The digital green of an alarm clock dimly lights the room. A hazy glow of 9:30 pm. The only thing separating the sleeping man from the scratched hardwood floor is a bare mattress. Aside from the alarm clock, mattress, and a shade-less lamp, there is nothing in the room. The man’s twelfth hour of slumber is interrupted by the incessant evening song of his alarm clock.
A frail, sleeping arm reaches up to silence the song and switches on the lamp. The room around him is awakened by a fuzzy yellow. Still locked in a muddled dreamland, he picks up the faded red t-shirt from the floor and puts it on. He opens his eyes, finishes dressing in his only pair of jeans, and without looking in a mirror, he turns off the lamp and leaves. In his pocket, he finds his last cigarette and his faithful lighter.
Lighting the cigarette, he can hear her voice, yelling from the window as she drove away,
“… And I hate the way your hair always smells of smoke!”
He exhales a puff of gray, foggy air, sending her nagging voice with it up to the clouds.
Only a few city blocks of walking and he reaches the club. To minimize the harsh contrast of the light outside and the dark, heavy atmosphere lurking inside, he closes his eyes. He enters slowly, reluctant to waste his midnight hours supplying rhythm for the nocturnal animals. He pauses for a minute just before the DJ booth and takes a deep breath, enjoying the last moment of calm before the night begins.
10 o’clock and the early rush pours in; girls freshly 18, virgins to the scene; men, 25 with entirely too much experience. These men are repulsive, hunting the room, hungry for the innocent flesh. They grab their prey by bony hips and take their finds to the floor for a pre-dinner dance. He does not like to watch as they bump and grind to the techno beats he provides.
A smoky aura surrounds the bodies; moving, swaying, sweating in the secrecy of darkness.
Through dim disco lights, he spots a girl dancing alone. She’s holding her stilettos, one in each of her small hands, waving them in the air as she moves her short, curvy body to the music. He watches her dance; turning and spinning, losing herself in the moment. She glances up toward him, not caring about his unwashed long hair or his wrinkly worn clothes, and offers him a slight smile.
He pretends not to notice, looks quickly back to his sound boards and changes the song to a seductive selection, eager to watch her body move sensually all night.
When he looks back up, she has disappeared. He frantically scans the dusky room, desperate to see her. His eyes dart back and forth, peering into every corner, searching every wall, studying every dancing girl. He can’t find the girl anywhere, but he stays behind the booth, changing the songs, keeping the party alive for everyone else.
During each song, he allows his mind to wander freely; letting it drift and soar, and float along until it lands on something.
The pier.
He always remembers it the same way; he was seven and his mom had taken him to see the boats. This was before his dad had left, before he graduated high school and left for college, before he discovered weed and free love, before college didn’t work out, and before his mom threw him out of the house. This memory was before the shitty living situation and the disgusting club. At the pier, he was seven, and he loved boats. The water was shiny, sparkling from the sun, the waves playfully rippled and crashed lightly into each other. He had looked up at the sky; it was exactly the color of his sky-blue crayon, and solid, no clouds at all. The boats were the best, white and strong, all lined up at the dock, like soldiers, waiting for their marching orders.
“Hey!” she yells, tapping his arm. “Hey, are you awake up there?”
He quickly comes back from the memory, and finds himself staring into the muddy brown eyes of a short girl holding her shoes in her hands.
“Do you talk?”
“Huh, uh, yeah. I talk. Hi,” he stammers, shocked to see the girl.
“Let’s get out of here!” She reaches a pale arm up and grabs his hand, pulling him out of the booth where he’s been hiding.
He follows her out of the club and into the brisk moonlit night.
“Aren’t you going to put on your shoes?” he asks her, not sure what else to say.
She laughs loudly, shakes her head, throws the shoes, and skips down the middle of the road, stopping under a street light.
He timidly approaches her, interested to see her in full light as opposed to the dingy darkness of the club. However, as he gets closer, her face morphs and changes, becoming that of his ex-girlfriend, young, beautiful, and full of fiery rage.
“I hate the way you always live in the clouds. You need to come back to reality. I hate that you don’t have a real job. I hate that you never wash your clothes. I hate that all you do is sleep. And I hate the way your hair always smells of smoke!” Her voice rings in his head.
He closes his eyes tightly, hoping the pressure will drive her voice away like the car did last week. When he opens them again, he finds instead the face of his mother, aging, tired, and disappointed in him.
“Son, just admit you were wrong. You can still have a successful life, clean up and come back home. Next fall we can have you back in school, you can study business, there’s always a job market for that. Just please, clean up.”
He closes his eyes again, this time clenching them shut. He balls his hands into fists, veins bulging from malnourished arms. He folds over and falls to the ground; a single tear leaps from an eye and slides slowly down his cheek, leaving a salty trail behind and paving the way for many more. His grown body melts into a pile on the cold asphalt.
The girl walks cautiously over to the pile of fleshy bones, sits down next to it, and puts her arm around its spiny back. He looks up at her through his hair, a tangled mess covering most of his face, and cries. She says nothing, just pulls him close and holds him. She doesn’t ask why he’s crying, just holds his shaking, dirty body, and lets him cry.
While crying with no inhibition, he realizes what he needs to do. He needs to go back to before everything went wrong.
“Let’s go to the pier.”
