Diluted
Zac Walsh
I spent an afternoon in San Francisco that lasted three days. It began as a day to drink beers and smoke joints with friends among trees while occasionally throwing Frisbees at metal goals. Some swear it is a form of golf.
On the third day I awoke with a sore right arm on my best friend's couch in a dank room on the corner of Sunset and Judah.
"You better call her," he told me.
"Not sure what good that is going to do."
"Prove you know you are wrong," he said as he handed me a beer, knowing my feelings on Advil.
"I don't think that is the argument."
A few hours later, after a long ride to BART on the Muni, and a short ride from BART to my house, I stood on my porch for some time trying to justify a quick run to the corner bar, but I was strong, knowing full well I had a flight to catch soon. I opened the door to her on the couch in pajamas with a novel in her face—my shabby old Scribner's copy of In Our Time.
She spoke from behind the book, "You missed dinner with my parents."
"Didn't I text you? I was sure I did." Binges make one doubt.
I began packing after she did not immediately respond. I had just enough time to get some clothes in a bag, call a cab, and rush to make the C boarding line for my Southwest flight to LaGuardia.
"I'm not going to live like this," she said from the bedroom doorway. I stopped packing.
"You're making me lose respect for myself," she continued. "You tell me, how the hell am I supposed to respect myself, let alone you, if I let you keep doing this to me. Can you tell me that fucking much?"
"You're leaving then? Is that what you are saying to me now, an hour before my vacation?"
"I don't want to speak to you while you are with Bresch in New York. I know that. I don't know whether or not I will be here when you get back. All I know is that I cannot live this way and you need to think whether you can, or want to, or whatever, but I will not. That is what I am saying."
"Okay. I won't call. But I hope you will be here when I get back," I said. I continued packing—my strategy to make this all make-believe: pack, act like things are normal, act like the one you love is not telling you that you are not a man. Pretend she is wrong.
Then I broke character. I looked into her eyes and the seriousness was not diluted by the tears dripping off her nose. The first time we made love she cried. She was so happy we were finally together after months of flirtatious emails and coffee dates before class. I rolled away and she had tears in her smile. It was the most edifying moment of my life. She wept.
•
We spent the first night in Brooklyn on the roof of Bresch's apartment building. The day had been a record for humidity percentage and the night was slow in providing respite from our sweat.
I had known Bresch from the time we were twelve. Now twenty-six, much had changed from the day he leaned over to me in seventh grade geography class and whispered, "Hey, you know what? If we just become bank robbers or something we don't really have to learn any of this." He hadn't become much since then, at least not in any career sense, and that with beatific intentionality. He was an old hobo soul like Kerouac lamented over when he saw they were vanishing from the Americana tracks. "The woods are full of wardens," Kerouac wrote, ending his essay with a conviction that the American Wild was now just a new place to put a precinct.
But Bresch's heart was full of hobo, even as an adolescent. And he, in his four years since college, had found a way around the wardens. He had also never had a girlfriend, a job with longevity, or a need for either. He was now living in a sub-let bed in the Polish district of Brooklyn, seeing some of America's east before heading back to the World, this time to work the fields of Frankfurt.
"Much better up here, huh?" he asked while handing me a tall can of Budweiser.
"Much. You sleep up here all the time, then? Your place was a steam room."
"Yeah, 'cept smaller."
We drank in the coldness of the beers and he caught me up on what his summer in the city had been. He was excited to show me his expert knowledge of the transit system. I pretended like all back home was fine, like all our mutual friends weren't floundering in their own way, whether through drink or pill or shame. I tried to avoid the fact that she was gone, gone because of my own thick head.
"Hey, remind me the name of your girlfriend again? Had a helluva time with her that first night we all hung out at the Iron Horse. Wish we could have done it more before I took off that time or this time or whatever it is now."
I told him her name and then how all was not well with us.
"So, you think she is serious? She the threat type? You expecting her to be home or moved out when you get back? Would you even get sober if she gave you the chance, I guess that's the question."
"Can I go sober. Last time I tried things got ugly. Nervous system mutinied. The whole bit. But goddamn, man, I hope she is there. But really, I don't know. She's no ultimatum-in-the- back-pocket kind of girl. Fuck, I'd say it's about a 'push bet' right now."
We looked out on the Manhattan night with its lit peaks standing to remind us there are always more important things, in firm rebuttal of any pity I wanted to believe I had earned. We finished off the two six packs that once strangled sixteen ounce cans and talked of other things. Talked of tomorrow and the day after that. Talked of our plans.
My girlfriend and I had been planning a trip to Alaska the following summer to celebrate the completion of her master's degree. She was very proud. Never anything less than an 'A'. She was focused and time managed and textbook tested. But then she tried to put all of the rules and order of academia on my drinking and things went sour. I don't think she planned on sharing a life with a boozy. I wondered if I would go to Alaska alone. I thought I might.
•
Bresch was desperate to hit the happy hour at Chevy's.
"Really, man?" I condemned.
"What? You hate cheap beer and free chips and salsa?"
