That video man in my head
I don’t know why I come here like this, a nearly 40-year-old woman looking for cheap thrills in the arms of men almost half my age.
I don’t even like the music the clubs play these days, so far from 80s pop I so loved when I was young.
Boys look at my long legs when I sat at the bar, the slit on either side an exotic flashback to an era before they were born.
I know what I look like – overdressed for a club like this, wearing too much makeup to cover-up the fact that I’m not young – but I don’t care.
The bar sharks seem not to care either.
Some even abandon their younger targets and start circling my location, as if each one of them can smell blood.
All of this is a bit surreal: the alien music, the lack of cigarette smoke. I might be living in a dream or a nightmare from which I cannot wake up.
Only the stench of the alcohol is the same.
When one bar shark makes his move, he staggers when he thinks he is strutting, and I wonder if he is sober enough for me to even bother with.
But I ached in a million ways I never imagined I would, craving a touch I rarely get, even from men who supposedly know how to make a woman like me happy.
I never stop searching or sampling the waters.
I stopped fearing for shark a long time ago.
This one hands me a line so unoriginal I could have printed it on a greeting card.
Still I nod, allowing him to sit. I even let my fingers linger on his knee when he does sit.
I can hardly see him in the dim light.
This is a good thing.
Who could stand up in comparison to a memory?
I know after a few drinks, I won’t see him at all, but rather I will see that other man from long ago, who claimed to love me – the fool that I was – refused to believe him.
I have relived that moment a million times in my mind, each time attempting to change my part in the dialogue, each time repeating the same outrageously unbearable thing.
And each time I watch that man from long ago walk away wounded, never to return, except as a rewound video tape in my head.
Tonight, the shark seems even more vague than usual, just a set of eyes looking at me with lust, and a set of lips bragging about himself, and a pair of hands gripping me in-between each drink he buys.
Then, he thinks I’m drunk enough and springs his questions on me about how we ought to visit the motel up the street.
All I can think as I gather my purse and rise is:
“It’s about time he got to the point.”