~ Spring Break #1

 I’ve had a drink or two, and I don’t care, 

(434 words, 2 minutes read time)

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Maybe it’s these stupid allergies I try so hard to disclaim, or maybe the thick New Delhi smog that drifts thick here on the northern breeze. It clogs my nose, crusts my eyes, makes me thick, but only after everything inside of me runs out to them. A breeze so soft it won’t even bend the gray smoke of my cigarette, rising straight up, vertical and plumb. It’s nearly forgotten butt parked, but still holding to nearly two and a half inches of frail ash still clinging precariously from its red ember base. It’s just another black char mark burning silently into the edge of the imitation wood-grain Formica bar.

I’ve been drinking here since just after three. Short of an hour since services ended. This is where I come to find myself after rendering a sermon. To sit on the edge of any of a dozen faded black vinyl barstools lined in front of Mel’s Bar. This one, like all of the others, has a broad split across its radius that pinches my ass’s left bun. I must straddle it just so, lest it pinches my right bun. It’s just like my life, always a delicate balance between two sides and both ends of what people must think.

They think it’s part of my job to know the answers, but I try not to lean towards one side or the other. More often than not, I think that I fail them. Maybe sometimes I don’t. I never know for sure.  Mostly, I simply fake an answer, make up some scripture. They’ll never know. They never open their Bibles, check the gospel, you know, just to see if maybe what I say is even there. I once did an entire homily that I made from a Steinbeck quote.

Mostly, I just hang out here at Mel’s or in my trailer. Unlike most preachers, I don’t really care for people, never have, not at all. I’ve just always had a gift for this kind of nonsense since childhood. My parents were Mormons. It all came naturally, like it was inbred. I had no choice. Besides, it’s easy, and makes women the same.

Mel, the barkeep, was probably cute in her day. She spies my empty glass through her soft blue cataracts, shakes her head, and slides a clean glass ashtray towards my way. She asks, “Ready?” She knows I am and draws my fourth Dos Equis. She sails it down the bar, and it stops by my hand as though queued.

“What’s bothering you, Bill?”

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~~~~~> more to come <~~~~~

-dalton

4-6-26