Friday night fine

Friday-night fine
She was fine as hell.
Not that there's a shortage of attractive women in my life.
Throw a rock my way, you're bound to hit a couple.
But this one dame, dressed in black with a beer in her hand, put them all to shame.

She wasn't some cutie pie girl, or a lusting Lolita looking to play.
She was all woman, all the way.
The kind of dame that made you thank good god himself for bringing your sorry ass into the world.
Earth ain't that nice. Life ain't that pretty, dying not a sight better. But a woman like that makes it all
worth while.

I wasn't in the pub to drink.
Saying my goodbyes to an old friend we'd sought indoors to escape the sting of late-night cold.
Despite what the sun in the sky lured you to think, its wasn't summer yet. Not by a longshot. And
the numbscull in the goth Hawaiian shirt with the short sleeves got cold. That would be me by the
way, and its my damn favorite shirt. Partly because it didn't use to fit me much. Almost busted a
button forcing it on a few years back. Today its baggy, spacious even.
A testament to my time in the gym, I look better than ever, and that shirt serves to remind me just
how far I've come. As a kid I was so fat that when my stubby little legs got tired, I'd just roll to
school in the morning. Now I'm constantly slimming, working my way up to ruggedly handsome.
And that shirt reminds me of it all, keeps me away from the potato chips and the video games,
forcing my exile to the land of drinks, drunks and dames.
Usually.
Late at night, when the quitter-of-a-sun has shot behind a mountain in a hailstorm of giggles, my
shirt served to remind me that spring was not summer, and that I was a dumb fuck in a black
Hawaiian shirt.

The pub was just across the park, so we shoot through it. Through the dense dark, and sour cloud of
weed surrounding a pack of kids getting high in the night air.
The pub was nice and warm and all kinds of welcoming.
But I wasn't gonna drink, I swear to god. This was a Friday night, and I was going out on Saturday.
Honest.

Just in the door, they caught my eye. Women, two of them. Black clothes, dark hair.
They looked at us, my buds and me. But I didn't recognize 'em.
And my buds didn't seem to care. They were too busy talking to a numbscull I knew from work.
I was throwing casual looks at the girls, trying to make heads and tails of it all.
Women in bars are usually there for a reason, if you can peg that reason before heading over, most
of your works already done for ya. Also if you figure their wants and yours don't mesh, you don't
mosey over. Simple as that, simple as a beer in an empty belly.

The girls got up, came over.
That's when I recognized them. One was short and cute, reminding me of a lot of the girls I know.
Attractive, sure. Who wouldn't tap that shit?
But her friend? Tall. Grown. Woman. Hot like Mexican Chili from an angry chef.
I'd met her before, kept my distance. A guy like me, and a woman like that is a pipe-dream.
I'm a fairly short constantly-broke writer, who can't seem to get his life in order.
I'm hardly two kinds-of-man, and she was all kinds of woman. I've said that once before, meant it
then too. But that was regarding someone completely different.
I once thought a girl I knew was all kinds of woman, I'd fallen for her too. But I was wrong, dead
wrong. She was all kinds of girl, hot for sure, smart and kind and wicked sexy. But a girl just the
same.

This here, this Friday-night revelation was a woman. Through and through, and there ain't no one to
convince me different.
We sat ourselves down, I got a beer. You kinda have to. When people drink together a bond forms.
Like an unsung oath. Its old and ancient, and links us back to our fathers, and their fathers and so
forth back to the day when man first clawed his way out of the caves and built a city in which to
live, learn and get wasted.
If you don't drink, you break that bond. Violate the unsung oath of the beer.
And that's fine if you like, just take your scrawny ass elsewhere.
In the company of drinkers, you drink. If you don't, you sully it. Like a foul fart in a funeral, loud
and reeking like a lost corpse. It doesn't have to a beer, but drink you must.
Such is the wow of the fellowship, of trust and bonds bound in blood through the ages.
Sinister tongues call it a poison, maybe they're right. But like Tom Waits once sang, I like my town
with a little drop of poison.

