He’s standing, and I’m sitting at his post. The tall bar-stool has carved a groove in the wall from years of bored bouncers leaning into and flopping upon it.
To the right of the barstool, the front door faces the dairy factory and the parking lot. To the left, sits the small bar and bartender, and straight ahead of that chair, is the stage.
The good bouncers remain here for much of the shift, moving mostly to assist drunk people with the nearby ATM, gather trash bags from the kitchen, or watch the stage to catch patrons who are misbehaving.
Andrew* is a good bouncer, and everyone agrees on this. “Good working with you tonight, darlin’, see you next week I hope.”
The girls in the dressing room bat their eyes and put a hand to their chests when they consider what it might be like if he wasn’t so married.
Handsome never had much of an effect on me, but Andrew is a good bouncer, and so I like sitting next to him, and I like working with him.
Tonight, as always, his empty coffee cup from the local drive-thru is nearby, out of sight from the crowd. We talk about our kids. Sometimes I’ll talk about dating, if he asks.
I ask him about his woman. I met her once, she was pleasant and pretty. His wife and my brain share a similar affliction. He can tell me about her mental health without saying much.
Tonight I am unwell. I am slowly crawling toward a panic attack and I know it and I suspect that everyone knows it, and the chair again pushes into the wall as I shift my weight to the other side of my person.
“Are you doin’ okay?”
I am not doing okay. I’m thinking of the men who crawled inside of me, or carved out slices of what they thought would be useful for their selves. I’m touching my wrists, and wondering if I can find inches of skin on my body that any man will feed. And instead I tell Andrew a truth, because I know that he will not repeat it, and that he will understand.
- - - -
The room is moving, but we are not. I see Andrew and I see myself in the opposite mirror, straight ahead. His skin is covered, dressed in black, and I know that a bulletproof vest hides under the buttons on his torso. My skin is mostly exposed and thin, sheer fabric covers my sex organs. And my self is propped on the chair that is quietly being carved into the wall. If the chair does not move and the wall does not change, the hole will become bigger.
I see his head turn to look at me, and I hear him say, “I’ll never hurt you, and you know that I love you, okay Elle?”
I know what he means, and there is relief when my woman’s brain absorbs the truth that he isn’t trying to fuck me, and it’s a momentary bandage. So I laugh.
And I agree, “We have the perfect relationship, don’t we?” And I love him too, in the only way that I can. So I get up and move because he is an ancillary character, and because that chair isn’t going anywhere either.
