He wears a sardonic smile, eyes vacillating between bouts of pseudo-vigilance and unabashed redundancy.

Glimpses of the once lucid man beneath betray themselves, cutting strained lines that flank the sockets through which he peers. Cognitive gears whir into sluggish motion – the scene is surveyed, deciphered and forgotten forthwith. Fumbling hands grasp barstools like rudimentary taproots, etching fingerprints into the chintzy imitation leather. These moments of clarity are nothing if not cursory – all too soon the furrowed brow dissolves, taking with it the stony grip and the illusory poise of sobriety.

What returns is a familiar vision of inebriation; an innocuous husk suspended in waggish perpetual motion. It lurches into speech, surprising itself as much as all parties in earshot.

“So, who’s the chap you..”

The pause is palpable, a synapse misfires and the repercussions fill the space between us – tangible stumbling blocks that halt his discourse and distract the unwitting recipient of the incomplete query.

“..you brought along? -I recognise his face” Further noises continue to trail from his lips, unformed words from unfinished thoughts, while the question falls flat on the floor. A spoken shambles that brings an awkward shift in the atmosphere. With no apparent intonation it sits unrecognised by the intended recipient. A doe-eyed colleague blinks back her own confusion; mind racing for riposte, hands fidgeting in pockets that rustle with promise of crumpled papers and plasticky wrappers.

We each pause, sagging uncomfortably into our stances, not one of us able to fathom an agreeable path forward. Like players rehearsing an unfinished script, the performers reach a state of torpor – not a modicum of initiative to share, three incongruous drones glaring po-faced at the space between.

Whirling in from stage-right, the bartender hits his mark precisely. Commanding the attention of the room, his presence affords each of us time to hastily gather our much garbled thoughts. Naturally, the drunkard does no such thing – for the drunkard has no thoughts to gather. Their allotted space is occupied by a primordial urge to hunt, gather and intoxicate.

“Three margaritas.. frozen, please.”

I’m baffled by the caveat, deeming it much too whimsical for one so far beyond the realms of whimsy. The bartender rushes away and, pivoting back to his gentle colleague, the drunkard’s prior line of questioning emerges afresh. “Is he your man then, man?” A terse return to an already brusque dialogue. Lumbering through each motion with now-characteristic lethargy.

“Girl!”

Speaking as though her voice has gotten away from her, unexpectedly released from some form of vocal shackles, the pitch and volume are wayward, heightened, shrill even. He glances at me for what I’m sure is the first time all evening – I just teleported in from somewhere outside of his alcoholsphere, the banshee cry to my left duly heralding my arrival. I’m suddenly aware of both the situation and my inclusion therein. The Drunkard has mistaken his colleague’s female friend for a male. In his present condition this comes as little surprise, the more experienced reader will surely attest that in such a compromised state even the most majestic of female forms can fall victim to ocular-buggery.

“Is he..”

The drunkard, again, is trying to process before unravelling his sentence. Would that he had foresight, he might do so before beginning it.

“SHE!”

Employing the same supernatural sound spectrum as before, her voice cuts through the space between his words like piano wire.

“Oh, that’s a girl!?”

His words, joining their forefathers, calcify on the floor around us. It’s the sort of line that you think, but think better of voicing. Internal rhetoric is best kept that way, particularly when one’s vocalisation buffers are all but dissolved.

“..that’s great.”

A swift recovery of sorts. His smile evolves into a tooth-filled grin boasting a sincerity that has no doubt carried him through worse encounters.

“..really, great.”

He doesn’t need to be talking anymore. Had he ordered standard margaritas, the bartender’s timely arrival would put the gender slip to bed and we’d all be grinning like Cheshire cats, chinking glasses and readying our palates for a sweet Mexican haymaker. This said, his repetitive parting shot had seemed surprisingly effective, forging an air of finality that was quite masterful. Seamless and watertight, our focus had returned to the bar and the liquor icebergs swiftly approaching by way of our drink-pouring friend. Unbeknownst to us, the colleague sought her own form of closure. “Are you drunk?”

The alcohol-fuelled man and I are bewildered. His expression is reticent but I know enough to see through the drunken veneer. He’s reeling, he recognises the catch-22 that stares him down.

“You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on!”

I vomit the words out at an elevated volume. My timing isn’t perfect, you understand; excitement gets the better of me and I deliver the line like a child gasping to visit the washroom. Still, I’m giddy, both parties can tell this much.

“What does that even mean?”

He’s suddenly more lucid than I care to consider and already I feel like a parody of myself, serving quotation over frozen margaritas. I stare down into my sauce, thumbing the tinted blue neck with fervour. I consider downing it to hurriedly adopt his ensemble. Donning his apparel, his drunkard’s regalia, a wayward quote would warrant not one look. Not one. I try to explain: “It’s Dean Martin, he said that. I, I thought it pretty apt, no?”

No time passes.

“Not really.”

“No, not really.”

They seem to enjoy their agreement. Small solace there, I suppose.

Words: Needs More Robots

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