the ‘regular’
i read in BUTT (as in GAY butt) that that year-of-magical-drinking singer/performer Kiki (of Kiki & Herb) learned that not drinking one day a week is good for the kidneys and liver. i take her advice, although my room mate tells me i don’t drink enough (5 watery Miller Lites a night) for any of this to matter. so what? i give it a shot. i take Sunday off the Lites and spend it with a book, knees under, pumpkin lampshade overhead feeling ‘clean’ because those beers at the Behan, midnight to 1, seem dull on day 7 and repetitive and when i add up the time off it’s nearly 48 hours of booze-free life. lo and behold, the day after is one crystal clear sky. what i do miss by walking past, head down, i-will-not-under-any-circumstance-change-my-mind-and-give-in are the big arms of friends, how they look up when another bum bangs through the door, the laughs, the farting dogs on leashes, the Red Sox/ Patriots/Celtics/Bruins analysis, the gossip, the nod into the night from the unknown solo who’s not afraid to talk and who wants to tell his life to a stranger, the cute one at the dark end of the bar who has me thinking about him when he’s not around who was so much fun to spar with the night before even as he avoids me the next time when i look to see if there’s that spark in his eye when he sees me laughing like an idiot over nothing funny. i miss all that. you see i have never ever been ‘regular’ at anything. certainly not in any bar. the Behan has pulled me in like a mafia don, a jolt of blurred reality, the steady unexpected look from a beautiful boy. it is church, club house, friend and family. it is as regular as i will ever get.
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
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