Sentence 1

This is from the first sentence I got, from Lisa. The original line was: "I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer."

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I lost most of a night once when I was younger and less prone to caution. I proved that recklessness to myself and anyone around me by frequenting bars in parts of the university town that did not welcome university people, which I was. Shipped in from the middle states, but already speaking the language of my rural parent's enemies. I was out of the country and into the city as I had planned since I was eleven years old. A decision made after football and cowboy hat boys stomped me flat for using words in class that caught on the teacher's ears and were converted into fawning praise. A sin that was atoned for with a boot-to-the-ass catechism twice a week for the rest of that year.


I hated my parents for it. Making me live in that town around those people after letting me enjoy books and plays. They had planned my suffering, I was sure, and to punish them I arranged college as far away as possible. Even years away from the bullies, but not yet out of town, it still burned every time I looked up and saw again where I was and who was there with me. I wanted it all to go away and finally cast the spell of scholarship and plane ticket to make it vanish.

And I found the city, and the people there who looked down on the world from a position of education and profession instead of arm strength and fist. I could climb with them and see the boys from my town disappearing below, disregarded and powerless in this new world.

From that vantage point it was giddiness, really, that brought me to abandon. Having trudged brown streets, pacing a small town cage, and then landing amongst color and noise in such profusion wound me tight in the other direction. At home I'd been sullen and coiled with the anticipation of flight. In the city I had reversed the spin, a spring-driven joy-toy keyed up to the point of breaking. I was soaking in the city, washing away everything past and drinking.

Not metaphorically. I was drinking for the sheer pleasure of knowing it was a bad habit. To keep the spring wound up and the colors bright. But I felt my parents creeping in at the edges. Methodist distrust of the glittery trappings that swaddled the alcohol. The places got noisier and the lights were irritating. The music wasn't understandable, the people unreal. I drew back from each by degrees until the package was completely unwrapped to reveal the core. It was bottle shaped and lived in dark bars on the outskirts of campus life. Old places with tinny, grubby jukeboxes playing randomly or not at all since no one would waste money on two minutes of distraction from their pastime. And it became a single bar, with multi-colored bottles gathering dust on the wall since they didn't fit into the pattern that the customers had forged years earlier. Half a dozen brands were constantly drained and replaced while the others sat unused, outside the ken of the shabby men and frayed women whose elbows shined the wooden bar for hours out of every day.

Days and nights I sat with them until they stopped noticing when I came in. I was in tight when I was ignored, when no glances were directed toward me, when a gaze wandered across my face without seeing me. My time at the bar became fluid and indistinct. It's passage marked by the change left in my pocket as I scrabbled for keys that didn't want to find the lock on my car door. Nights to mornings and class, then evenings to nights.

And then came the night I mostly lost. It is closed to me. I remember the entry, striding into the bar and putting my elbows on the wood, placed on the clean ovals I had worn into the surface. A quick glance at one of the spots to notice a faded reflection of an unkempt face and small town eyes sunk into big city sockets. Then it's gone. The film isn't cut, but it shows nothing I can see. Memory snapping off like a light in a windowless room.

Only the man remains. I knew his shape, hunched and curled around a glass. The familiarity of his shoulder blades and the nape of his neck testament to my having seen him there often. But this time, on this night, he pulled his head up, looked at me and spoke. It was a story. About his life. I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. His god was not listening but he spoke so I could hear. The tones carrying me deep within him, rhythms that pulled at my ear and kept my face away from the glass loosely gripped in one hand. His voice a wordless chant that pierced and coddled, wrapped and shoved.

The rest of the night is a smoky gray. I woke in my own bed. The morning was bright and the radio that constantly murmured through the thin dorm walls was chattering to me but I didn't mind either. My thoughts were clear and my body clean as I swung naked feet to a cold linoleum floor. Last night's pants hung neatly on the back of a chair, the shirt folded on the seat. I pulled them to me, intending to put them on but stopping as I caught the scent of the bar on them.

Cloying and warm, the smells of malt and ash scampered under my nose and brought back the man and his voice. Nothing else. No words came with the image, just sound as his mouth moved and he stared at me with small town eyes in a big city face.

I put down the bundle and padded naked to the closet for fresh clothes.