Wednesday night
Sitting in a blue collar brewhouse on a Wednesday nightA salesman is telling jokes…hes got a routine down hes down hes done this before
in between wife beating jokes, gay jokes, and “I was so drunk” jokes he tells me he made 156 thousand last year and his girlfriend won’t put out and he can’t understand why. The first three buttons of his shirt are undone and he’s feeling up a waitress, he’s looking for love, he’s lunging in the dark, he owns every AC/DC album, drives a vette, works three days a week and parties in this beerspitoon every night ratting off knee slappers about French guys with Bartlett pears on their dicks saying “can’t you see I’m fucking in dis pear?” drinking pints of radioactive lager and I can smell the salt behind his eyelids as he whips out his company visa, yells out “wenches come hither” and orders another round.
Then theres the 20 year-old kid who just joined the union – a proud buck on his eighth double rye – good thing you’re not on you’re sixteenth single I say, otherwise we’d have trouble “yeah, damn good thang” he replies. He’s professing his love for the married woman at our table, a good friend of mine, and despite the fact that he’s being a dog, I can’t help but like the guy – he’s a pisstank pretty-boy canvass-overall wearin’, expensive cologne smellin’ Molotov who talks too loud and swears too much and hes full of teenaged slam his whiskey tongue attached to the magic esophagus of youth, he’s swallowing piss and spitting up gold. Still stylin’ married girl and shes all cool and about fifteen years older than him but he keeps comin and keeps getting slammed down and when I get up to leave this fine establishment for the night, my good friend married girl gives me a wine-laced peck on the cheek, just for good measure. Post-adolescent Union punk raises a glass to me and says “smear it a little you dog”. I get up and wade through the toxic carpets, the smell of a thousand dodged suicides behind me…
I leave the joint and catch the bus in front of a strip club. Crowds of young guys sliding into the parking lot with coins in hand, ready to drink, ready to yell, ready to get a semi goin’, ready to throw those coins at someone’s daughter’s pussy. And for a minute I think it might be cool to see a woman I don’t know spread her legs in front of me. But hey, I’m SO above those guys. I’m better than that. I’m on the summit of the fucking bell curve of maledom or so I think as I sit there at the bus stop, listening to KISS Alive II and lost in my vile, apomorphic, pornographic, clandestine snapomapic, tragic megalomanical animalistic hardcore thoughts.
The bus segues into the night – a silver dagger sailing towards the smelly indigo bloodpump of the city. And I ride with the jacked up, the cracked up, the smacked up, the petty, the wild, the innocent, the free, the sinners, the squares, the students, the grocery store clerks, the time murderers, the carless the listless the mistless the kissless, the huffers of perfumed sailboat fuel - beloved riders… a bus transfer a flag…
And I see at 10:30 on a Wednesday night, standing on a street corner, in front of a politicians office, all alone, a woman holding a sign of political protest. I don’t know what the sign says and I don’t think it matters. Maybe she’s a kiss blown into a melee. I see this woman standing alone in protest at 10:30 on a Wednesday night and I wanna jump outta the bus…I wanna dive through the window, cut myself on the way out and hit the street hard. I wanna stand in front of that politicians office and scream with that woman. I wanna say to her, “You got it all figured out. This isn’t about politics or protest or not getting enough sleep. Brave woman, I see politics on your sign, but after tonight, I’d like to think it says something else. I think your sign really says
What
Has
Happened
To
Love
And I wish that I had a good answer to that question. And I wish that I could fuck away all our troubles, but I’m just a pile of bones wrapped in a skin bag with something called a cortex calling the shots. A couple trillion cells that somehow think and breathe and sweat and live and love. Like Bobby Zimmerman said, just one more person crying.
I get off the bus.
Asphalt with a trace of yellow on it’s belly.
The city electric hums all around me.
With defective footwear,
I walk home on concrete and dream of tomorrow.
The city:
A million sets of legs trembling under blankets.
A million desperate sighs on a Wednesday night.
And for a second, I thought I heard a million
hearts lunging at the beautiful
under those same old stars
© 2006 Mike Gravel