Madison Avenue Ch. 01

I don't see the sense in lying. It's 3:49 a.m. as I sit in front of the glow of my computer monitor in my otherwise unlit apartment. I've had a few drinks — gin as I recall — and I've been thinking, the way I always do this time of night (or morning if you feel like being anal about time, and if you do, perhaps you should have joined me for a drink or seven) and this time of year.

Drinking and thinking. Have any other two rhyming words gone together worse? Don't answer.

Don't worry, though. The drinking never impairs my ability for recollection. It only enhances it, makes the memories more vivid, makes me more capable of ascertaining details — both real and imagined. But when you're thinking back on the past, don't "real" and "imagined" usually become wrapped together in an indecipherable blur? Maybe it's just me. Maybe when you think of your past you're capable of putting everything together in a neat, perfect, linear form. Maybe I'm the only one who has a hard time remembering. Maybe I'm the only one who forgets — or chooses to. Nah. You forget, too. Even simple details gets washed around in the cleansing of time. Even if you don't want to, you forget. Smells. Tastes. Background noises. Right? No one can remember those things all of the time.

Of course, part of that has to be the way we look back on the stories we tell, the way we know what happens next — and after that and after that. The story is always spoiled when the narrator knows what's coming. There's no way to look back at a situation and remove those things that have happened since and allow yourself to just tell the story. Everything between the occasion and the narration contaminates the story, altering it forever, making sure that no telling of a story is ever the same as the one before, pushing each rendition further and further away from actuality until every story, without fail, is fiction to an ever-growing degree.

All obituaries should come with this caveat: Based on actual events.

Fortunately, though, this isn't an obituary (fortunate because I'm not just yet ready to be done with the joys and pains of life). No, it's just a story, a man remembering as best as he can, accepting his limitations, that he's but human and therefore capable of forgetting. Of course, some things we don't forget, sometimes to our unending benefit — I happen to be fantastic at trivia games — but often to our detriment.

So, then. Let's take a walk. Well, you stay seated and read. I'll walk.

She did always enjoy going for walks.

*********

-December 17, 2006-

You know what I love most about bars? It's not the booze; after all, it's always been cheaper to get drunk at home. It's not the noise or the terrible songs people play on the jukebox. It's not the bartenders being nice for tips, the waitresses occasionally remembering to stop by your table when they're not busy arguing with their boyfriends on their cellphones or flirting with the hot new busboy. It's not the smoke or the food, not the beer or the whiskey or anything else.

It's the crowd. I love a crowded bar more than I love anything, and that's saying a lot, because I've got a deep passion for baseball games, for cheesy music from the 1980s, for lip gloss, kissing in the rain and eating breakfast at 10 p.m. I love bad action movies and doing crossword puzzles while waiting for my laundry to finish in the dryer. But I don't love anything the way I love the crowd in a bar. I'm a people-watcher, always have been, hope to always be. And there's no place in the world better for watching people than in a crowded bar. I've had people tell me that shopping malls are better. For lack of a more articulate and intelligent sounding argument: Fuck that. Bars are where it's at, where the different people all mix together, everyone looking for something: a release, some relaxation, a one-night stand, to get so drunk they don't remember her, to relive glory days. Something. And watching people when they're looking for something, man, I'm telling you. It doesn't get better than that.

So that's our setting. A bar. It's a Sunday in northeast Ohio, cold as imaginable outside, but that's why we're all inside. Let's call it a sports bar. You know, lots of shit hanging on the walls, jerseys and pictures of guys playing kids games and baseball bats and autographed this and that. If they were clocks and bells, we'd call them knickknacks, but they're memories of serious tough guys, so we call it memorabilia. Whatever. Keep your semantic debates to yourself.

Why is a sports bar crowded on a Sunday? Well, for one thing, it's Ohio. What the hell is there to do once the sun goes down? And also, it's December, which means colleges are out, college kids are back home, and people are at bars. Does that really matter?

