Refuge in Denial

“Christ… how does it always end up like this,” I ask myself as I spin a martini glass between my thumb and index finger. I sigh, slouching my shoulders and slumping further down into the half-moon booth. The off-color pale green leather groans like a senile greeter at Wal-Mart, its decrepit material subtly reeking of long dormant cigarette smoke and bleach.

I drop my elbows on the table, zoning out in the dimly lit, dismal glory of the Tonga Hut as Debbie Reynolds inexplicably resonates from unseen sources; the gurgling of perpetual waterfalls sound like the bar has become incontinent.

The Tonga Hut is a rare place, a dying breed of Americana that is being replaced by overpriced watering holes too hip to be a dive, yet divey enough to be cool: blank, characterless rooms full of faceless names and designer labels. But not the Hut. Here, time dissipates in the bizarre neon lighting and reality fades into naught but the over persistence of incessant cell phones. This is a haven for those looking to neglect, reflect, and simply kill time until the next thing comes around.

“God I should be working,” I murmur to no one in particular. After a generous sip of this tiki cocktail, I turn my attention to the distraction of other customers. What better way to distract myself from that nefariously abhorrent monstrosity known as writers’ block than inundating myself in the weird, surrounding myself with an eclectic medley of characters, and drowning myself in Polynesian cocktails?

This just keeps getting weirder.

I look up to the low-hang ceiling as ‘Viva Las Vegas’ now drowns out the explosive silence in my mind. And there in lies my problem… the catalyst that drove me from my apartment in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. Apparently I’m blocked: shooting snake eyes, pullin’ a dead man’s hand, coming up empty. I sling back the remainder of my cocktail and head to the bar for another.

Yeah… just another rat running its course in this misanthropic pulp-novel known as life, I think as I leisurely move through the bar. I’m so distracted by my own introspective narration that I fail to be amazed at how many people are drinking at a tiki bar at 1:32 on a Saturday afternoon. Out of detached curiosity I start looking around the bar as I move to the bar with the speed of a zombie. A group of college students are attempting to play darts, though it seems no one fully understands the game: a charming little redhead, in skin tight black jeans and a Chicago Bears t-shirt, walks up to the line… dart in one hand, mai tai in the other. She wobbles ever so slightly, her aim not so true in the all-encompassing haze of rum.

            The bartender is already waiting for me when I get to the counter, anticipating a new round.

            “What took you so long with that one,” she asks, hands on her hips and a daring look in her eye.

            “I got distracted,” I reply with a shrug.

            “So I see. Haven’t written a word today, have you Strat?”

            “Ehhh shut up, Meg,” I say, putting my empty glass on the bar counter and sliding it towards her. She catches it like a pro. “It’s a slow day and I’m celebrating that fact. Now could I get another drink, please?”

            “I’ll make you one, something special, if you get your ass back to work!”

            “I’m content sitting in the booth watching the soon-to-be debacle of this darts game.”

            “Well too bad,” Meg says. She leans forward and gives me a solid right jab to the shoulder. “Now your usual spot just opened up. So go plant yourself, get out that little notebook of yours, and do your damn thing already!”

            “Why Meg… I didn’t know you cared.” I start walking towards the opposite end of the bar where, sure enough, my preferred bar stool is now vacant.

            “I don’t,” she calls back as she fills a hurricane glass with ice. “I just don’t feel like listening to you moan about not writing in an hour!” She winks as I take my seat, pulling my Moleskine notebook from my back pocket. I open the little book, pull a pen from my right pocket, and start scratching away. Before I get completely absorbed a loaded hurricane glass slides to a halt right in front of me. It’s filled with a bluish-green concoction and garnished with the staple of maraschino cherry and pineapple slice. I sniff the glass and almost fall backwards out of my seat: there’s enough alcohol in this thing to put Rip Torn AND Mel Gibson into a coma.

            “Jesus in jogging pants, Meg,” I say, my eyes still watering from my odious experience. “Are you trying to kill me?”

            “Quit your bitching and drink it,” she retorts gruffly. “You’re always complaining the drinks don’t have enough kick so I improvised!” Meg, the beautifully sardonic bar maiden in her mid 40’s, pulls out the clip holding up her untamable wavy black hair. While holding the clip with her teeth, she wrestles her hair back up into the closest semblance of a bun she could make and then replaced the clip.

            I smile, nodding my appreciation, then turn my attention back to my notebook.

            What the Hell does it even mean to write? The truth is monumentally unexciting. Words are the only things we have to make sense of the world, and the only appropriate method to express my personal disinterest and dissatisfaction at the state of all things. So I scribble gibberish, hoping to highlight my general distaste of the reality before me.

