Changing Times

An Iron Age Media Prompt - “The Lounge“

“One Manhattan please”, she said, grabbing a stool near the corner of the bar.

“Hey lady, what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” a man said approaching her at the bar. She sighed in exasperation. His suit was all wrinkled, the blazer an obnoxiously loud and unflattering mustard yellow, and the outfit topped off with brown slacks. He looked like a half-ripe banana. Based on how much he was swaying and leaning on the bar in order to still be standing, she wagered he’d already had a few drinks.

“I was hoping to enjoy a nice drink and some good company and I’m currently waiting on both,” she stated matter-of-factly.

His face wrinkled in confusion and frustration, realization eventually dawning on his alcohol-addled brain that she wasn’t interested in him.

“You wear a dress like that and expect no man to talk to you?” he snapped bitterly.

“You wear a cologne like that and expect to not ward off every woman in a two-block radius?” she retorted.

“Ah, women are impossible”, the man said as he waved his hand dismissively and, surprisingly, walked away having taken the hint.

She took out her pack of cigarettes from a slim black purse, a good find albeit a bit pricier than she had hoped for. It looks nicer than it really is but what doesn’t these days she thought dryly.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had to light her own cigarette. A sign of changing times or her aging she wondered. It was only now she realized she did not even have any matches in her purse. I guess it really has been a while, she thought.

“Smoking kills you know,” said a man in a nicely pressed gray suit a few stools down.

“So does curiosity,” she said cooly.

He slid a box of matches down the bar, his eyes never leaving his drink, an Old Fashioned. A decent drink but perhaps a bit cliché, she mused. She stared at him for a minute; it was as if he hoped if he stared at his drink long enough, he would find the answer to whatever he was currently pondering. He swirled the ice around contemplatively, as if the swirling would change the drink, his situation, or his surroundings. No such luck it seems as nothing changed.

“Who’s the girl?” she asked him, wagering the cause of his contemplation and sadness.

“She was my wife” he replied quietly.

“What happened?”

“I still don’t know for sure, it must have been a lot of little things over time. I woke up one morning and she was just gone.”

“You didn’t have a big fight the night before or anything?”

“We never fought, that was one of the nicest parts.”

“You know that’s not a good thing, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not normal or particularly healthy for a couple to always get along or never argue.”

“Really?”

“I mean you probably shouldn’t be arguing all the time either but no fights sounds like there are low emotional levels. Where are the sparks, the passion, the intensity?”

“I ain’t never been to no intense city”

“You know what I mean”

“I was comfortable, maybe too comfortable. Started taking her for granted, I suppose, and vice versa. Slowly but surely the sparks started to fade and one day she realized the fire was out.”

“When was the last time you told her she was beautiful, smart, or kind? Or she complimented you?”

“I can’t remember…Come to think of it the last time she complimented she had a strange look on her face, she was telling me how proud she was of me for working so hard at my job recently, putting in a bunch of extra hours with no thanks from my boss. Looking back, I realize that it really was a tear in her eye, I foolishly just thought her allergies were acting up again. She knew what was coming and was making one last attempt to divert course. I should have said something, maybe I could have saved things.”

“I’m not sure it is quite that simple.”

“You’re probably right but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. In a sense, it’s easier to deal with if it is all my fault”

“How’s that?”

“If it’s all my fault, I can sulk and blame myself and wallow in misery. But if some of it is her fault as well, I might eventually harbor ill will towards her and I can’t have that.”

“You still love her, don’t you?”

“I don’t want my view of her or feelings towards her to change. I can’t sour or lose what we had, that’s just about all I have left.”

“You didn’t answer my question”

“The answer hardly matters at this point, don’t you think?”

She started to interject with another question or comment but to her surprise, he continued, as the words and realizations poured out.

“High school sweethearts. I can’t help but wonder if that was part of the problem. Her wondering ‘what if’ about some other guy or just the idea of being with someone else and never experiencing that.”

“Did you ever think about other women?”

“I’m a guy and human, aren’t I? It’s not like I wanted to, it just happened sometimes. I tried really hard not to sometimes and that only made things worse.”

“She didn’t leave a note or anything? When she left?”

“She left a short note, saying she was fine and not to worry about her or look for her.

“You and her have kids?”

“No thankfully, I thought we would in a few years but clearly that ship has sailed.“

“So what, you just come here to drink your problems away?”

“Something like that”

“How’s that working for you?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? Must not be doing it right or something.”

“Have you tried dating again?”