"No, I'm just imagining the conversations when I get back home. 'Oh yeah, New York is an amazing city. Yeah, they have this place called "T.G.I.Fridays" but it's open like pretty much every day, not just on Fridays. Only in the Big Apple, right?"
"Listen, we'll walk down Times Square, get to happy hour, come back and make dinner, then I know of this great venue that does shows every night, but tonight it's only a buck to get it. That enough New York for one day?"
I acquiesced - something I have always been more willing to do for friends than for lovers.
After Times Square I didn't want to see light ever again so I walked with my head slightly down on the way to Chevy's.
"Here we are," he said with his left arm stretched out to the restaurant.
"And what the hell are all the cranes for?"
He stretched out his right arm to the massive, city block upon city block, construction site in the middle of Manhattan's mazed congestion. "That? That's Ground Zero."
"Jesus. You could have mentioned Chevy's was right next to the Tower site! Don't know, man. I wasn't sure I wanted to see this. Guess I'm glad the ground itself is blocked by all the construction fencing, at least." I looked straight up. "Fuck. This place."
We walked a few paces to our left and opened one door. Suddenly we were supposed to be celebrating a birthday. That is all my ears could tell me.
At the bar we sat in front of four flat screen televisions slammed so close together the image of one ran into that of the other unless you could ignore one of your eyes. The bartender was attentive to our empty glasses as we watched the Little League World Series. Tapeii was beating the meat off of the German team 16-1 in the top of the third. I wondered what would be on next once the mercy rule was enforced.
"Nice," Bresch said.
"How can you root against Germany?"
"No, no. I just made fifteen hundred."
"Dollars? How the fuck you figure?"
"Citi Bank stock. Look." he pointed at a massive Dow Jones ticker above the taps. "Stock went crazy on the good end today. No, more like seventeen."
I began to think of lying in bed with her a few weeks back, the two of us snuggling over our new joint Certificate of Deposit with its Gibraltar interest rate of 4%.
"That means," she said, "that in only a year we will have made almost five-hundred for doing nothing. Just for having money we get more money."
What would Eugene Debs say to Bresch, or Eliot Rosewater to her, for that matter? My happy hour mind wondered.
"Yeah, babe. Seems like a good idea any way you look at it," I told her as I kissed her neck.
"Big Savings, Babe. Like you always say. Big big savings," she said as her words turned into gentle sighs.
"So you're telling me," I said to Bresch after I was done remembering, "you're saying you just made seventeen hundred dollars drinking beer with me and watching them Asian kids maul the Germans? How the fuck does that work?"
"No," he responded as he pointed to the ticker again. The stock numbers had changed into baseball scores. "How the fuck does that work?"
I looked up to the new string of names and numbers, these making much more sense to me, and saw a game listed as 2-1 in the bottom of the zero inning. The team's names, the runs they had scored so far, and then a zero where the inning should have been.
"Still confident about the stock market report? One tiny typo's all it takes."
"Hey, America's pastime," he said with a beer stalking his mouth.
"What do you mean? The greed and lying part or the baseball?"
"Don't tell me you think you can tell the difference," he laughed with his glass raised above his head.
This made me think of what I know to be pure memories of baseball. The voice of the late Bill King, long-time radio announcer for the Oakland Athletics, came straight to mind. I remember watching the games as a child with my father, and how I would go nuts when he would put the television on mute and play King's broadcast, even though the delay was at least five seconds so that you knew what happened before King could say it.
"Dad, we see it then we hear it! This is stupid!"
"Then close your eyes, son. He makes you see it better anyhow."
I was filled with regret then that I never did what my father once told me I should do. I never went to a game alone and listened to King tell me what I was watching through a pair of headphones. I began to miss a man I had never spoken to, never even had seen. Considering where I was sitting, it did not feel strange to miss a stranger.
The week I returned we were supposed to go to an A's game with her sister and fiancè and a few family friends as a mellow substitute for a bachelor/bachelorette party. I barely knew any of them.
•
The Great Venue Bresch had promised me was Webster Hall. I felt like a Rube.
Back at his apartment he warmed hot dogs on the stove. I drank large bottles of Zywiec, a Polish lager. Bresch poured off Yankee souvenir cupfuls of vodka and energy drinks. Tonight he wanted to be drunk.
We passed the time in this way, playing cards and recalling old varsity glories while we watched the clock for show time. From the corner of the slim apartment came loud beats, thumps, and whistles. Soon in walked a creamy shirtless boy. Bresch told me I probably would not even meet his roommate, the opium tea addict, but here he was, in very soft flesh.
"Hey, hey guys," he said. His eyes were poorly filled test bubbles.
"How's it going, man?" I said, trying not to stare at his nipples, same as you do when a friend's child daughter runs out without a shirt or panties on.
He began pouring brown water from a decanter next to the toaster. "You like the music? I'm spinning some now. You're gonna love the shit I got coming up, though. DJ Drugula spinning all night. Bet you don't know where that shit is from."
"It's Pynchon, right? Or is it Coover?" I said.
"Holy shit! Shnaps. Spinning that knowledge! Druguuuuula! No one knows that shit. No one has heard of Pynchon!"
I decided I would never do opiates. I pulled heavy on the beer.
