Dialogue Essays - The Bar :: Dialogue Conversation Essays

Dialogue Essays - The Bar It doesn’t take long for lives to come together or to come apart. Just a few short moments in time, time that is subjective, objective, judging or not judging. Nobody really cares about it. It just happens. It doesn’t take long. It is happening all over the world and no one even notices. No one wants to notice. Because they all have their own secrets that they’ll never tell. She meets him in a bar. She is languishing at the scuffed up bar, one of those places where the work weary retreat after they put in their eight hours, or ten hours, or twelve, depending on the person, depending on the job. She sips her Bud Light from the bottle because it gives her a sense of sought after strength, the kind of strength she doesn’t possess and she can only achieve through illusory enactment. She has no interest in meeting a man, or a woman, or any breathing entity at all. She just wants to be left to her own thoughts, thoughts which she doesn’t care to share with herself let alone another human being. She can’t escape the nagging feeling that time is running out and she better damn well do something quick about the situation. â€Å"Take me home with you.† â€Å"Why should I?† â€Å"Because I give a killer massage and you look as if you need one.† Overheard conversation. Will she step into it? Suddenly, she doesn’t want to be alone anymore. The dark night outside is closing in on her, reminding her of all the empty spaces in the universe. She pictures in her head the vastness of the Grand Canyon, only to have it metamorphosis into her own kitchen. The kitchen with the floor tiles the color of dead lemons and peeling in the corners. In the center of it is the table that rocks when you lean on it, even though she keeps cramming the thrice-folded Queen of Hearts under its leg. At the table sits her husband of twenty-one years working diligently on the daily crossword puzzle. Occasionally he flips ashes from his constant cigarette on the dead lemon floor. She tries to push her mind back to the red rock canyon, tries to conjure up the feeling of vastness and purity and silence of nature doing its thing. It is too late. She reaches for her briefcase and stands up unsteadily on her black pumps.