Can't Beer The Reaper (..New Years, Part Two)

Further down Elm Street the wind picks up, and I'm cold. Really cold. I nearly slip a few times on ice. My car is of course several blocks in the opposite direction, but what makes me less eager to turn back now is the thought that this night is in many ways not just a real downer, but a bust all in all. I have come away with nothing, and feel more perplexed than when I started my walk.

Faintly then, I hear her.

"The moon's awake now/With eyes wide open..."

A beacon in any storm, Shakira's tantalizingly absurd vocals pulsate from inside Rudy's, a favorite bar of mine.

Normally I don't drink alone. No real moral objections, I just always saw drinking as a social thing and feel a bit self-conscious and generally uncomfortable with no one there to join me.

"Sitting across a bar/staring right at her prey..."

I pace for a few seconds with my phone out pretending to send text messages. My fingers start to lose their dexterity in the cold.

"It's going well so far/She's gonna get her way..."

A couple of burly door guys with lots of facial hair and piercings are chatting it up, and they vaguely notice me.

(Hey fellas!-A douche-bag? No, no I just might be meeting someone here. But they may not show. That's why I'm CONTACTING them. Ya know, with THIS phone? FRIENDS. YOU know how it is. What a hassle. Need the light over here because the screen on my cell phone is the kind that. doesn't. light up.)

...

"Nocturnal creatures/are not so prudent…"

Damn you Shakira. Damn you and the float you belly-danced in on.

I grab an Advocate from one of the free vendors and practically dive through the front door.

Once in, I can smell the frites sizzling in the back, behind the bar.

Rudy's is a Belgian owned establishment, an off the beaten' kind of joint where neighborhood regulars and Yale students go to chill out, mingle, catch live bands, sing karaoke on the right (or wrong) night, and write/carve something poignantly random or perverse in the bathroom or on the walls in the back.

Despite it's hip, alterno-simplistic vibe, the bar serves, among a few domestics, expensive dark reddish, or "blonde" beers with complex Flemish names, brought to you each in their own intricate glass. Adorned with calligraphy and images of things like leaping fish and medieval angels on the sides, these are far more than just glasses. They possess all the regalia of a mini chalice or goblet.

Eat a basket of thrice dipped fries covered in MAYONNAISE to wash down your grail-beer!

It's a Belgian thing. If you don't know anything about the Belgians, well, that’s just how those 'Wa-loonies' roll, and I certainly wouldn't change it

I grab a small table, order an $8 beer the name of which sounds like "Grimreaper", and take to my newspaper, my back to the door.

Occasionally I bring my head up for sip of beer, and I scan the room. It's generally quiet, like the glow of a fireplace at midday. Pockets of people are seated throughout at the old, oaken booths while few patrons lean at the bar.

In the middle of an article about a man's successful bionic sphincter implant (THE FIRST REAL medical breakthrough of the new decade, mind you) Cold grips my back and neck and I shudder. A group of about six or so walks in. All friends. All cheerful. All holding the door open for one another in an irritatingly slow, chilly cadence.

I pop the collar of my jacket, and when I turn back around, on a wall otherwise littered with rusty staples and thumbtacks a single flier with two words on it glares at me.

"Fuck Resolutions."

Yes, strange paper, I agree. Resolutions are destined to fall by the wayside. It's a Lifestyle that truly endures. Points for Rudy's.

Again, and for about the fifth time by now, the cold lashes my back and I shiver. I turn again, and this time rather scornfully. These people clearly don't realize they have no right to leave, nor do others to enter: Not while I am seated in the wake of the front door.

I notice the place has really picked up since my last sip. The dull peat-fire from before has become a kind of bonfire now, with a steady roar of lively conversation.

On the final swig o' the 'Reaper', the feeling from outside on the street returns.

Everything seems to mesh together and, alone at my small table I am becoming increasingly self-conscious and all the more annoyed at myself for it.

I'm hit with a feeling difficult to describe except for incorporeal-I have somehow popped my head through "behind the scenes", the curtains unguarded because no one on the outside had been watching.

It all sort of weirdly comes into focus then.

I wasn't actually a person in the room, but felt more like a presence haunting it--an undercurrent barely acknowledged, like a draft creeping in from somewhere, considered with a mild disdain, or apprehensive indecision.

A GHOST…

On the street I had been the live one, chilling out with the specters condemned to the boundaries of Temple and Wall; Chapel and Crown. In here it is the opposite dynamic: that, though within an arm's reach they all feel impossibly far; younger, older, male, female, each separated from me by some other existential plane.

This upsets me. It's one of my worst fears.

It was time I disappeared from there. I know I'll return. But not tonight, not for a while. I put the fancy glass back on the counter and make my way out. The man in front of me obviously doesn't hear my footsteps in back of him and lets the door nearly slam in my face.

....
.......

New Years is a bizarre time...