The Whiskey Detective Flash Fiction Collection | Fundament-Ally Jul 15 Posted by DAMM This time I sat in another table, along the wall in the booth where they all dump their boyfriends. Being this dive’s proprietor (what? I LIKE dives) I have seen many a man as big as a house whimper in the cold decay of rotten romance. I have seen the smartest of street men laid low by the ultimate con. I have seen genius wasted to befuddled idiocy in the gesture of a well painted and finely manicured hand. I had been thinking of Selene and our last encounter. I didn’t want to feel I had been cruel so I sat here to remind myself why it wasn’t cruel. It was about 11 and most of the regulars were either sleeping nearby or gone already. People don’t know this, but most men get dumped in the morning. Oh sure, in the best of cases it is from the bed you shared for years and upon waking she decides she has outgrown you but usually it is in the EARLY morning by phone or here by drunken desperation where her friends can see. They like to soften the blow. Even when they are stabbing you, women convince themselves they are looking out for you. By feeding you and getting you drunk they can tell themselves they did all they could to ease your pain. Except not deliver it in the first place. It’s part of their most important defense – justification resulting in no accountability. Instead, most substitute self punishment for that. In the younger ones especially, that late twenty something woman trying to convince everyone she is closer to 20 than 30. Or they assign blame. That is the offensive version of that mechanism. And they wield it deftly. As my Turkey and color arrived for the second time, a couple sat in the booth and more than obliged me. I knew by the look in her eyes what was going to happen. He didn’t. Apparently this was going to be his first time. Any man who has seen that particular look will never for get it. It is also inevitable by the time you see it. That look of “nothing is wrong” replaced by the “things are going to get right” in their eyes. The look of freedom long dreamed of and never actually realized. In fact some are chained by their own cycles and leave with a new man to plan to break up with before the greasy spoons on Main St. close for the night. He had no idea all right, I heard the sound. There is a sound every man makes when a woman breaks his heart, there is also a sound a man makes when he breaks. The first is like the sound of iron being pulled through the vocal chords and it is always attached to a form of this sentence. What did you just say? The second sound, the one where irreparable damage is done and no amount of reconciliation can rectify the harmhas an even more unique pitch. No comfort will do in this place; no healing ever occurs when the second sound is uttered. It is the sound of vacuumed silence, a heartbeat and breathing so erratic that if you could hear it, you would call for medical assistance. And it always comes with one word at its end. A desperate, identity void whisper of “NO“. It is the end of who a man was, and the beginning of what I call The Becoming – a perpetual transitional state in which the core aspects of a man’s nature are reduced the thing inside him that drove him as a man is thrown out of sync. Sometimes the transformation that never materializes lasts for the rest of his life. When she (her name was Ally and I had seen them here before) told him I heard the second sound. The clarity and understanding of reality fled him before me and my newly refreshed drink, (I told Maggie to leave the bottle anyway). I saw him walk hand in hand with his father as a child and ride his bike for the first time in his mind. I saw his ideas of the future; the weddings, kids, security and love. I watched pain, fear and a universal questioning replace them. And I saw her excitement as the idea of a new victim walked in the door. It was of course her new ex’s best friend. That man died in front of me and ordered gin from the top shelf. They danced on the floor all night in front of him. He couldn’t leave from shock and liquor and they danced some more. I called the bouncer over and told him to escort them out. And I told Maggie his drinks were on me. She liked the hundred I slipped her too. She came with me upstairs and she brought the bottle. I liked Maggie. A lot. She didn’t like booths and I never had to worry about her wanting to sit there. Plus she worked holidays and weekends.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 04:02:13 +0000
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