The Beer Poet

Here I sit. Dusty from the road but the offshore wind blows cold outside of this Baltimore Holiday Inn barroom. The November sky fades through the wall of windows as twilight and darkness creep in. Right on time, the horizon rises to hide that daytime ball of blaze and glory. I’ve always felt closer to the moon. (Philosophically . . . and literally I guess.) I trap myself at nighttime with all the stories played out on some whitewashed brown barroom stage. My role is a simple one right now, as I hide in the corner in the shadows down by the industrial ice machine, way back at the yonder end of a deserted bar. An empty Budweiser bottle stares back at me from my distant seclusion, yet my half full bottle of Coors quietly takes my side. The only other motion is the scarce barmaid darting in and out, not bringing my beer fast enough. But she’s nice. She is an African American and she is a knockout. I know it, but she knows it, even the beer bottles know it. She has a tattoo of the word “snake” on her neck and she’s ten feet tall and bullet proof. A real specimen. Ten years ago I would have tried conversation with her. Ten years ago it wouldn’t have worked. I wasn’t nearly as cool, calm, collected and/or handsome. I would have made an ass out of myself. She’d feel uncomfortable, then I’d get uncomfortable. Then we would break off conversation with, “I had to ask,” and “I’m flattered, really, it’s just . . .” Then I would get really drunk. Now I skip all the drama and just get drunk, gaining age in a fast forward motion. Burning the candles at both ends then I break them in half and light the middle. Working too hard and playing too hard, in dire need to change the routine. But the night falls on me. The darkness revives me and the twinkles in the eyes, the gleam of the bottles captivate my mind. The wide open nights when you down gin and tonics while watching people dancing and you laugh until your ribs hurt, the nights when you meet with a couple friends and brush off the day with a few cold ones and a baseball game on the tele, the beautiful nights you make beautiful love to a beautiful woman, the rainy November, Baltimore nights hidden in the corner (down by the ice machine) in the shadows just reflecting life.
I have always felt closer to the moon. It rises and falls differently than the sun. The moon is more random, romantic, inspiring, and most of all haunting. Finally the barmaid brings me another Coors and I’m hungry. I ask for a menu. She brings it. People are trickling in. Like moths to a flame, at night. Like flies hovering over dead rotting flesh on a burning sun highway. I’m the moth without any wings, under the flame, endlessly trying to jump high enough. I hide in this corner. I order a salad (ranch), a t-bone (bloody but not cold), potato . . . another Coors. The bar has come to life. A bus load of Fraternity faced soccer chumps from some New York shithole, a Jewish couple in a heated lovers argument, a middle aged gay man with a cell phone glued to his ear, and a few scattered walk on characters, they line up before the bar (beer bottle in hand) just hoping to find the garden of Eden tonight within the barley and fermentation and within the beautiful barmaid. None of us are new at this game. We have all been drunk before, we’ve all been laid, we all drive a car, and we have all felt lost in our own homes. Especially me and the beautiful barmaid . . . we’ve seen tragedy and madness. We’ve known love and hate. I’m not sure about the rest. But we line up here like a tribal community, meeting at a watering hole with all the rituals and fear. These days the water has alcohol in it and it comes in a glass. The holes are more comfortable and convenient and the hunt . . . oh the “hunt” these days. The jobs to pay for all this mess, the blood, sweat, and tears to pay for all the booze, sex, and gasoline. That’s where all this ends. The problem is that the victim is no longer a deer, or buffalo, or elk, or moose. Our prey is ourselves, and our method is the flame. The candles we burn, the brain cells, the cigarettes and endless hours looking for that mystical garden. The one we believe in but can’t realize. The one where we can tolerate the sunshine, the one where everything is going to be O.K., but we just keep coming to this purgatory looking for heaven. Until last call, and the crying ashtrays and heart-broken beer and liquor bottles go back to sleep before our part of this spinning ball of water dirt and madness twists around again to face that star of light and gravity. We come here when the moon smiles, even hidden by clouds; we come here when the moon is on our side. I have always felt closer to the moon.