Thin end of the wedge
Where does this couple come from? They show up sporadically, once a month or so, time travelers in their denim and leather, the woman wearing pointy-toed boots that demonstrate the thin end of the wedge, the toe jam, the man with quirkily British brothel creepers, thick-soled and wide. Both of them have artificially blonde hair, tousled, the roots a shade of anonymous brown. The quick intake/exhale, the sideways glance, the tabby or calico, all of it incongruous against a stucco house the color of French’s mustard.
This is one of my dream lives, beholden to substances, a life of no obligations, romantically influenced by the 70s punk scene, where I could reasonably write something like this:
I paid for it
A lifetime of clean living doesn’t show on the face. The late nights, the whiskies and tequilas, the hovering over a mirror with a tightly rolled dollar bill: eventually, those years catch up with you. It starts out as a slight dullness in the eyes, a yellowish tinge to the skin. One night you go to sleep almost young, the next morning, the fine lines start to appear, the fissures, the sags and bags.
At that point, it’s too late. No amount of detox can save you from the destruction you’ve brought upon yourself, the physical ruination.
At that point, then, why stop? Why not go out in a hazy glare of glory, the afternoons fuzzy, the mornings cotton-mouthed? We’re all dependent upon something. Some people need sweet-as-candy positive thoughts, the cheery aphorism, pep talks written on the bathroom mirror in styptic pencil. Others need human touch, have to feel skin against skin, insist upon hugging every acquaintance, on touching palms with strangers. You, lover of chemicals, of the products of ferment, find this need pathetic. It’s nothing that sour mash and cheap wine followed up by a pack of Pall Malls can’t solve.
So you examine your face, pinch the sagging skin on your forearms, remember the long ago days when you were young and naïve. That first drink was bitter, but the next one went down easy. It wasn’t just the taste, the feeling of looseness, like drifting on the ocean, it was the camaraderie, the friends around the bonfire, the people stacked against the bar.
From a prompt, I paid for it. The next Round Robin starts up this weekend, thank goodness. Feeling very dark today, despite my night of long-enough sleep, but there's good news: we're closing on the house on Monday.
Image by Diamond Farrah.
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