Characters. Well, there's me, and goddamn if I didn't just realize I hadn't introduced myself. You sure stuck around a long time for a story with a main character you didn't know. Anyway, I'm Christian. That's my name, not my religious affiliation, otherwise I might have more useful things to do than be sitting at a bar on a Sunday. You need more details? Well, then I was 24, two years removed from my undergraduate studies, six months removed from telling graduate school to fuck off and four years removed from moving out of state. Got all that? I graduated high school, went to college around home for two years, skipped out of town, and as the story picks up, have only recently returned. (And the professor in my freshman "Intro to Fiction Writing" class said I needed work on foreshadowing. Pssh.)

" 'C,' I still don't get it. If they offered you a better job, for more fuckin' money and your own office and everything, why the hell would you come back ... here?"

That's Paul. Calls me "C," has ever since we were kids and he got his teeth knocked out and couldn't say my whole name. He's my cousin, same age, same school, same hometown. He's like a brother to me. He drinks a little and gets philosophical, thinks he knows what everyone should do all the time. Good guy, though, loyal as hell and that's really all that's ever mattered.

I just smiled, shaking my head, looking at Damien and shrugging one of those "he's drunk again" shrugs that friends can share. Damien is my best friend. We met my freshman year in college before I left the state, just one of those things where people click.

"Whatever. I'm glad you're back," Damien said, looking around the bar, shaking his nearly empty glass softly in his hand, wondering whether we'd ever see our waitress again. "Three and a half years of drunk text messages about indiscretions and rare visits home didn't cut it, you know?"

"I know. You've been saying that for six months," I said, smiling at Paul. "What? You're not happy I'm back? You'd rather be drinking with your asshole brother at your apartment?"

Paul shrugged silently, looking down at the table. I knew what he was thinking. Before I left, we'd had a long talk, one of those talks where we'd had a few beers and gotten real deep and meaningful. At the end of it, we both decided that there wasn't anything here for us except bad memories and worse futures. He hated that I left, told me so, in fact. But he hated more that I came back.

"Anyway," I said, my gaze drifting around the bar, looking from one group of people to the next, looking for familiar faces -- not people I knew, just people I'd seen before in here, wondering if they were doing what they'd been doing before, noting habits and momentary lapses in general demeanor.

"Damien, we still on for tomorrow night?"

He wasn't looking at me. His eyes were narrowed — not in the angry, defensive way, but in a curious, pensive manner. He didn't respond, eyes following whatever target they'd locked onto. I looked in the direction of his stare, not seeing anything that immediately grabbed my attention, no tremendously beautiful young woman, no perceived enemy of his.

"Damien!" I snapped my fingers, eyebrows raised inquisitively.

"What? Oh, tomorrow? Yeah." His eyes never came to mine.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" Paul rejoined the conversation, apparently done pouting, laughter in his voice.

"Nothing," Damien said, shaking his head slightly, as if trying to figure something out. "I just thought ... nah, never mind."

"Bro, you need another beer." Paul's voice was serious, like a doctor prescribing rest or medication. "Yo! Waitress!"

Paul was waving at anything wearing a uniform, trying to scare up another round. I was looking at Damien, who looked, for lack of a better phrase, like he'd seen a ghost.

"Service around here blows." Paul was whispering to himself, shaking his head. For a guy who wanted to be a clinical therapist, he wasn't real patient (no pun intended).

Damien looked back up at us for the first time since he'd lost himself in whatever it was that he'd lost himself in.

"Yeah, tomorrow night. We're definitely on. I figure we'll meet at your place since it's between mine and Paul's and take my car up to Cleveland, catch the Cavs game, hit a few bars and stay at Marty's. He's meeting us at the game."

Was a long-standing tradition for us to head up to a game before Christmas and party in Cleveland. We'd been doing it since high school when our buddy Marty moved up there. Marty, coincidentally, had gone to the same high school in the Cleveland area that Damien had before he moved down here to go to college, so they knew each other even before Damien and I had started hanging out.

Paul, now completely out of his temporary funk, was rocking back in his chair, laughing as he retold some story from last year or the year before. Even when I was out of state, I still always came back for the trip.

"... And then Damien looked at the waitress and said, 'Darlin' I don't know how ya'll Yankees make a Mah-guh-ree-tuh, but down in Jaww-juh, we usually put some damn' — What the fuck?"

Damien and I, both chuckling at Paul's impression of Damien's fake southern accent, snapped up, looking back and forth between him and each other, confused.

