From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Elegy For A Drunken Man - For Jean Bon Leclerc

 

Drunk, Sunday night, early Monday morning drunk, drunk against the new week, against the nine to five grind, against another book in need of reading, against the loneliness of Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, early Sunday afternoon, but mainly against the new reality of a joyless Joyell-less world, to give the against a name, a human name now vanished or rather vanishing before his drunken eyes (she had said they were blue, bedroom blue, she from a brown-eyed world and so delighted, that is the very word she used , to be with her pagan blue-eyed boy but that too was vanishing, the thought of it anyway). Sitting, same sitting at this same sitting bar, on this same sitting bar stool drinking, the last four, or was it five, Sundays  running that too vanishing when he was given his walking papers. Yah, he was a walking daddy, walking daddy, a be-bop non-stop walking daddy since she had decided to go back into her safe brown-etched world and leave her blue-eyed, hell, she really did say bedroom blue-eyed, walking daddy to walk alone (and that thought that profound bedroom blue –eyed thought of hers would be retailed many times later, from many other brown-world-women looking for blue-eyed kicks before leaving daddy behind. Leaving that drunken trouble behind, leaving that white lies world behind, leaving those fumbled grand larcenies behind, but that was later this was his first blue-eyed exit and so it hurt.

And so he drank, Sunday night, really afternoon, maybe three or four, catching, cadging when he was short on dough, girl or girl-less, drinks from fair weather drinkers, or drinking exiting customer drinks before the bar maid (quaint, huh) or bartender swooped up the wet napkin liquor as he mopped his section of the cigarette- scarred, ancient glass ring embedded circles of the brown mahogany counter  (high class joint two bartenders, and on Sunday afternoon to increase his misery a fetching blonde, unfortunately not interested in has-been blue-eyed  silent drinkers) at some Commonwealth Avenue Kit Kat Club “happy hour”  to un-silence him. But that is all preclude, all so many extra drinks, collared, cadged, stolen (small larcenies though). At that hour he was drinking  low-end whisky neat (maybe with a water chaser, maybe hold the water, gone are the rumble days with Johnnie Walker some color and a beer chaser one guy buying another round until equality and maybe a floor rest, or simmering beef exploding on that ancient ring- stained (and not wiped) brown mahogany counter, a counter filled with pickled eggs, and seven kinds of  jerky, an old trick to increase the unslaken (nice) thirst in some South Boston dump bar, ladies by invited escort only, and so only manly rounds, and maybe a few broken glasses, such is life).            

This afternoon is ancient history though, a dozen drinks ago, a mile of utter useless chatter to college girls seeking Sunday afternoon thrills before heading back to books further up Commonwealth Avenue, and schools heavy with co-eds, with boyfriends and who knows, brown-eyed worlds that he would  never know. Once in a while, a Joyell, once in a while, maybe some girl looking for negro kicks, negro kicks before Malcolm turned them black. The Kit Kat Club intersected, well a lot of things, including be-bop jazz and bop-bop rock and the edges of black town and so the joint had a mix, hipsters, black and white, white mainly wanting to be black hipsters, college girls previously thrill-mentioned, and working- class guys, some drunks some just working away their silences. So some of the girls were thinking dreamy black thoughts, no blue-eyed thoughts to disturb their brown-eyed sleep but some black adventure, some black street adventure before the night sets in. Or daddy finds out, and not walking daddy either. That was how he met Joyell, over at the Red Top Club, another intersecting club, where she was slumming looking for black-eyed guys and where a blue-eyed guy could still hang with heavy-handed, heavy hipped, black angels who know all the angles, all the white man’s angles and be-bopped them away. So she, slumming, came up blue-eyed. But that was a river of drinks ago.

