Baby the Bartender

I ripped the nail from my thumb, but it doesn’t hurt anymore because I’m three whiskey shots into the night. The music slides off my back, and in this bar, I’m a drop of water falling into a bathtub.

My bathtub, at the apartment, the white bathtub with lion’s feet, it’s painted with blood, and I should really get to cleaning it, but I’ve let my thumb be the excuse.

I can’t touch the top of it. The skin, that skin underneath the nail, the skin that was once attached to the nail, those filaments hang loose like the tentacles of an octopus. They’re white and soft, and when the wind touches it, it feels like fire, but looks like the hair of an angel. My thumb throbs, but I feel nothing. I’ve put my heart in my thumb, and my heart, having been left vacant, feels nothing, and I’m growing used to that. Now, underneath the gauze, with the blood soaking through showing a soft orange, I hold it at chest level, and focus on my breathing.

I’m a Yoga. I’m a Zen master.

This bartender, the one with wavy brown hair and perky tits, she’s this bouncing twenty-one-year-old. She asks, “Another?”

I show her my bandaged thumb with the white gauze wrapped around it, and say, “Guess how this happened.”

This place, dark and smoky and dead like a Sunday night, is the row of letters you can’t make out in an eye exam. A couple dances in a corner. In the shadow, they’re the tortoise to the hare’s music.

The bartender, this girl like the rest, she says, “Show it to me.”

“What’s your name?”

“Baby.”

“Serious?”

She puts the fourth shot on the bar and shakes her head. This shot, it tastes of acid, and I swallow it like the night ahead.

Through the whiskey I say, “After work, come home with me.”

“Will you show it to me?”

And the only time it ever happens, is when it’s easy.

 

Returning from my bathroom she says, “Your bathtub is full of blood.” She laughs, asks, “Should I be worried?”

“Yes.”

My apartment, the little box, is five flights up and overlooks the building next to it. In the sole window, fogged over and cold, are our reflected images soft like peering through water.

In the bed, propped up on her elbows, the bartender named Baby, she asks, “So what happened?”

“I said you needed to guess.”

My apartment, the dark and cold studio, is quiet like a subway station at 3AM. And she’s the train rattling through.

“How can I guess if I don’t even know what your thumb looks like?”

“You know, it’s disgusting that you’re into it.”

She laughs, says, “What’s disgusting is that you like that I’m into it.”

This girl in my bed, her arms propping her up, pointing her perky tits toward me, she’ll do. Really, all this is punishment. Really, all this is building a metaphorical wall. And while I do it, I can cherish every minute as another opportunity to hate myself.

 

The handcuffs locked around the bedposts, her arms held back as if attached to a medieval stretching device, her legs tied to the bedposts with sheets, Baby is suffering the will of herself. Baby, one of the naive young.

“You know, you shouldn’t ever go home with someone you met at a bar.”

“Ooh, talk dirty.”

In the kitchen, the fluorescent lights blinking disco, I grab a cutting knife from the sink. The knife, its blade thick and long, it is covered with dinner from yesterday.

Around the corner, from the bed, I hear, “Don’t keep me waiting – come back!”

“Coming.”

 

The night, it comes in glimpses; I’m left with hazy reflections of what might have been. With the light cascading around corners blowing away shapes, the memories are spheres of midnight.

 

I splash water around the bathtub. The red drains away as the last penny down the funnel. The nail from my other thumb has been ripped away. My thumbs, the self-prescribed medication. They throb to the beat of my heart. Slow and rhythmic. I breath gently, and watch the red disappear.

 

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