Beer went into bellies, and voices rang through the night. My bestest bud took off. He'd leave the
country in the morning, and chances were I wouldn't see him for years. If it hadn't been for him, I
wouldn't have been there. In the pub with the woman that would put a boner on the pope.
It was his parting gift, more of chance than intention, but I thank him still.
Him gone, there were two of us, and two of them. The two girls, my roomie and me.
He'd have to settle for short and sweet. Tall and blonde was mine. Even with hair colored dark as it
was now, contrary to last time I saw her.

Thats probably something I should mention. I've seen her around. In my house even.
And each time she gets drunk something good happens. And then she throws up.
She's has a boyfriend, the greasy kind of guy that despite being nice, is basically just a grown boy.
He's good-looking enough, probably kind when he puts in the effort. But he tends to not, tends to
not notice. Not care. So much a boy.
And she, as women most, knew the best way to get a guy to notice, is to notice another guy.
First time we met, she kissed me on the forehead. Second time we met, I didn't even remember that.
When I told her I didn't remember, she kissed me twice. On the forehead again, and then on the
nose.
Meeting her that Friday, in my oh-so-pretty yet impractical shirt, I harbored a faint hope that she'd
simply been working her way down.
She hadn't.

We spent that night drinking, trying our best to duck away from the annoyances of a Friday night.
Loud work-friends, talky strangers and Hyena boys, poaching other peoples dames. But we dodged
the gist of it, and we did so together. And those we couldn't dodge, we endured. Divided among us
and got through more or less unscathed.
Then the hour came when the beer stopped flowing and the doors of the pub locked behind us.
My roomie and shorty-cute took off. She wanted to go home.

The woman who took my arm as we left the pub was hungry, so the two of us shot into town.
Looking for a meal, talking free. No loud work-friends shouting ever louder as they were
continually ignored, no asshole turning off my favorite song to put on that shit song from True
Blood. Fucking vampire romance, I got no patience for that shit. And that song is nothing but bad
memories. But it was gone, gone with the pub and the assholes and the noise.
The night air was cold, but private. Her bod next to mine through the empty street of a city I've
learned to love. The dark half of the world bathes in streetlight and unseen stars.
Its a city for lovers, fighters and monsters. The world of the day is comfortable, simple and pretty.
Like white lies and make-up.
The night, the dark streets were you're alone and its just the two of you with no eyes looking and no
one caring, is honest. Pure and simple if not pretty.
Like the alcohol has bonds through the ages, to generations past, so does the night.
If the true measure of the human heart is to be found, its won't be in the light of day.
Sweet whispers in the den of night, a dark rendezvous between lovers, a bum on a bench wrapped in
yesterdays news. The human heart is not found were it is observed, observation means evaluation
and judgment. The heart will shy away from that, put on its face and its smile and act good and
nice. But its a clown mask on a crying child.
In the dark, the human heart shines true, honest. Simple.
Violence, sex and passion. Love, intimacy. Things hidden from the cruel day flow free through the
night.
And so did we.

By the time we'd done our rounds, talked the talk, we'd gotten closer than I ever thought I could
with a woman like that. But in all fairness, 'cause I know you're wondering, nothing happened.
No quickie in the bushes, no secret kiss. (though I would say that anyway, it being a secret.) No
sweet nothings beneath the stars. Even when she asked me back to her place, for food and sleep,
there was no innuendo. We spoke plainly on such things. Its one thing to claw for your mans
attention, its something else entirely to jump the pretty little boner of the ruggedly handsome writer.
She didn't Which is good, 'cause I wouldn't have been a pious man. I wouldn't have given a damn
about the dumb schmuck of a boyfriend. But she made no such move, so neither did I.
We said our goodbyes, and I walked home.
Feeling her presence in the back of my neck for days. Whispering in my head.

Only dames can do that to me, well dames and deep regrets. Funny how the two tend to come
together. Part of me will always wonder what would have happened if I'd taken her up on her offer.
Would the alcohol and intimacy of her apartment change us?
Would our true natures shine through even stronger, and what exactly would that be?
I keep telling myself that nothing would have happened, I almost believe it too.
But I'll never stop regretting walking home that day.
It was a perfect night out, she was Friday-night fine and gone by morning.
And once again, the sweet rush of good times bear the sour taint of remorse.

Then again, tomorrow's a Friday night too.