BY BRIAN PRICE
Another Friday night alone.
A pile of cigarettes. A half-drank bottle of scotch. And a blank page taunted me.
But I wasn’t entirely alone.
A beautiful, married woman kept me company too. Entertaining me with naughty videos of her using a lady stick. Naked. On Snapchat. Asking me what I wanted to see next.
No evidence on Snapchat.
I guess.
I made a note.
She told me that she was separated.
But apparently women lie about that these days.
Maybe they always have.
I don’t know.
Or care.
It reminded me of how much better women were at cheating than men. And lying. In general. Women rarely got caught. And when they did, it was usually because they wanted to be.
I ignored her next message.
Fuck.
At least it was warm enough to be outside.
But I’d give anything for a Saturday night at my hometown’s watering hole. A fresh beer. I didn’t mind the place, but I hated the people.
I’d always run into old friends and people from high school in that bar.
But I never felt like I was anything like them.
Sure, there were times where I wish I could join them and become blissfully ignorant and accept a nine-to-five, a white picket fence, occasional missionary sex and Sundays dressing in over-priced clothes to impress the hot neighbor with recent marriage problems.
At the bar, they’d compare routes to work, repeat something they read online and tell it to me as if it was their own original thought, spout social media conspiracy theories and go on and on about the glory days of yesteryear.
I’d love to act interested as they explained how much smarter they were than their bosses and how everyone around them was incompetent.
But they, of course, were completely competent.
They spent every weekend at the same bar with the same people doing the same things until years and friendship turned into decades and marriage.
Proximity love is true love of the fearful.
They let their fears and doubts paralyze them into inaction. Their lives, once full of promise and potential, slowly faded into beer bellies and closed minds. They tried to replace the emptiness with prestigious job titles, fancy cars, a social media highlight reel, the coolest gadgets and unpassionate love.
It was quite the American Dream.
… Or maybe I had it all wrong.
They took what life gave them and made the most of it.
They still hung out with their childhood friends, maybe out of a false sense of loyalty, not always because they actually enjoyed each other’s company. They married the people they spent all their time with. They were grateful for everything life had handed them and needed nothing else.
There’s no harm in that.
But …
… fuck that.
I saw them when they got wasted.
The drunken truth.
And that’s where I could tell who was happy.
And who’s wasn’t.
Most of them were white knuckling their lives.
Talking of past regrets.
Saying aloud the doubts about their choices.
With their only hopes and dreams in the eyes of their children.
They pumped themselves up in the mirror before long commutes to a job they despised. They blamed life, others and their circumstances, never themselves, for not being happy. “Not having time” was the biggest lie they’d tell themselves. They romanticized the past forgetting they were miserable then too yearning for the past before then.
I felt bad for them.
But at least they took their shot.
Maybe I saw it wrong.
About it all.
But I couldn’t fathom that existence.
No way.
But then came along COVID.
It forced me back home.
Living with relatives.
My mom.
In the hometown I left …
.. and swore to never return.
Fucking COVID.
I sent a snap to the married lady.
She was separated.
Her husband was at work.
And it was a pandemic, after all.
