I thought I saw a ghost.
Before I came home from the Marine Corps, I’d cashed my Savings Bonds, a little over five thousand dollars, and spent some months traveling through Australia, from Canberra to the Gold Coast to Melbourne and the Twelve Apostles. I returned when I ran out of money.
After four years of sporadic visits home on leave, all I wanted, now, was to go somewhere that was vaguely familiar, to feel some faint connection to a past I’ll never again touch.
I get this instead.
“Oh my God,” gasps some pixie haired cunt when she sees me, “I thought I saw a ghost.”
Derek is manning the sound booth while a girl reads poetry from a notebook onstage. My guitar is sitting in the hard case by the wall. I order a pitcher of Summit Ale. …show more content…
I limply lift my guitar case and nod as I walk to the Volvo in the vacant Wells Fargo lot.
It’s too late for the liquor store. I remember that Joe’d just poured a pitcher of beer—I forgot to pay my tab.
I lay my guitar in the backseat and climb into the car. The engine purrs softly as I turn the ignition then back up and drive onto Fifth Northeast. I take a left onto First and cross the bridge toward the Warehouse …show more content…
I wondered if I shouldn’t simply stay in the District tonight and let the lull of throbbing music, the gyrating hips, the curious painted nails and supple lips occupy my attention, but it’s always a disappointment when the lights go up and the girl who seemed so interested is now counting the seconds until you finish your drink.
I continue toward Seventh Street. That girl, what was her name? When I worked security at First Avenue, the only job I could find when I got out of the Corps, it wasn’t uncommon for some club girl to give me her number.
I remember her eyes and the blonde highlights in her long, straight hair. Blue and green eyes with flecks of brick red, she handed me a small slip of paper. Impishly, she smiled as she asked what I was doing after work.
Tugging playfully on the sleeve of my black hoodie, she gazed wolfishly into my eyes then she simply dissipated into the crowd on the dance floor.
When I called her later that night, after I had confiscated a glass pipe from four middle-aged men smoking weed in the bathroom, after I’d traded the pipe for a bullet of cocaine that another First Ave. worker had seized, she gave me directions to her condo in Brooklyn
Before I came home from the Marine Corps, I’d cashed my Savings Bonds, a little over five thousand dollars, and spent some months traveling through Australia, from Canberra to the Gold Coast to Melbourne and the Twelve Apostles. I returned when I ran out of money.
After four years of sporadic visits home on leave, all I wanted, now, was to go somewhere that was vaguely familiar, to feel some faint connection to a past I’ll never again touch.
I get this instead.
“Oh my God,” gasps some pixie haired cunt when she sees me, “I thought I saw a ghost.”
Derek is manning the sound booth while a girl reads poetry from a notebook onstage. My guitar is sitting in the hard case by the wall. I order a pitcher of Summit Ale. …show more content…
I limply lift my guitar case and nod as I walk to the Volvo in the vacant Wells Fargo lot.
It’s too late for the liquor store. I remember that Joe’d just poured a pitcher of beer—I forgot to pay my tab.
I lay my guitar in the backseat and climb into the car. The engine purrs softly as I turn the ignition then back up and drive onto Fifth Northeast. I take a left onto First and cross the bridge toward the Warehouse …show more content…
I wondered if I shouldn’t simply stay in the District tonight and let the lull of throbbing music, the gyrating hips, the curious painted nails and supple lips occupy my attention, but it’s always a disappointment when the lights go up and the girl who seemed so interested is now counting the seconds until you finish your drink.
I continue toward Seventh Street. That girl, what was her name? When I worked security at First Avenue, the only job I could find when I got out of the Corps, it wasn’t uncommon for some club girl to give me her number.
I remember her eyes and the blonde highlights in her long, straight hair. Blue and green eyes with flecks of brick red, she handed me a small slip of paper. Impishly, she smiled as she asked what I was doing after work.
Tugging playfully on the sleeve of my black hoodie, she gazed wolfishly into my eyes then she simply dissipated into the crowd on the dance floor.
When I called her later that night, after I had confiscated a glass pipe from four middle-aged men smoking weed in the bathroom, after I’d traded the pipe for a bullet of cocaine that another First Ave. worker had seized, she gave me directions to her condo in Brooklyn