2004-04-30 - 1:25 a.m.

I can say this with resolve, and pride. I insist on saything this wihout admitting to the terrible cliche I know I'm giving way to. I know it's there, but best to ignore the shadow and keep on trucking baby...

I have a 'Cheers'.

I can try to describe all the details of my local bar: the bartenders who drop shots out of bordom before any regular, at regular thirty minute intervals, the errie green light that flickers over the never used public telephone...the light that gives it an oddly Matrix-y kind of glow. (Did the man with Literary ambitions just use the word Matrix-y? Yes he did.) Possibly I could bring up the nights spent cheering the Yankees with abandon that far superceeds any true mark of loyalty. I could discuss in poetic jargon the wonder that is the smoking garden out back, where, and oh how this should not be a rare joy, one can enjoy a smoke and a beer side by side in New York. (it's not unlike watching twins meeting after being seperated for decades on a very special 20/20.) I could tell you all of this and yet, all that matters is that it's a place where everyone knows my name. In New York...in this towering metropolis jammed packed with more people per square foot than there are against the fenses at a European Soccer Match...it's nice to hear your name being echoed by four different voices as you walk in.

It's my 'Cheers."

There's a man there, with whom I've shared more giggles than any two men ever should, who despite that feminine admission has proven himself a man amongst men on many an occation. His Bad Ass card is not only laminated, but has a distinctive hologram seal in the lower left hand corner.

It is for this reason that I am so put out to see him cut under, wrapped in an overpowering undertow and slowly dissembled when SHE arrives.

M'lady Muerte.

What hold she has on him is a mystery. What reason for that hold, an enigma wrapped in a mystery.

He'll sit with us, sipping on his beer, thowing verbal spit ball after spit ball at the tv screen, when she enters.

M'lady Muerte.

She stand behind him, not saying a word, and his countence falls. He drinks the rest of his beer, with a look of shame....like a five year old caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and then forced to be watched while he guiltily ate the treat he chased after so greedily.

When he finishes he leaves, with a muted goodbye.

The phrase "Breaking up is hard to do" is now so common and oft-used that I no longer no the music that used to go with it. It is one of those accepted facts now, needing no other backing that it's own cache.

I say this, not to disprove it, but to stand by it.

I am a master...a master...of not breaking up. And for this reason I can not my fellow bar stool.

We all prepare the speeches. I've even rehersed them in the bar-bathroom trying to get the inflection down, but it rarely helps.

You might have the speech memorized. (I've even seen them written and then read aloud.) When the speech is over, nothing has changed. YOu still need to actually do it.

All it takes is one flinch before the firing squad and it is as if you had said nothing.

One thought of 'well, maybe..."

'If only we could just..."

"Maybe just one more time..."

"Maybe if I put FeBreeze on her I won't smell the..."

"He's not so bad...when he's drunk..."

"I don't want to go home...

"I don't want to go home and watch DVD's again.

"I don't want to go home and read the same magazine in my bathroom for hours on end...

"I don't want to masterbate to fall asleep for the eighth night in a row...

"I don't want to go home."

There is nothing worse than realizing a cliche isn't too far off the mark.

"I don't want to go home, but I can't stay here."

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