Seperation Anxiety

#5 in a series for the Blue Room

I separate myself from the others again tonight.  Familiar faces, going nowhere…I’m off kilter, but I don’t want to leave.

 

Like a broken record, I must go ‘round, obsessed as I am with music and seeing life as I do through crystalline Bogart & Grace glasses.  Oh, maybe throw in Hepburn’s sunglasses, too.  The facets distort, but they fascinate.  Demons, monkeys on my back, with faces I recognize, gape and stare.  I wear a mask because it’s who I am.  I think back; it was raining in the parking lot.  I had to run across in my heels as a man with a familiar solemn face and large gray car splashed near me as he passed.   

 

“It’s who I am,” I say aloud toward the smoke of the air, at the familiar face of the bartender that smiles, the face that smiles from the piano, the familiar faces of the two women who stand there beside the music man, the two men I know standing there by the bar.  I’d forgotten the beauty of the yellow dress, the young girl carrying the notebook, the package left under the chair. 

 

I separate myself from the others again tonight.  Familiar faces, going nowhere…I’m off kilter, but I don’t want to leave.

 

 “Can’t you see?  I’m not after anyone.  I’m waiting, but I don’t know why anymore,” I tell the young couple sitting beside me.  I roll ‘round, like that tiger blindly chasing its own tail; grabbing it with teeth that tear. The pain is mixed with the shock and absurdity of the taste of my own blood.  I put my head back and laugh at myself, at the world.  Mamu will show me out, I think, at the very moment he carefully takes my arm.  Instead of out, he shows me to one of the back rooms to gather my senses. He doesn’t say get yourself under control, but it’s in his eyes.

             “As if,” I say up to him as he smiles all one-sided and wise. I go beyond the velvet curtains as he holds them aside and lie down on the plush couch, waiting.

  “Thank you.” I say to his broad back.  He simply nods.  He knows me too well. They all do, but I’m safe here.  Safe, I think as I watch him turn toward the bar and the music beyond; his broad back the back of Jesus tonight.  Yes, it was me that threw my diamonds away, put them in the ashtray.   It was time to go on with life.  What do I have to lose? 

“I must go on with my life,” I say to Mamu who isn’t listening.  Shutting my eyes, I hear the piano man playing his songs for us all.  The fusion of jazz and blues that he chooses soothes my angry burnt mind, as I slip into a light sleep. Someone covers me with a jacket.  No doubt it’s gray.  I think, “Thank you”, I know I’m safe.  For now, I’m safe. 

 

I separate myself from the others again tonight.  Familiar faces, going nowhere…I’m off kilter, but I don’t want to leave.  It isn’t them that’s going nowhere, but me.

 

Reviews

[R J Askew]

It feels as if you have become a part of the Blue Bar...as if it absorbs you and gives you meaning, reality. All you need is there, it is familiar and comforting...you do not need human company as BB is also company to you. So too tbe Bar almost feels like an undemanding psychiatrist that you visit in the hope of enlightenment, but who never asks you any searching questions. I could hear the click of the heels in the top graph and sense the tender concern of Mamu who is your sort of unofficial minder. Easy does it!