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October 7, 2005
Birthdays
So I decided to give into myself and I put procrastination aside for all out failure and I turned my computer screen a little to the left and pulled it forward so it would catch the light. I surveyed the remains in my apartment of an ill-spent weekend on unproductive nonsense and wondered if this was the best thing I could be doing.
I’d made a point to myself, several times in fact, to start putting the stories down. The snippets that slip through the memory net yet can’t help but unsettle you at the time they are re-iterated. The kind of stories where the setting of place in which the story is told to you is just as important as the story itself and both dance together like drunk ghosts and at a failed wedding to send shudders down your spine. However you go home and you sway in front of the mirror and you sidetrack yourself with ideals, worries and the stale thought of pre-packaged dinner and all you can remember is the shiver.
The first thing I remember is her birthday. She was 31 and there was nobody to celebrate. Her husband was there, yes, but after 5 years on and off the outspoken Texan had little social adoration to show for it.
She’d been drinking all day.
She hates birthdays.
She gets pretty fucked up when she drinks.
She wraps her arms around me and steadies her self with one arm on the bar, thankful that somebody braved this miserable downpour late on a Sunday night. I looked around the room at the Americans drowning everything else out, at the Korean bartenders paid a 3 lousy bucks an hour, at the Korean girls hopefullying eyeing the room.
The place dying. It stank of rotting pasts.
Not that their was any smell to really detect, but it touched your nostrils and you grimaced. I pulled out a cigarette and turned to her. I had a beer but I didn’t want to drink.
She ordered some shots then berated me for not doing them with her. She yelled about her best friend, about the state of her affairs, her place of work. Life was misery. But better than home.
At home she’s capable of anything. She’s run with a rough crowd. She’s been jail. Old habits die hard she says.
She was carjacked twice. The first time she had a gun put to her head and he told her she was a fucking bitch who was going to be raped and killed. She still has nightmares. She’s scared in America. That sort of thing doesn't leave you. The second time she was stabbed. She looks me in the eyes and says fiercely “I did everything right…�
She was put in jail for 3 months. She drove a big Mercedes and shipped coke, pills and pot around the state. She reckons she was a player. But that’s not what she was arrested for. She drunk drove and broke probation. She made some friends. But when she got out she was scared of what her life had become. She came to Korea. Many come to here to escape.
The alcohol dampens her fire....
It all collapses soon. The tequila high, her beer spilling across the counter. The looks of uncertainty from those further up the bar. She slumps back in her stool and slurs she wants to go home.
We exit, her head on his shoulder. Some american playing pool walks up to the bar and checks my empty pack of cigarettes. He picks up her half finished morose beer sniffs it and walks back to his table.
Posted by alex at October 7, 2005 11:32 AM