I nodded. "So... you're doing good?"
She smiled. "Yeah. How are you?"
I'm drunk and sick in my guts from seeing you, I thought to
myself, I've been missing you for two years, taking myself apart and trying to
figure out how to put myself back together so that I could be the guy that a
girl like you would want to be with, even though I had been the guy you wanted
back at the beginning, but then when you got to the bottom of me you found me
empty and decided that I wasn't what you wanted after all so I've been trying
to fill in that emptiness but the more I try to fill the emptiness the more
empty space appears, and I've been trying to figure out who I want to be,
always with an eye over my shoulder looking toward an unseen image of you,
trying to figure out if any step I take is the one you would want me to take,
and it's been driving me crazy and it makes me love you and hate you and want
you and resent you because I don't know who I want to be anymore except that I
want to be the guy you want. But I couldn't say all that, so I said "I'm
fine. I think I'm going to grab another drink."
"Cool," she said. "We'll be here."
So I smiled and backed off, went to the bathroom and then up
to the bar. I checked my wallet and realized I didn't have enough money for
another beer, so I left the bar and went to the ATM across Spadina and took out
another forty bucks. And then, once back in the bar, with another unnecessary
beer in my hand, I went to the back and found that the second band was nearly
through their set, and that the members of Seam/Fault/Flaw were all gone.
I drank the beer and then another while I waited to see if
they would show up again. I was completely wasted, rolling my head around and
wishing I could lie down under a table. I decided it would be a good idea to
head home while I was still able to walk. The night had been a wreck. A
depressing, humiliating wreck, and I felt like a fool. I zipped up my coat and
got the hell out of The Horseshoe.
The beer didn't like being sloshed back and forth while I
walked, and vomiting was a real possibility. I pissed in an alley, and I
started thinking: just make it home and then you can pass out in your warm soft
bed. If you have to puke, you can puke in your bathroom. Your nice, clean
bathroom.
I almost made it.
There's a tree in front of my four-story building, and I
ended up leaning against it, holding myself steady while a stream of beery
vomit forced itself out of me and onto the snow-flecked grass. I just remember
trying to spread my legs as far as I could to avoid splattering my shoes.
I must have been making a lot of noise, because someone came
out onto their second floor balcony and a female voice asked me what I was
doing. If I live a thousand years I'll never know why I replied, "Goddammit,
I'm a music journalist!"