"Paul, that's not how the story ..."

"Shut the fuck up, 'C.' " Paul's teeth were clenched, and his eyes were in the direction that Damien had been staring off to. "That can't be who I think it is."

Damien snapped to attention, his head whirling around as though someone had hit him in the face.

"I fuckin' knew it," he growled as I sat back in my chair, lounging as casually as a confused man could.

Both of them stared, angry, defensive, like guard dogs sensing an intruder.

"Guys, I don't see anyone that looks ..."

And then she caught my eye. Her hair was darker, longer than it had been the last time I saw her. She still had that smile, though. The infectious one, the one that spread through a group of people like lice through a first grade class. Forgive me for attaching such a negative connation to something that's supposed to be thought of as beautiful, but sometimes a man tires even of a sunset, pleasing to the eyes as it may be. I felt my fingers grip the edge of the table as I looked her over.

Her.

Taller than average, almost 5 feet, 10 inches of her, with her auburn-streaked chocolate hair done up in a loose ponytail, a few stray strands dancing carelessly around her face, eyes still radiant enough to be noticed across a crowded, noisy bar, slightly upturned button nose wrinkling at a joke, fingers playing with her earring the way she always did when she was bored or disinterested.

They were right. It was her. I shook my head, taking a deep breath and exhaling loudly as I turned back to my friends.

"So what? So she's here. It's not like she doesn't live around here. Who cares?"

I ran my hand through my hair, brushing it out of my face and finishing off the beer in front of me in a long, slow sip, steadying myself, eyes closed, before setting the empty glass down on the table.

"Yeah, bro. Who cares?" Damien was looking at me appraisingly, trying to gauge my reaction, the look in his eyes telling me he was wondering whether we'd spend another long night in his garage next to the wood burning fireplace, draining beers as he listened to me go on and on about the reasons I didn't even think about her anymore.

"It's been what, four years?" Paul asked, sneering at her one last time even though she didn't seem to notice him. "There's no way she'd even recognize you."

"He's right," Damien said with a nod, turning in his chair so that his back was to her, as though he were snubbing her.

"Yeah," was all I could say, tapping my fingers on the table. It was true, really. The last time she saw me my hair was much, much shorter, I didn't have any tattoos, I was clean shaven, and I weighed 50 or so pounds more. I took another long, deep breath, feeling my fingers coming to a rest, done playing their imaginary set on the table piano.

Just then the waitress popped up, three fresh beers in hand.

"Glad you could make time to wait on us ... waitress." Paul had a way of saying things like that with a smile, making you wonder whether he was an exceptional asshole or just really, really weird.

"Sorry guys," the waitress said with a less than concerned tone. "I was on break. I totally forgot you were still an active tab."

"If you forgot about us, how did you remember our order?" Damien looked confused. Paul and I joined him with quizzical stares up at the waitress.

"Oh, I didn't. These are from her," she said, nodding over Damien's shoulder as she set the beers down, spun on her heel and left without further conversation.

Damien seethed. I didn't look up. Paul shook his head, confused.

"It's you guys," I said quietly, reaching down to pick up the beer. "She didn't recognize me. She saw the two of you and realized that you wouldn't be at a bar together if I wasn't the third, slightly familiar yet not exactly recognizable guy."

It was true. Sure, they knew each other through me and always got along when we were all together, but they weren't the kind of friends that would hang out without me around as the buffer.

Damien shrugged and picked up his beer, clinking the neck against my bottle with a look mixed of confusion and concern on his face. I just shook my head and raised my shoulders, a motion that meant I didn't have any clue what has happening either. We both just took a sip, happy to have cold beer replace the room temperature ones that had been hanging around our table. Paul, though, just looked up, mouth open slightly, eyes open wide, hand wrapped around the base of the bottle in front of him.

