Nicotine and Pheromones

Gyrating like a beached porpoise in front of me was a plump Latina and her somewhat Asian looking friend who was also thick but much more pleasantly curved. The two arrived at the bar an hour or so after we did and had been sharing our shadowy corner for the better part of the night; smoking, drinking beer and clearly hoping to catch the attention of similarly minded men. It was at once a confident yet pathetic move and I could see the foggy sadness which permeated their being like the gothic cigarette smoke hanging about them. They were my fellow humans, searching blindly for a time when they would not be dancing to cheesy auto tune pop songs because they wanted to connect with somebody new.

Friday night at Mudskippers. A well known watering hole throughout the region and it was here that I met with my friends for the first time in months. We walked across the street from a grocery store parking lot and into the front door nearly unharrassed, but alas the bartender rounded the counter asking for our ID's. He took the cards, bending them and flashing them under a black light before at last handing the drivers license back to us with a discerning look, perhaps trying to detect any signs that we were underaged boys with excellent fake identification. He took mine last but only bent it once and waved it under the light quickly. I took great satisfaction in his speedy determination that I was of age, thinking that perhaps i possessed more manly qualities than my friends who were a few months older than I. If I felt too proud of a trivial advantage it was because on this day I too had a fog of sadness, though I'm not sure anybody I knew could detect it.

We ordered our drinks and found a booth in the corner of the main room. It was dark and secluded, which was fine with my friends because they were here to drink and forget and flirty socializing was not part of that agenda.

Mike and John were their names, friends since high school, one time roommates, now educated working men with seemingly distant memories of good times.

"Remember that time we rode our bikes to the..."

I've heard this story a million times and so had they, but we all happily reminisced, remembering the younger versions of the three of us and all the random fun they had.

"I'm so exhausted today," said John. "I looked at the clock at 5 and basically spaced out for the last hour of the day."

It was such adult conversation. Looking around the room, there was a strange mish mash of old and young and stylish and clueless and happy and sad people with little homogeneity between them. It was the same at this table. I felt a world apart from Mike and John. They were graduated, working hard, engaged to be married and worried about the cliche bad economy. I was none of those things.

They drank their pitcher of beer and I sipped on a 5 dollar vodka and tonic. The lime was old and contained very little juice and so it tasted less like alcoholic sprite and more like a carbonated shot. We arrived rather early in relation to the Friday night bar scene which did not arrive until nearly 10. That's when the girls showed up and sat at a bench on the perpendicular wall to our booth.

There were a lot of women that night. Some were very beautiful girls and the rest were the lonely, exhibitionist types, pushing their breasts sky high like a billboard on the side of the freeway advertising milk. I glanced around the room periodically while our conversation ebbed and flowed organically like the tide. There was one girl in particular that I spotted who had a lovely face. I foolishly wanted to make eye contact with her, perhaps as a result of my loneliness or the amount of alcohol flowing through my brain. But mostly she never looked toward my side of the room, so I stared down at my drink.

The clear liquid caressing the ice and melting it down into different shapes. It was almost alive as I watched it adjust and slide under the forces of temperature. It was like a sculpture forming from invisible hands.

My mind wandered as it was too loud to hear my friends without really concentrating and I didn't feel up to it anyways. See, there was this girl I met. There always was. I was the same at age 12 as I was at 22 in Mudskippers.

Her name was Geraldine and honest to God it didn't start out that way. The first time we met, I had no definitive reaction to her being besides the fact that I found her face alluring and her music tastes impeccable. But I was not head over heels for her, no not at first sight. Not even the second or third sight. It was almost liberating at first, how much I resisted her unique charm and thought nothing of her indifference towards me. Talking to her was different. Unlike other girls, it didn't feel like an awkward interview where I did circus tricks to get her attention long enough to remember my name. It could relax around her.

But things changed. I started to like her and what was better as a friendship became clouded with mixed emotions. Here I was, surrounded by pretty single women. In fact, I think they were more objectively attractive than Geraldine. Yet, if she invited me to come over right now I would ditch those sirens in a heartbeat like the boring mannequins they were.

"So Evan, have you gone on any dates lately?" asked Mike.

"I mean I guess so, I don't know, I'm not sure anybody would classify a night out with me a date."

They laughed and popped peanuts into their mouths. I did the same though with the pleasure of knowing that I avoided their question successfully.

The bar continued to fill with lonely people and cigarette smoke. Broken down, that's all a night out really is; Nicotine and pheromones.