the blur of my own preconceptions. What I do see is Emma Lee with a
tight smile, looking at me unblinking.
EMMA LEE:
Thank you for that. I appreciate it. I can’t say you’re wrong, but I don’t
think you’re right, either.
ME: Then
I want to hear about it.
EMMA LEE:
Deal.
ME: Over
coffee.
EMMA LEE:
Deal.
ME: One
more for the road?
EMMA LEE:
One more for the road.
ME: On
me.
I cap my pen and close my notebook, and as Chris Isaak plays in the background, the words of our
conversation drift out to sea as soon as they’re spoken.
I don’t remember Emma Lee leaving, but I do remember
ordering one more pint of Guinness and having an argument with myself after it
happened.
KING ALCOHOL:
Go back and grab her. You gonna let that get away? Come ON! Do you really only
like it when they say no?
ME: I've
been with women who've said yes.
KING ALCOHOL:
Not recently.
ME: And I
have control over that how exactly? Because drinking ain't gonna make it
happen.
KING ALCOHOL:
But it will make you feel better about it.
ME: No,
it will make me feel like I NEED drink to make me feel better. And better than
what?
KING ALCOHOL:
Everything.
ME: I'll
tell you what. I'll drink like a fish as long as I can write like an angel while
I do it. Can you promise me that? Can you? Hello? Your Majesty?
KING ALCOHOL:
It could happen.
ME: And
Liora could call me tomorrow and say I'm yours! But not in this universe.
SARAH:
Who the fuck are YOU talking to?
And I realize two things: Sarah is standing beside me at the
bar, and I have been talking to myself, out loud, which is something I always
do when I'm by myself but never do in public unless I'm extremely angry or
extremely relaxed. And believe me when I tell you—you get extremely relaxed at
your peril in New York City.
SARAH:
You okay?
ME: I am
fine. I am arguing with King Alcohol about my lack of social life.
SARAH:
You're one of the most social people I know.
ME: Curly
hair, straight hair.
SARAH:
What?
ME: We're
all unhappy with what we've got.
SARAH:
Yeah, why is that?
I quote “Self-Pity,” my favorite DH Lawrence poem:
I never saw a wild thing sorry
for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen
dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry
for itself.
SARAH: I
can't tell whether you're too drunk or not drunk enough.
ME: My
rule is, if I can quote poetry word for word? Not drunk enough. What'll you
have? I'm buying.
SARAH:
Water.
ME: Water
it is. With a water back.
As we talk, I’m scribbling our conversation down so I’ll
remember it. Sarah gives me the hairy eyeball. I write down the words: I
am going to miss this woman’s mind like nobody’s business. It will be my phantom limb for years to come. Then I cap
my pen, close the notebook, and put both of them in my shoulderbag.
SARAH: Is
this off the record now?
ME: Yup.
SARAH:
About fucking time.
We share a hug, and then we start a conversation that will never end as long as one of us can take a breath upon this planet.
Alcohol: Guinness
(10) Jameson (7) Patron (5)
Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells
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