Now downtown bound and done, after Kit Kat memory Joyell done, Carousel bound, bound  by mad drunken stools bound, reserved for in the chips customers and hidebound heavy drinkers, say from noon on, and not just on Sunday,  bound by four, or was it five weeks SundayafternoonSundayeveningearlyMondaymorning  tradition, bound by Edie sitting next to him met on one of those previous Sunday bouts, more on that later, bound by that river of drinks, now step up, Edie step up Canadian Club mid-shelf blends (remember water chaser or neat, Tom, friendly Tom, Tom the everyman  bartender,  no not cool beer chasers and South Boston mucks, not at the Carousel, the bloody Carousel, where everything is connected, you know c-o-n-n-e-c-t-e-d in your face connected from the bouncers, now of surly looks and beef-eater physiques and no nonsense moves, or out you go, tumbled out onto some garbage can when you wake up, not like the ex-football players that people the security squad at uptown Kit Kat Clubs and places where college girls, adventurous college girls to be sure, go seeking safe negro kicks). Live music coming from the professionally built stage, stage lights beaming and all, now bare except the plethora of musical instruments used to keep the customers restless. (Of course, jukebox heavy, connected three for a quarter jukebox heavy for when the boys, this night boys, Mason-Dixon and the Line filled with plenty of brass and jazzy sounds, and filled with Edie-heavy Motown sounds, take their heavy breather breaks out in back lot automobiles that smell of, but he was no snitch, smell of the stuff of dreams, minute dreams. And fugitive dreams too.       

He, walking daddy, walking with the king now, walking with the king after shortly before coming out of one of those Mason-Dixon cars (met, tradition met, on that first Sunday drunk night tradition , having lost all his dough to demon whiskey, and some bitch proctoress, some felon schoolteacher slumming as a bar maid to be with her man on dreary afraid to be alone Sunday, who then went home with her boyfriend, the bouncer, that surly one with the black hair and  black heart now standing not ten feet away who all the other bouncers look to for their nods, for his nods and, he, parking lot chased had been saved by the drummer who lived only minutes from his house and who first showed him how to walk with the king), ordered  a pair of drinks, Edie and he drinks, what are you having, whatever, he is having, whisky neat (the stale water in the thumb-print heavy  tumbler warning him to go neat, or go beat). Beat, beat down, beat around, blessed beatitude beat, but beat. Just then he, now three, or was it four weeks she met, she met right at these very stools evoking nostalgic memories for just a minute, reached his hand over to her thigh and began a gently meaningful rub. She, for a few pats, let him go through the now familiar paces, and then firmly pushed his hand away, he tried again but though better of it.

Strange pattern, strange woman, but right that moment he was tied to her, tied to her by ten thousand lonely desires, ten thousand tough breaks, and maybe ten thousand pats and pushed away hands. She, one, never told him her last name (and he was not altogether sure that Edie was her name, somebody had once called out to her, Maria, she waved, and then ducked her head), two, never told him where she lived other than some over there Cambridge reference (although on previous partings she had headed toward the Massachusetts Turnpike entrance lane nearby), three, never mentioned very much personal information at all, nothing about work or school or family or where she had, or hadn’t been, or where she was going (and went to pains, great pains, to emphasize that they should live in the moment, the bleary-eyed, whisky-sotted moment, and dig those horns, those sexy saxes coming from the stage) and, four, she did tell him  she had a boyfriend who was ready to marry her tomorrow , if she was ready, although she said she wasn’t, and that boyfriend had no problem with that either. He figured either she was a whore on a night off, still capable of working a guy for dimes and drinks just to keep in shape for the heavy week ahead or she was being kept by some out- of- town married guy who showed up for business conferences every once in a while and she worked her hands a different way with him. Each week he would lean toward one theory or the other, although by the end of the night the previous week he thought she might just be a “lessie,” a dyke, queer with a big thirst and an itch to make blue-eyed guys crawl before her. But he was tied to her, tied to her in a way that he would have to play out, play out at the cost of a few shared whiskies           

A few more pairs of whiskey, one with a water chaser to slow down the pace, and the band came on for the last set, the now familiar max daddy set that gets everybody kind of sexed up, or thinking about the sex they are going to get in an hour or two, if they can make it up the bedroom stairs. These guys are good, whiskey fever good, evoking old time memories of Tommy Dorsey, or Jimmy Dorsey, he never could quite get the difference (except on mother-loving Tommy Tangerine from deep in the heart of World War II, waiting lonely waiting for news of dad, and the fate of the world), Harry James, or the be-bop daddies of the 1950s except they have taken that basic knowledge and applied it to 1966 blast out sound coming from Motown.