            Really, it’s anything but romantic. This breeds an anonymous frustration that gives way to doubt, squalor, and self-loathing that inevitably ends in a cascade of insanity, a litany of forgotten loves, and an unending typhoon of booze and irrationality.

            However, at the very same time, there is no greater feeling. The world is but a plaything to the imagination, and everyone I’ve ever known takes the stage as actors in my running opera. The ecstasy of reshaping reality in a pseudo-godlike complex can’t be measured. And let’s face it… the hours are pretty great.

            I take tentative, cautious sip of the atomic cocktail and after I swallow, I’m convinced I can feel the back of my eyes vibrating. I take a deep, trying to wrangle in my rapidly scrambling sanity and I close my notebook. No sense pushing my luck right now. So I sit, secretly avoiding the devildrink custom made for me and watching the ruckus and frenzy of a Saturday afternoon in a tiki bar. The collegiate types continue their inebriated conquest of the dartboard, but none of them appear capable of stability.

            I wonder if I could make it back to New York, I ponder, content and developing a punch-drunk grin. There’s got to be a better way than this…

            …And this is the moment I realize one of my inherent flaws, the problem that continuously drives me onward and ever away from the places I’ve known as home. My problem is I’m a fucking writer who can’t stand being unknown but can’t get out of my own damn way!

            “Excuse me,” a mellifluous, dainty voice sounds behind me. Naturally I assume it’s a greeting meant for someone else so I ignore it and linger in my introspective nightmare. But I can’t ignore the delicate fingertips that come to rest on my left arm. I turn in place, coming face to face with an adorable little hipster chick, her skin the color of a faded penny and her chestnut hair falling lightly over her face, obscuring one empathetic azure eye.

            “Hey,” I grunt, eyebrows raised in a non-verbalized question. She’s wrapped in a green gypsy skirt and wearing a black Ramones t-shirt.

            “Is this seat taken,” she asks, gesturing to the open stool to my left.

            “It’s all yours,” I blather as I pull out the stool for her while shuffling my seat aside. We exchange that awkward smile people share when being polite and I return to my drink and work. I vaguely notice that she orders a drink. I can’t help myself: I start writing this absolutely absurd soliloquy that dangles between psychotic humor and pure nonsense.

            “What are you writing?” My head goes upright like a prairie dog’s and it takes me a millisecond to recall my newfound neighbor.

            “Not much really,” I reply, shutting the book and turning to face this unintentional barroom temptress. “Observations on futility, rants about mistakes, a general eulogy to common sense. The usual things.”

            “Oh, so just a puff piece,” she says with a playful grin. She toys with the straw from her cocktail, nibbling on the end and interrogating me with her eyes.

            “I’m an aspiring blurb writer for book jackets,” I reply, “but if everything goes well, I’ll start writing for the IKEA catalogue.”

            “A man of ambition,” she struggles to say amongst a fit of laughter. “Glad to know we still have some genuine dreamers left in the world.”

            “I prefer vivid, pharmaceutically-induced hallucinations these days.” She laughs again, her nose crinkling as she does. It is a powerful smile: every ounce of her is in every single laugh. I raise my glass and take a ship; she mimics the gesture.

            “Sooo,” she says after a moment of that silence that drives most people bat shit crazy, “what were you really working on?”

            “Nothing, really. Just some thoughts.”

            “Can I read something?” She pleads, conning me into compliance.

            “Suit yourself,” I reply. I hand her the notebook and lean back, taking a larger sip from my venomous drink than I had planned. Out of the corner of my eye I watch her open the book and rifle through pages. She stops, scans the page, and seems content.

            “Just another night lost in the battle,” she says, her striking blue eyes scanning the lines as she reads.

            “Wait a minute,” I cut her off. “I said you could read it. Not aloud: I’d have to charge these people!”

            “First off,” she counters without hesitation, “you said I could read it. You didn’t specify how I read it. And I want to read it aloud… I want to hear it. And second, where’s your sense of altruism?”

            “I think I traded it for a pack of guitar strings in 2008.”

            “Shush,” she scolds, staring me down. She returns her gaze to the page.

            “My apartment was screaming at me, accusations of inadequacy and madness flying like bullets in Baghdad. And yet I find even less solace in the night than I’m accustomed to. New York nights were a perpetual carnival, delving into the madness and bizarre… suited only for the most uniquely deranged. Here, amidst the ‘angels’, it’s naught but an exercise in soci-masochism as us peons watch the beautifully cancerous golden people indulge in their narcissism and gluttony. There is no solace to be found in an LA bar- instead, the hunt focuses on career opportunities and nepotistic endeavors. Everyone claims to know someone, simply to elevate their perceived status.

