I bartend at Nick’s on Sixth from Thursday to Sunday nights. Nick hired me four years ago on one of July’s hottest afternoons when I was navigating student debt. Audrey tagged along that day, hoping she could land one shift a week. (I thought her sly attempt to sabotage this opportunity was an ignoble excuse to remind me that she was ultimately the better one.) However, as the universe was on my side for once, I landed the role of bartender and on Audrey’s bad side the entire week. For days, she spewed backhanded compliments and forwarded my calls. It wasn’t…
Category: Blog
Spellbound in Close Tight Spaces
I was spellbound. I stood, immersing myself in close, tight spaces with a watered-down drink in one hand. The room was imbued with otherworldly energy, like stark beams of light spawning from four walls and zigzagging around each other. It was indubitably dark, but the spotlight on stage reflected a lambent glow on my clear plastic cup. I caught myself, amid my mental affairs, pouring my attention into him so much so that the room grew eerily silent. The muffled sound of my heart racing, breath orbiting, replaced these extrinsic qualities. His voice, guttural and heart-twisting, held the room. His…
Cool girl
Cool girl by Viola Day Such a cool girl, I thought. How one can be adored, invariably noticed by her peers and still have the spatial awareness to notice someone like me leave the room. She wished me well and hoped for my return. As I tried not to let the door hit me on the way out, a strange thought surfaced, as though a glimpse of five years from now sat me down: she was the type of friend to lecture you on being more confident as she applied lipstick on your lips before telling you to dab them against a Kleenex. Then matter-of-factly,…
Garden Square on Tenth
Garden Square on Tenth by Viola Day Mr. Cromwell always drew the curtains of his window, where his unit sat right above the Romero’s whose daughter I used to date back in ’93. Some say he was allergic to the sun while others assumed the daylight aggravated his depression. Every time I pedaled my way across his once-dilapidated apartment building in my fixed-speed bicycle, I’d see his shades drawn. I was sure his curtains were stained by the sunlight from being drawn so often. At night, when I’d make my way home, after picking up Mom’s medication from the Pine…
When Sleeping Dogs Lie
When Sleeping Dogs Lie by Viola Day Trailing a few footsteps behind him, I couldn’t help but gaze wistfully at the way he picked up his feet when he walked, the way the sun struck his back and the way he stared down every time he found himself rambling. There was this fog between us, so thick and dense that it almost felt palpable. He was distant and I hated knowing him this way. “What?” he asked after turning around and dexterously walking backward as though he were some Senior sweet talking a Freshman by walking her to class just…
Man on the Red Line
Man on the Red Line by Viola Day I stood there, waiting for the Blue Line, waiting closely enough to the yellow warning strip on the pavement that warns you to stand back unless you preferred a severed foot. (Who’d want that?) Before the Blue Line, came the Red Line. On the Red Line, I saw this man. At the time when both my hands were buried into my pockets, my fingers rolling pocket lint into tiny balls as I bounced my right leg out of impatience, I grew most fascinated by him. He sat, slouched and engrossed in his…