“I have but a lot has changed since the last time I dated. No one wants a used car apparently, new models only.”

“I’m sorry to hear that”

“Enough about my sad life, what brings you here tonight?”

“I wanted a drink.”

“Bah, you can get a drink anywhere. There’s got to be more to it than that. This is a classy enough joint, you looking for a higher caliber of company or something?

“Hmm, something like that”

“Come on, I give you my life story and the best you can give me is ‘Something like that’? Looking for a husband or something?”

“I…I think I came here looking for a bit of attention.”

“Well, a dress like that certainly starts a lot of conversations like that”

“Yeah”

“But not the conversations you are looking for? Or not the guy you are looking for?”

“Unfortunately, no to either”

“How’s a woman as beautiful as you looking for a guy?”

“Never found the right guy, I guess”

“Never the right guy or never the perfect guy?”

“Looking back, I think my expectations were perhaps unrealistic. It’s hard being told how beautiful you are all your life and then when it comes to one of the few things I care most about, it was not enough.”

“Hmm, I imagine it is hard to find sympathy for being too beautiful”

“Exactly, guys don’t believe me and women think I am bragging.”

“How come it never worked out?”

“Something always went wrong. Sometimes I thought I could do better or got hung up on something as being a deal-breaker even though it probably shouldn’t have been. Other times the guy would be so insecure and jealous they would always be picking fights or paranoid that I was already married and they were unwittingly a part of an affair.”

“Sounds exhausting”

“It was discouraging, to be sure. Even now in this conversation, I’m trapped and hindered by this infernal beauty. Were I less attractive would you ask what I was doing here by myself? I could talk about my life were I able to truly live one. I could have been an artist, a volunteer, a poet, a doctor even. Am I not a human being or just a lump of clay with all the right portions?”

“So, what did you do with your life?”

“I went where they told me, foolishly believing they knew or wanted what was best for me. Parents, teachers, friends, boyfriends, and so on. I wanted to be a poet and I tried my hand at it on many occasions. No one would take me seriously or would only feign interest in hopes of dating me. They all would encourage me to act or model but I had no interest in that, I did model a few times, the money and attention were nice but ultimately felt empty.”

She took a long drag of her cigarette, exhaling slowly.

“To so many I was not a beautiful woman. I was just beautiful. Woman implies that I was seen as a living breathing human being. In reality, to them, I was an object, a fantasy, not a human being with thoughts, desires, hopes, fears, loves, quirks, and so much more.”

“Hmm, yeah being a looker is not a problem I can relate to.”

She smiled slightly.

“My first boyfriend. Todd. He was a senior in high school when I was a freshman. He was our football team's best running back. Real all-American type stuff, you know? He had his whole life planned out ahead of him. College football and then either go professional or work in finance. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in no small part because no one ever asked me. Given no room to breathe, express myself, or explore my passions or talents how could I possibly know what I truly wanted to do or who I wanted to be? I had so little idea what I could offer life or what life could offer me. My mother strongly “encouraged”, shall we say, modeling or acting for a while, and then once my looks started to fade, being a homemaker which seemed a somewhat antiquated idea for their generation much less mine. My father thought it unladylike or unbecoming of someone as beautiful as myself to work at all. “You’ve got one gift you might as well use it”, he’d say. I struggled with history and they said I’d never need it or use it, which seemed to be their attitude towards my education as a whole. I exceled at writing and they are too preoccupied with local gossip, work, or politics to notice or care.”

“Doesn’t sound like the most nurturing of environments. It must have been frustrating feeling trapped like that.”

“It certainly was and, in a sense, still is.”

“Do you have any poems on you right now?”

“What?”

“You said you wanted to be a poet, do you have any of your poems with you now? I’d love to hear one.”

“Not on me currently, I still have my old notebook from back in high school with my dabbles in poetry. It’s been years since I’ve written a poem”

“There’s still time”

“I could say the same to you”

“You could, but it’s so much easier to fix someone else’s problems than your own”

“Next time I come by here, I’ll bring in an old and a new poem”

“I look forward to it”

“If it’s not too forward of me to offer, if there is something I can do to help you get back out there, I hope you’ll let me know”

“Ah, don’t worry about it. I’ll figure things out. Or I won’t, who knows? On second thought maybe a second opinion is a good idea”

“Excellent”

“It’s unfortunate, you know, but I don’t think either of us can provide what the other truly desires”

“Perhaps not, but good listeners are hard to come by these days”

“Ha, a fair point, I’ll drink to that”