DJ Drugula left us, but not before mentioning that if we liked his shit, we would love the shit at Webster Hall. Bresch shot me a guilty monk look. I knew the night was written long.
Webster Hall is a two story blender of noise, fools, and jism. I made it long enough to drink two Beam and waters, hear "Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Good Night" four different ways in succession, and see Bresch silly with drink and ill-directed lust on the dance floor, covered in pots of flesh. I got out.
I wandered a few blocks and looked for a jazz club. I know nothing of jazz. What I found was a billiards room and an empty bar. I sat down at the end of the row of lonely stools and tried to talk the boredom out of the bartender. She appreciated the company and we shared mash and sours together to the music of corner pockets. I forgot about the anger that the glitter and moistness of the previous place had stirred in me. I forgot about Bresch's safety. I simply remembered the bare essentials of my life in this moment—the timing of my drink and the clarity of my speech.
The first time my girlfriend and I kissed she was dating another guy. I invited her to come play Frisbee golf with my friends and she said sure. I told her she could bring her boyfriend but she said he was working. Later in our life she said that was a lie.
I drank rapidly before she arrived. I had told my friends she was the perfect girl—I laid the whole rap on really thick, and I think they were nervous to meet this girl, the first one I had ever admitted to respecting. When she got there we were jointly distilled.
I drank all day but I could not get drunk. She kept laughing at my jokes and she came back to the house with us after and watched basketball. I later found out she hates basketball. After the game, and easily a case of beer, I told her we should go for a walk. Outside I told her she had changed my life and that if she would only leave her guy we would be happy until we died. We kissed. The next day she was moving out of their apartment.
•
I woke up on the roof of his apartment alone, showered by the rain. I looked about me and saw empty green bottles filling with the falling sky and a notepad being washed clean. It read:
I ca ________ ances of her being gone when I get back. I h__e to stop. I can't run the odds anymore. But what of her od_______ hat would be in favor of her? She asked me to think things over this week but I don't and didn't and never would need a week. I know it's worse without her. I 've had both. She needs to think. ________ ds to know what it's like without me. She doesn't have t________ memory I do. The thoughts that _____ aren't included. I binge too much. Don't call out of boyhood useless__________o much.
I made it down the ten rusted prongs of the fire escape to his kitchen window and fell inside. Nothing moved. There was a mass on the living room floor, but it was too much between day and night for me to see. Bresch was not in his bed so I took the honors. I did not worry about him. He was still somewhere in his night.
The next morning I was awake at dawn. Bresch was on the floor, sleeping with his head on my dirty clothes. I walked out of the room and almost stumbled over the same mass I saw in the dark a few hours before. A small woman sleeping on her belly with her skirt flapped over her back, revealing a set of opaque and oversized plums on either side of a black string. Her back was tattooed into a bouquet of balloons made up of stars.
I opened the fridge and saw seven or eight bottles remaining. I took out one and placed another in the freezer. I sat near the window and felt the air on my face as cool as it would be all day and began to read. The novel was by a new writer from Los Angeles who had a book of short stories to his credit, a book that received some much-due acclaim. His words on the wickedness of the world spoke with both hurt and hope, a mixed wisdom that belied his age.
After two beers and a hundred pages I rested my eyes on a CD on the table. It was by a band called Jawbreaker. I picked it up and turned it about, looking for nothing. Then she came in and grabbed it out of my hand and placed it on the top of the fridge.
"That's mine!"
"Okay."
She sat herself into the window sill and rolled a joint. She was very young and not a woman.
"Kinda early for beer, ain't it?" she asked while she licked at the seam.
"Maybe, but there's more in the fridge."
We spent the next two hours trading drags for sips, she fried me three eggs and put jam on two pieces of toast. We were drunk and full by morning.
"Time for work," she said. "Time to serve drinks on stilts."
My girlfriend was the corporate manager of a fast food hot dog chain. Even though she was management, she still had to wear the silly hat and bombastic striped shirt while she worked. A few weeks before I left for New York, they were having a 'co-worker-family members eat for free' promotion. I was supposed to meet her parents and sisters and go down and have dinner together, but my after tennis beers with a friend lasted into the night, and I missed her work function. You would have thought I cheated on her. And I did, I was slowly realizing, every time I opened the fridge.
•
I sat at the bar next to Terminal 23 at Chicago Midway, counting down my last beers for only god knew how long. I was terrified and weak inside. I would not drink on the plane. I would get drunk in the airport and be sober by home. Sober for her if she was home for me.
On the plane I had a row alone. I defensively faced the window and tried to read myself to sleep before I could be asked for a drink order.
•
I'm often half-awoke by dreams. I'm startled by the incessancy of my pulse. I feel like something of wisdom or dignity has just taken place in my consciousness and that I must write it down now to construct something of it later. Something to decipher. But then I awake in full by morning, with vague recollections, not knowing if I dreamed of dreaming, or thought of thinking that something was going to make sense out of it. If I forgot or if I mistook my mind for containing more than it can.
•
The cabbie woke me up in my driveway. The sight of her car forced me to breathe, cooling the warm whiskey in me. I stood steady and turned the key.