I've seen too many times the way a man reacts to watching her walk across a room, and I knew from Paul's expression that was exactly what was happening. I couldn't help but smile knowing that he wasn't the only one so affected. I didn't need to look to be able to picture it in my mind, heads turning to follow her as she strode confidently, eyes locked on whatever her destination was. I've read other people try to describe the graceful gait of a goddess, and it doesn't come close to the vision of her walking and moving. That's not criticism; I can't do it justice, either. The way her head is held high, one hand relaxing in the front pocket of a pair of jeans I'm sure look as though they were made to be worn by her, clinging to her mile-long legs, wrapping around her hips and the ass she loved to show off. Her lips would be curled upward slightly, smiling the way only a beautiful woman can, knowing that she can have and do anything with a look, a longing stare. And if she was still the "her" I remembered, she wasn't wearing a bra, knowing that the hypnotic sway of her full, firm breasts would capture the attention of every man, even if each knew he'd never have her. She always walked like a woman who knew she could invade your dreams and fantasies and at the same time, as if the very thought of that had never crossed her mind.

"Damien," she said, her voice slightly scratchy the way it always got when she was around people who were smoking, but still with that soft lilt as though she were about to giggle at a joke only she had heard. "Paul."

Paul swallowed. Damien nodded up at her. I ran a fingertip around the lip of the bottle on the table in front of me, knowing that she would wait forever for me to acknowledge her, that she'd never so much as even say my name first. Both Paul and Damien looked at me for a few moments and then at each other. Damien nodded toward the bar, and Paul scrambled to his feet clumsily. They left without saying a word.

I took a deep breath, my mind telling me that I could smell her perfume despite the illogical nature of such a thought, considering we were surrounded by people, most of them smoking.

"Hello, Madison."

*********

-January 19, 2000-

"C'mon. Hurry up, Chris."

Madison is the only girl I've ever known who was more anxious to get into bed with me than I was with her. Not that I wasn't excited, mind you. But as she tugged on my arm, pulling me toward the front door of her parents' house, knowing they'd be gone the rest of the night, I couldn't help but smile at her eagerness, at the excitement in her voice and her actions. We hadn't planned this or anything, but at dinner a half-hour or so earlier, she had been bouncing in her seat like someone who had a secret she couldn't wait to let out of the bag. When she whispered into my ear that tonight was going to be the night — THE NIGHT — I had dropped my fork and immediately signaled the waiter to bring the check. I had a little bit of experience and wasn't a virgin, but she was, and all of her experience had been with me, a startling fact considering how gorgeous she was, especially compared to me.

"I'm coming, Madison," I said with a chuckle, letting her drag me along like a petulant child.

"Not yet, you're not," she said, looking back at me with a wicked grin. "But I plan to rectify that soon."

The shedding of coats and shoes and scarves and hats and gloves in the foyer is one of those moments I always look back on fondly. It was comical, the sort of real-life scene that makes you think that the ridiculous ways people act in bad romantic comedies might not be all that absurd.

By the time I had kicked off my boots, she was clinging to me, arms wrapped around my shoulders, lips dancing across my neck and ears, giggling as her feet dangled off the floor when I stood up, arms wrapped around her back and holding her against me up in the air. I might have mentioned that she was taller than average, but 5'10'' isn't real tall next to a young man who stands 6'4'' and was a large as I was. By large, mind you, I'm not suggesting that I was obese. I certainly had the shoulders, chest and height to make the 260 or so pounds of muscle and leftover baby fat an 18-year-old football player has seem intimidating and not disgusting. So she wasn't much of a hindrance to me hanging from my neck and wrapping her legs around my waist as I carried her through the house, one hand gripping her ass firmly through her jeans and one hand in front of me, feeling for walls and couches and anything else that might turn the experience from something special to something involving pain and a hospital.

She was whispering in my ear, her voice husky and eager, telling me how long she'd been wanting this, wanting me to be her first, needing this moment. And when she whispered, "We're going to make love, and then we're going to fuck, and then we're going to make love again," I was grateful to have reached her bedroom door, because there's a good chance I'd have spoiled her fantasy of having her first time be on a bed by taking advantage of the stove or the kitchen table or whatever I reached first.

I pushed the door open with a gravelly growl, flicking the light on and moving quickly into the room, leaning forward and laying her softly down on the bed, leaning down as I did, making sure to be gentle. I kissed her neck up to her chin and then skipped over her mouth, brushing my lips against the tip of her nose. I pushed myself up, hands next to her shoulders, still leaning down over her, my face hovering over hers.