What bottle is this? The fourth? The fifth? Does it matter? I have been in this bar for what feels like an eternity…or maybe an hour…I don’t know. This place used to feel like home. I used to spend hours on end enjoying life’s pleasures; chatting about nothing important with my friends, failing to woo women, and unpleasantly wiggling our bodies to the same four tracks that were a staple at the Upenyu.
But now the familiar faces have been replaced with new ones. The empty smiles of those who I showed with gifts in exchange for sweet nothings have been replaced with frowns filled with contempt. “You not handsome or charismatic as you think you are!”. “You wreak of desperation and loneliness!” Well, it isn’t my fault I have no money, it isn’t my fault I look this way and it sure isn’t my fault I love the people that I love. But that doesn’t matter to them, I was and will always be a blemish in Upenyu bar. As for my friends, who even knows where they are. Once I sort truer smiles, they slowly faded away in the crowd. Maybe they still are here, maybe not. Whatever the case I don’t see them and I don’t think I ever will.
At least the women are just as unpleasant as they ever were. One blatantly asked me to be her sugar daddy, my finances unbeknownst to her. It is nice to know the price of opening a woman’s legs. Too bad I am not fond of women as I used to be. The men are no better; just a foul and unpleasant bunch. I have no intention of becoming bar meat any time soon. But it is nice if I could dance with someone, gaze deeply into their eyes, to forget the foul stench of alcohol and sweat, the all-consuming noise, and the petty bouncers who arbitrarily torment patrons for their sick amusement. It would be for Sisyphus to have his rock. Something in the hell that is this dingy bar that is reliable and thus comforting.
The tracks have changed, unfortunately. The first song, a dark and melancholic tune weighs on the soul and mind although the young blood seem to love it.” It is getting hot in here! The bar is burning. Give up now all your yearning!” What is hip about that!? The second tune sounds like a call to arms smithed by the finest DJs of the third Reich. A song that boasts of the great strength of the self fellating bouncers. How they will make the party last forever or some such nonsense. The third is my favorite tune. Not because it’s any less shitty than the rest but because of how ironic it is. “We don’t need your money! We don’t think it’s funny! You keep drinking this honey and the bees will sting your bummy!” Bummy! They couldn’t be bothered! The fourth is, among all of the four, the most peculiar. Each time I hear it, the melody is the same but the lyrics are different. One moment it is about the perfect man and woman. The idol of the saint Mary and the corpse of Rhodes. The conquered and the conqueror respectively. The next is about the Madonna and the Epstein. The freed victim and the damned bastard. My least favorite version is about the empowered woman and the cuckolded man. In it, the song implies that the only way a woman is of any noteworthy is if she is to become both Mary and the tin god Rhodes. The man however must become subhuman. A pleasure stick and livestock for breeding. A disposable, brutish creature who only deserves to kiss the women’s heels and wipe alcohol off the floor with their tongue.
At least back in the days, I could pretend this was worthwhile. I was just like these. Maybe the tunes we danced to were just as unpleasant but I can’t seem to remember what they were. The rose-tinted glasses are becoming blood red. All I see through that crimson tint is wasted money and time.
I think it’s time for me to leave this bar. I am kinda tired…I hope to see you again…