They bring the house down with stuff like Wilson Pickett’s Hold On I’m Coming and every guy in the place hopes to high heaven, to some big bopper high heaven, that   he is sober enough to do just that (and every girl hoping she is drunk enough to take it, take that thing easy, since she was a little sore the last time she did it and hopes that he will just ask to put a little sugar in her bowl and not want her to get all karma sutra crazy like last time  since she has to work in the morning) and then finishes up, encore finishes up with Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman and he could see guys on the dance floor dropping their hands down a little to get some ass. Further down the bar, a few seats away a guy was putting his hand on his girl’s thigh and she was helping him slide it toward her private turn-on spot with a little sigh(he thought that pair may not make it to those upstairs, and later out in the a parking he noticed them, just shadows then, except the guy’s bright yellow shirt reflected in the moonlight, against his car, she on her knees doing her thing furiously, a karma sutra woman, Good luck brother he snickered).                

The lights then came on. They finish their drinks as the Cossacks start pushing people out the door. He asks Edie to come home with him, then, when she refuses, for him to go home with her. No soap, no karma sutra night, again. He was very drunk, so drunk that night he did not make an issue out of it. He ramble-scramble, no walking daddy now, escorted her to her car, a deep green Triumph, an import from Britain which she had given him a ride in before but, mystery girl, no this night, this night she is miffed at something, not him, he doesn’t figure in the miffed department (maybe the one of horn-player was off, or something like that), so no ride. Adios, this night he knows she is somebody’s whore, probably has an assignation (nice) in the morning and no time for hard-on heavy, blue-eyed French-Canadians who spot girls drinks, whiskey neat drinks.         

He walked out of the parking lot, wobbling a little (in the direction where he saw Mr. Yellow Shirt getting his preliminary ashes hauled, preliminary since by the time she gets him home he will be well again, hungry for what she has ready for him again and she looked like she had plenty more to give him, if he wanted it. He had half a thought to go over and see if she was ready for more serious stuff, to spread the wealth with a lame walking daddy,  but he, frankly, by then was feeling just too loaded down with drink to press the issue. But he would remember her face, just in case, some other time, always some other time, when she was solo and looking for some kicks, some one night stand when daddy was away or too tired to fill her need and she was like tonight ready for just about anything), feeling in his pocket for cab fare before hailing one. Nothing, no dough, not even change. Flush.  Christ, at two in the morning he will have to walk home, walk home through those fugitive streets, no work for him tomorrow or if so, misery.

He begins slowly walking in straight line, consciously aware that he needed to do so in case a stray Boston cop, lonely before checking into Anna’s Diner for his nightly coffee and cakes, or short a few arrests on his monthly quota pulled him over for “vag” or disorderly conduct or some mickey mouse thing. And he just a few moment ago ready to go mano y mano with some sex-hungry chick (he remembered back to that voyeur moment when she practically forced Mr. Yellow Shirt’s hand up her bare thigh, under her short skirt and to her temple of delights, he could almost hear her gulp again when that hand hit pay dirt) who looked like she might enjoy a couple of guys at a time (strictly amateur stuff though, the look of a bored secretary trying to face Monday with a little promise and maybe an adventure to tell the girls at the water cooler at coffee break, a girl just looking for kicks, and finding them where she could) and maybe he should go back to that parking lot(delusion, two o’clock delusion). No they are long gone, long gone by now.

He continued to walk, walk haphazardly but not like a solid drunk, more like a man with an odd-ball purpose, walked pass Anna’s, no good tonight, no dough no good tonight, walked down those fugitive negro streets that separate his white enclave from the encroaching ghetto (and later barrio and later still Little Saigon) , sobering up enough to keep an eye out for jack-rollers, for bad ass guys out to be just bad ass (worse than jack-rollers who just take dough and forget it). No whores around Fields Corner, too late and too Monday. No trade this late out as the negro streets turn to the fugitive mick Irish streets. (He knows, he knows a couple of very good pros over across the street from Saint Anne’s who would show that amateur girl tonight many things, many expensive things, to while away her boredom, and then she would really have plenty to tell the giggling girls at the cooler come Monday, more than how she did her guy out in the parking lot with his pants down and the whole world watching if they wanted to watch, and no lies either. And a lot to tell Edie about how she should treat a guy who buys the drinks week after week but that is water under the bridge, done, done for the night.) He heads up Ashmont Street and home, his rooming house home, the bed, and the sleep, the sound sleep of a drunken man.