o./|/10n_|-|aT
# at the Trident
I reached for the last piece of cookie—what was left over from the night learning to decipher obscure script—took the dishes to the counter and thanked the new face at the sink.
Walking out the door earlier than I had anticipated, the outside air was abuzz as it is wont to be around these weeks of the year. The awkwardly-timed crosswalk at the stop light did not beckon me to cross, of course. But the street was empty and the excitement of seeing him was enough to cross a street, casually breaking the law.
Same as usual the doorman asked for identification and swung the door open. Busy inside the energy mellow I ordered a whiskey. Neat--bartenders are behind those counters peculiar hubs of social lube, slippery in their advances at times.
Walking to the basement a group of familiarity replete with tall beauty and magnificent beard react not surprised with the drink of choice. I’m not certain they’ve known it another way. They know the trouble that accompanies nights like these; they know it just as well as I do, only they rarely get the experience.
He comes over, already drunk. This is really the way that I like him: already smiling. I kiss his cheek and, hugging him, I feel the solidness of his body.
He shows me his feet, making sure to point out there are no shoes on his socks, and adding details of the precarious situation this has put him in with the cocktail waitress.
Dave is playing pool.
Our arrival, though, initiates a new game followed by three more. Fraught with intentionally confusing conversation, the kind that keeps interpersonal tension, uncertainty, questioning the intentions of words, even your own.
Perhaps it's in this space between you really get to know someone, how comfortable they are to exist beyond the tip of the nose. A place where rational conversation need not reach, but emotion can. A place where, in one sense, your soul crawls out from your mouth to pick your nose a little—or someone else’s nose, depending on her proximity.
Dave’s soul picked my nose a little bit that night, on brief occasions, while it reached out and got in there before being pulled away, extending ever so slightly for want of more inside time, a gentle hand on my side and another handed a cue—it was my turn to miss.
Stripes or solids? I never surely knew—I don’t think any of us did, and the one who might’ve known wasn’t talking. But how would I know? I mostly attended to the glimpses of his smile, the stubble on his face, and the contour of the t-shirt on his body.
Dave, kindly, made all of the balls in before realizing he had wrongly believed the one who had held the most secure knowledge throughout the night. This one time, though, she was wrong; she didn’t know the better or the worse this instance, and then, after all, who’s to say?
He talked with Dave. They confided in each other as close friends do when conspiring.
I could’ve dreamed what they said. And then I saw the ‘benji', the bill that would find its way into my underwear that night, with a hand down my pants, a kiss from Dave, and a longing to go home with him as he smiled and I walked away, on hold for a taxi ride home.