            Charlatans, hookers, whores, and thieves: that is the quality of citizen in this Mojave pseudo-oasis. There is no liberation or redemption to be found in these unsynchronized streets: the naively ambitious and voraciously cruel are the microbes that thrive here.

            So why the fuck am I here? Admittedly it’s a question I’ve been asking myself for two years. Two years spent in exile in paradise.”

            Silence recaptures the space between us when she finishes reading. Though silent her eyes continue to scan the page, no doubt rereading that wonderfully pessimistic, clinically cynical ran. I scratch my neck and take another sip of my drink, finally acclimated to its virulence. After a few endless moments, she closes the book and holds it before her, her eyes focused on a place that doesn’t exist in the bar. She finally turns and looks at me: she stares right into my eyes, her head occasionally tilting as if she were deep in thought.

            “So what do you think,” I say, breaking the quiet, “do I have a career in greeting cards?’

            “You think like a cynic,” she replies, her tone serious and steady. “You have a swagger that suggests you don’t give a fuck about much of anything, and your casual apathy is pretty well honed.”

            “I had an affinity for it in summer camp,” I facetiously offer. “I think I got a badge for one of them. Wait, no… that’s boy scouts. Forget that last part.”

            “But it’s all an act, isn’t?”

            “Say what now?”

            “You’ve got that rough edge to you, sure,” she says, placing her hand on my forearm. I notice for the first time her fingers are covered with rings and her wrist was laden with thin silver bracelets. A good old fashion neo-hippie chick. “But that’s not the full story. You write like you’re nothing but gravel and ash, but deep down inside… you’re an innocent, sweet person. Admit it.”

            “And what makes you think this nonsense,” I ask, a smartass till the end.

            “You have sad, honest eyes,” she replies simply. She takes a sip of her tropical cocktail, her eyebrow raised and focus entirely on me. I grin and chuckle, taking a sip of my own.

            “It’s a theory,” I say with a shrug.

            “Just a theory? Hmmm.” She leans forward, slumping her elbow on the bar and begins to play with her hair. “What’s your name?”

            “Stratton.”

            “That’s quite a name there.”

            “It’s a family name,” I counter.

            “It is a strong name.”

            “Thanks?” She raises her glass, so I raise mine and we toast without a word. “And you are, by the way?”

            “My name is Sarah.” She smiles coyly, an unpredictable light shining in her eyes.

            “It’s a pleasure.” This time I instigate a toast, and we follow the same routine. I finish my drink and check my watch.

            “Somewhere to be,” Sarah asks.

            “Not particularly. Just force of habit, I guess.”

            “I guess it happens.” She takes her drink and downs it in an impressive display. She reaches down and pulls up a tattered canvas shoulder bag and begins to excavate. Sarah eventually finds a wallet and lays a $10 bill on the counter. “Thanks Meg,” she calls out as she stands. She then turns to me. “It was nice meeting you, Stratton.”

            “The pleasure was irrefutably mine, Sarah,” I say as I take her tiny, fragile hand and shake it. She stares at me for a moment, her hand still clasping mine, before she heads towards the back door. But she stops after only a few steps. “Do you wanna get out of here? I live close by… we could have a drink, hang.”

            “Seems like the thing to do.” I stand up and stretch my back.

            “Good.” She smiles and walks out into the waning light of day.

            “Hey Meg,” I call out, moving towards the exit, “put it on my tab?”

            “No problem,” Meg calls back.

            I start down the small, narrow hallway towards the rear exit. The backdoor is open and sunlight is storming in, unrelenting. I’m almost at the door when I hear Meg calling me back.

            I hurry up to the bar and say, “what’s wrong, Meg?”

            “Forgetting something, sweetie?” She’s holding me notebook and has a judgmental look on her face.

            “You’re a lifesaver Meg,” I say as I reach for it. Before I can take it, she smacks me in the forehead with it.

            “Tell me something I don’t know. And for God’s sake keep a hold of your notebook. This is more important that that one is,” she says, nodding her head towards the exit.

            “I think I understand,” I reply, genuinely listening to her. “I’ll be careful.”

            Meg nodded, content with my sincerity, and handed me back the notebook. She then was off, servicing the needs of the locals and boozehounds seeking haven from the day. I lingered for a moment, staring at my notebook and believing Meg’s words. I chuckle to myself and head towards the exit, ready to step out into the world again…