Thursday, February 18, 2010

Drunken Confession (warning! adult themes)




It was the other night at the bar - I was sitting down towards the far end, nursing a beer that I wasn't feeling, and trying to ignore the local garage band murdering their own works.
Normally, I don't hit the bar anymore - not since that incident with the monkey, the hooker, and the priest. I know... sounds like the setup to a terrible joke, but I've told you that story already - no need to go over it again. What were we talking about? Oh, right, right.... the other night.
So I was nursing that beer, and listening to so bad music, when I notice this guy kinda unsteadily raise up from his chair. Honestly, it was too smooth a motion to say he stood, but you could tell he was lit up brighter than the Denver Skyline at Christmas. For some reason, I can't stop watching this guy - it's like watching someone pulling their parking brake on ice, you know it's going to end in tears and you don't want to watch, but you know that if you do, you'll hate yourself for the rest of your life.
Even from that far away, I could tell he was trying to focus on his surroundings, just that kind of far-away, glazed, "where the hell am I" type of looks that serious drunks tend to get when they want to talk to their friend, but don't know where they left them at. As his bleary, unfocused eyes swept the room, I felt my heart stop. The temperature in the room dropped. I could feel a cold sweat rolling down my spine as I tasted ashes in my mouth. He hadn't locked on to me yet, but I knew, I just knew, her was going to make a bee-line for me.
My mind started screaming "Get the hell out of here! Go to the f'ing bathroom! Dive out a window! Just don't let this drunken sot wrangle you!" I'm telling you man, I willed my body to move, I literally tried to throw myself on the floor, but my body would not move. It was like I was trying to move a puppet without touching the strings. Sure enough, his gaze fell on me, and this big, wet grin appeared on his face.
By now, I've made eye contact, and I can't look away. You know how there are those snakes that can hypnotize their prey by looking at them?
Yeah, just like that - I was caught.
My mind was still trying to badger me into fleeing, but now that the guy had seen me, I couldn't just get up and walk away, that would be rude!
What?
Oh, so now you're telling me about morality? Mr. "I'm gonna make this chick into a pirate by jizzing in her eye and stomping on her foot to make her shout 'ARGH!'" You have no right to tell me what is socially acceptable.
Anyways, this guy comes tottering over, and plops down next to me. You know how there's always that silence that occurs when someone first sits down and they're kinda getting a feel for their seat? Yeah, got that going on, which is a shame, because it's giving me a chance to experience the ordure that is seriously encasing this guy.
I don't know if he hasn't showered in, like, three years, or if he just found something wet, dead and decomposing to roll in outside of the bar before he came in, but I imagine if I had wanted to, I could have cut a chunk of this smell off and sold it on eBay.
Anyways, I'm sitting there, trying to prevent my eyes from drying out from this stench, and trying to figure out how I'm going to get away tactfully from the human cess pool, when he turns to me.
"Hey buddy!" he rolls the h out so it's like "hhhhhhhhhhhhey buddy!" I blink furiously, my eyes fully dehydrated in their sockets - I swear, I can feel them wilting. If I thought his funk he was wearing was bad, it was like a garden full of roses compared to the shit that came rolling out of that mouth.
Obviously, this guy hadn't showered in years, but whatever he might have rolled around in? I think he ate it instead. I don't know how I managed not to barf in his lap.
Anyways, after his greeting, I smiled weakly, and tried to look at my beer, which had apparently developed a thick coat of slime on it, simply from the toxins in this guy's breath.
Glancing back over at the guy, I could tell he was getting ready to unburden himself onto me. I don't know why, but it always seems like when someone has a big heavy hurt, they dump it on me. Sighing, I looked at him, and prepared myself for the worst. "You look like a man with something on your mind" I said to him, trying to get this over with.
He sat there for a minute, staring at the bar top. Right when I started thinking that he decided to back down and I could get out of there, he spoke up "I've told you about Bea, my daughter, and everything we've been through" his voice was leaden - quite the change from the boisterous drunk I was accosted by a minute ago. There was real pain there, along with what I could only figure was remorse, possibly shame, and regret - a lot of regret.
Before I could set him straight, he continued "Well, the truth is that she was mine. She wasn't my daughter, she was my possession. There was no blood relation. In fact, I kidnapped her when she was sixteen." he lapsed into silence again, and I felt my stomach begin to flip-flop and try to tie itself into knots. Very soon, I was going to be sick.
"For the first couple of years, I kept her locked up in a hidden room." He spoke again, his voice wavering slightly. "Those first couple of years, I had to fight the urge to take her. First I had to win her trust, then her love, then we could be together. Now I knew we would never be able to pass ourselves off as a proper couple, so I concocted that story about how she had been living with her mother out of the country, but had to come live with me after her mother died."
The nausea was building, I could feel my throat constricting, and my heart-rate was through the roof. I swear people across the bar could hear it thudding in my chest.
"After the first two years, I was able to convince her that I wasn't going to hurt her, and I started letting her out of her room. Of course, I had to keep the doors and windows locked, but I treated her like I would treat my own flesh and blood. After a while, we started talking, getting to know each other, and I managed to get her to understand that I didn't mean her any harm. I even got her to admit that she liked me!"
I was gasping for breath by now. Motioning the barkeep over, I asked for a glass of water, trying to find some way to signal the guy that I was next to a psychopath, but unfortunately, I couldn't find a way.
"After several months of talking together, I finally convinced her to sleep with me-"
That's when I cut him off. "O.k.! I get it man, just please, no more!" Fear lit my eyes as he stared at me, shock and recognition flooding his face.
"You're not...." He stammered, realizing that he was talking to a complete stranger. "Oh... shit..." he went pale, his eyes getting bigger and bigger.
At the same time, I started freaking out, not knowing what was going to happen. Was this guy going to kill me? Was he going to run off? It was right about that time that my question was answered for me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement by the door. Glancing over, I saw several policemen enter. Looking back at the (now sober) drunk, I whipped my head back around to stare at the cops. Taking my cue, he looked over his shoulder, gave a strangled yelp, and tried to run, only to get tripped up in his stool. He went down hard, the cops swarmed him, and I watched him get hauled off.
The entire he was there, getting cuffed, he just stared at me - not really in a threatening sort of way, but almost like he was saying "what are you going to do now?"
I still don't know what I'm going to do man, I mean, what can I do?

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