Neither Limes or Lights

When I arrived at the bar, there was a line to get in. I couldn't believe it. I thought someone had been stabbed in the patio area as it was flowing out into the street with human filth like an unbridled sewer main.

But in San Antonio, this had become the bar of choice for the surrounding college and local art crowd so it was to be expected that on a weekend night it was the place to be. Only the winners, baby. Only the fashionable, hip, 21-to-30 somethings known as the "Who's Who of Who Cares." I didn't drop in for over a year, but, due to a birthday gathering, was forced to bemuse the goddess in waiting. As soon as I got in line a young girl I had only talked to a handful of times in my life and hadn't seen since I made the last unfortunate trip to the same dive ran up to me and grabbed the bars of the steel fence that separated us.

"I heard what you said about me you fucking prick!" she snarled. I stepped back, looking down on the petite, red-headed stranger. "What the fuck are you talking about?" I asked and sincerely wondered. "You, your friend told me what you said about me. I look like Uncle Buck's girlfriend from the movie Uncle Buck?" I went back another step and tried to carefully think about what to say next. "What?" was all I could come up with. "Fuck you," she retorted. "Shit, you mean Chanice Kobolowski?" I said. "Oh my god," she yelled, shaking the bars into my face. "You even know the actress's name?" "No, that's the character's name...I mean, I think...as best as I can remember." Her face leaned into the bars and her lips softly stated,"Go fuck yourself."

I looked into the crowd and saw more of the same coming on strong. I saw a few friends--some drunk, some scared, some depressed, some empty, some angry. No one looked at ease. Before I could enter the gate, some 22-year-old neo-yuppie in a suit and tie pulled his girlfriend, also business-casual, forcefully by the arm through the crowd. "I'm so drunk," she repeated over and over in different inflections, surprising herself with each one. "Come on, let's get the fuck out of here," he snorted. "I'll take care of you when I get you back to my place." The girl, squinting her eyes in two directions laughed, fell over the curb in the street and started crying.

I took out my license and waited for the next Sad Sack to leave, so I could get in. A man, with more sense than I had, sauntered out of the gates alone and made his way across the street to a gay bar. I lifted my right foot to step onto the yellow-piss-road when the white, dread-locked doorman launched his paunch into my crotch. "Hold on buddy...should I let you in?" he said with a cunty smile. "I'm not sure, but it would probably save me a lot of trouble if you didn't," I answered. He told me he was just kidding and let me in. I made a z-line for the bar which was the proverbial swarm of bees around the sweet domestic honey. A friend of mine, who I hadn't seen in a while stood next to me and we chatted. A hand came up on both sides of our inner arms. I turned, looked down and saw an out-of-work La Femme Nikita crossed with Hermey from Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer staring back at me. In a night full of magical trolls and unsolvable riddles, this new gatekeeper sloppily spoke, "So, are you boys trying to start a new scene or are you in line for a fucking beer?"

"A little of both, baby," I replied.

She spit out, "I'm not your fucking baby." She was wasted. One of her eyes was twitching and cocked to the right like a gun that was ready to backfire into her face. She just stood there, one hand on her hip, upper lip unnaturally raised, waiting for me to say something back. I walked out the door without a beer. I sat outside for about an hour, trying to focus my attention evenly around the crowd, taking in the assorted transexuals, sluts, and scabs.

On my way back to my car, alone, I noticed 4 or 5 leaves zig-zagging backwards toward me. I realized they were cockroaches and leaped in the street. One followed me, but made an exit into a sewer drain. Another disappeared under a piece of trash. Another went into a crack in the sidewalk.

We were all going to the same place.

I stepped back onto the sidewalk and followed it until I reached my car.