I’ve been painting animals the last week or two. I don’t know any of them. Most are for the Faulkner book I’m illustrating so you could say they’re imaginary. But they’re real to me. At least for the time it takes the ink to dry.
I never met Simone the cat but know she died and that her owners miss her. I painted her portrait for money, but, I hope, it doesn’t look like it.
I’ve had a few animals in my life but none for very long. Dex the rottweiler from the street had to be put down for heartworms; Porkchop the chihuahua/papillon mix hated me; Gustav the cat was old when I met him. I had to dig him a hole in the backyard.
K has a cat called Tomás that I hear stories about. He likes to run away and has to be brought back sometimes. He’s a stray who was caught and fixed by her neighbor years ago. One day he broke into K’s house and decided to stay.
K and I ran into each other on a Friday outside the Music Box five weeks ago. We’d both gone to the matinee of Cronenberg’s The Shrouds. I’d clocked her before the movie, sitting a couple rows back from the front row, my customary spot. I didn’t say hello because I thought we weren’t talking. It had been many years. I figured I’d said or done something to upset her so I wasn’t going to bother her now.
Outside, still shivering from the thunderstorm I’d ridden through to get to the movie, my clothes still damp after two hours of a disappointing movie; she came out of the theater and stopped. We started talking and haven’t stopped since.
Our first date was the following Friday. She invited me to see a show of prisoner kerchief art at the Mexican Museum. Neither of us paid much attention to the stuff on the walls. Couldn’t stop yammering at each other. Lunch afterward was the same. I knew she wanted to be kissed but I waited till the following Friday. The first time I invited her over.
Every Friday since has been like a holy day. We spend the days leading up to them texting and pining away. My week now revolves around our Fridays together.
My whole life is upside down over this but I don’t care.
I’m taking the bus to the bar. There’s a street festival on so they need a third bartender. I’m sort of dreading it. The money will be good but what I have to do to get it will not.
Watching young people do mating dances can be fun but as the decades of watching them slip by I have to psyche myself up for it. The trick to surviving any service-industry gig is to remove yourself emotionally/psychologically from the interactions. It’s unhealthy and unnecessary to expose much of yourself when you’re just a means to others’ end. It’s a simple job: ask what they want, bring it, take their money, say thank you, wash glasswear, repeat, repeat, repeat. I’ve rarely had trouble achieving the required remove but the older I get the odder it feels to even be occupying the same space with those on the other side of the bar.
The bar is reasonably full when I walk in. I post up in the nook behind the photobooth and ask Mike for coffee. He tells me about the intense Wisconsin fishing trip he just returned from. Hip-waders and hiking through wilderness in 80 degree heat. Sounds miserable but he sounds happy about it. I wonder whether they’ll even need me. Maybe I can just go home.
At 10pm they start piling in. I get ice from the back, then duck in behind the bar. It’s not much room for three guys to navigate but we manage. They’re tipping large tonight. We don’t know why but don’t complain. It’s funny to still be doing this. Mike and Augie do it all week but these days I dip in and out. I wonder whether they’d like to be somewhere else too or they accept this as their life. It’s not that bartending is beneath me now, only that it feels more and more like an out-of-body experience.
Mike cuts me at midnight. $156 for two hours’ work. I don’t even stay for a shift drink. I say goodbye and walk east down Division to the bus. The street is filled with weekend revelers. I feel like a ghost. I go into Wendy’s and wait forever for my order. Then the guy comes over and tells me they’re out of big buns so no Baconator for me. I ask what they can make and eat the baby burgers near the bus stop. A homeless man keeps asking everyone for a light. He’s two-fisting mostly full bottles of vodka and malt liquor as he assembles a rollie. Everybody at this bus stop looks exhausted. It’s a party all around but not to us.
On the bus a woman announces she doesn’t want to be sitting on this bus, then sits down next to me. She puts on a face mask and apologizes anytime our shoulders graze. She’s very fidgety. After a few stops she finds a better spot. I’m not sorry she’s gone.
