The Girl At The Bar: A Monologue
So I'm sitting and watching this girl, so like an angel, she almost could sprout wings, she's sitting at the bar crying in her beer mug, and I want to go and comfort her, but she might think I'm a lesbian or something and want to take her home, so I just sit silently and hope that the fact that I'm paying attention from a distance comforts her soul somewhat. I wonder what such a beautiful woman could be sad about, so sad that she would drink herself into a stupor and reduce her beautiful form to that of a weepy drunk. I bite the bullet and move over to her barstool. "It can't be all that bad" I say as I offer her a smoke out of my pack, I notice she's out. She silently takes the cigarette and asks for a light, looking at me warily. "I don't bite" She asks me if I'm coming on to her, ok, so I called that one, and I tell her no, that I saw her crying and felt bad, and thought she could use a girlfriend about now, and she just starts bawling. I wonder what in the world could be that bad, or if shes one of the millions of women who couldnt stop crying when Julia Roberts died in Steel Magnolias. I ask her if she wants to talk about it. She says no and thanks me for the cigarette, pauses for a minute, then starts telling me about her husband, about catching him in bed with another woman, their bed, their house, while their kids were asleep. I ask her where her kids are now, she says they're at her moms, and I feel releived, I would hate to have to give a parenthood lecture, especially since I'm not a parent. She tells me they got married when she got pregnant, and It never was a particularly happy union, but she's always loved him, you know the rest. She finishes her beer, and motions to order another mug, but I tell her that it wont solve anything. "Probably not" she says, "but at least it will make me forget about it for awhile" I gently inform her that in her drunkenness she has been talking about what she wanted to forget about, and that forgetting doesnt really help anyway, it just delays the inevitable, and she tells me she knows, but that shes already resolved to get drunk enough to forget her last name, so I pay for her beer. Shes not an alcoholic, not the traditional kind anyway, she doesnt usually drink, and when she does, its usually just social, so I guess she has the privelige to get seriously fucked when she catches her husband in bed with another woman; was it someone she knew? I could tell this woman wasnt going to tell me much more, but she took the liberty of helping herself to another one of my cigarettes, as I had left the pack on the bar. My vice, I really need to quit smoking. I got to the point to where I can go into a bar and not drink, not even crave it; I know shes not an alcholic because I am, alcoholics are the people who go to the bar when they're not sad and get fubar-d and get up the next morning and go to work then go out and do it again. This woman, was just depressed, and thats ok. But because of how I am, I really wanted to just help her, but I realized after she lifted my last cigarette, that sometimes you can't help a person, sometimes, you just have to let them learn on their own, and in and of itself, that can be a difficult lesson to learn.
