A First Foray Toward Romance Before Leukemia Struck

THE MISAPPROPRIATION OF LITTLE WHITE LIES CAN MAIM AND EVEN KILL - Jonathan Swift

In 2006, as I sat in on the one poetry reading I attended, a monthly spoken word festival of young, often amateurish explorers, exhibitionists, hobbyists, and youthful poets looking for a way to speak to their own versions of the ineffable, I remember how a fatigue began to reach into me.  

I don't really know what had happened.  I think I was a little bored.  It's not as if I was mouthing off about being bored. But in my case, I was beginning to grow as a poet; I'd begun to develop a deeper and much farther reaching understanding of the craft and its necessary critical mind.  While it was nice to see acquaintances there, as for the readings, my activity there involved sitting quietly, silently giving younger poets respect and applause, and then perhaps greeting people, feeling affection and  community.  

Then I'd go home.  As for community, the spoken word reading met my needs.  I've always appreciated solitude, rarely get lonely, and am usually interested in my surroundings and the various stimuli of books and music and some television, my walks, my talks with neighbors, and generally, living a small corner of a life that would be more expansive had I possessed the money I would need to have more of a social life.  

Social lives require some money.  Furthermore, I don't know many people, save for true friends, willing to drive all the way into far North Dallas simply for a visit.  I find meeting spots to meet various friends: a coffee shop here, a restaurant there, a drive into the arty environments in South Dallas at times.  All of that is fulfilling.  

Perhaps I had become a little depressed in 2006.  I'm not certain.  But I began to drift away from the poetry performances themselves, and toward a pretty bartender who always worked on the Wednesday evening monthly readings.  

Attracted to her beauty, yes, that seems a likely excuse perhaps expressed by spectators and onlookers.  But, since connection with the reading seemed to have broken down a bit, I sensed connection with the pretty bartender.  There was more there for me than sexual attraction.  In fact, due to the medication, an antidepressant, I was basically emotional flat-lined: No ups, no downs, merely a sort of straight ahead overreliance on the mind's grasp of the memories of what emotions were.  

What?  Connection?  That pulled me up to the bar.  A couple flutes of red wine (with  glass stems serving as flowery stems themselves, the wine looks like a blossomed rose), a little chatting, and soon the bartender and I were relating on a level I found connective.  I enjoyed conversing with her more than I did listening to young poets who would return time and again--sometimes for years--never improving one bit.  What was all that about?  

Over a period of several months, then, the bartender and I became friends, and also, due to the stirrings of attraction, we also began to flirt.  I really did like the woman.  Despite her reputation as a real siren, a lovely lure to men who can't see past, say, the breasts.  She was a sort of metalhead cowgirl.  Liked to dress as a cowgirl--one picture of her and a friend playing pool at a local Deep Ellum bar struck me as if photography from the Thirties: two never-do-well ladies out hitting pool balls into various pockets.  

We became even closer over time.  I began visiting the bar on Monday nights, a few times on Saturday afternoons.  You know: looking for palpable connection on days that, even in hot summer weather, cooled me.  Not much wine necessary.  Not at all.  

At the time, I'd received an offer from a Boston-area 'zine called The Seed.  The editor had seem some of my MySpace blog entries, some of which dealt with musical likes and dislikes, and asked me if I would review an album or two.  I accepted, and soon, mail arrived: a CD of a Boston-local band up for review.  

I think I did a good job.  The editor asked me for ideas.  I suggested, "Hey, Dallas has a lot of good bands, and I go to a bar where the bartender has all sorts of connections, and even brings in relatively unknown groups to play on the small stage on off-nights."  

I told the pretty bartender.  She was elated.  Let's give some groups a little national exposure.  She selected a band to play at the bar, I attended, greeted the band members, asked if I could review their performance for The Seed, and also asked to interview the members.  Of course they accepted.  Many unknown musicians (and poets, and writers, and artists) crave such exposure.  

Better than operating in a complete vacuum.  

I remember when the first band arrived.  They were pretty good: some folk rock, a little more of a harder sound.  The bar?  It was nearly empty.  But the band would be paid nevertheless.  

The bartender slipped out from behind the bar, and she and I stood listening.  She looked at me, I at her, and we put our arms around one another.  Nice.  Connection.  

Each night I'd show, the bartender brought out a bottle of Tuaca, a liqueur, and ordered up two shots.  That was our statement of friendship.  Connection. 

I always ordered wine from her.  Not much.  At least most of the time.  As for her and her love life?  I never really asked.  I do remember how she and I would meet at the end of the bar itself, chat and joke, and that some men hovering at the bar, some of them literally leering at her, seemed indignant toward me.  What?  I was overweight.  I didn't dress all that snappy.  What's up with "that guy"?  Why's he getting so much attention from (maybe) Helen of Troy?  

Yes, she was a coveted beauty.  As for me, I could feel sexual attraction growing between us.  Special connection.  We'd play.  Joke.  Talk quietly.  Chat about poetry at the reading.  What strategy did I have for all this?  Nothing really.  I simply know from my own personal experience (I was a "pretty" man when younger, attractive enough to have to fight confusion over which young lady was for real and which wasn't) that beautiful women often don't like unsolicited attention that is leveled solely on their physical attributes.  

I noted something deeper than the bartender's tough-girl sheen.  

I remember how one time, when she was on break, she slipped around to my side of the bar, and there I stood as she sat on a barstool: we were arm in arm.  The proverbial "warm fuzzies" felt like connection.  With added excitement.  Especially heartening for a Bipolar on flat-line meds.  

Soon, however, something changed.  I'm still a little confused by the development.  She'd begun an affair with a very seriously alcoholic man who, as if playing to her attraction to music, played acoustic guitar like a master.  Yeah, he was good at that, even while shickered.  

He'd show--like the night he drunkenly flirted with the pretty bartender while sitting right next to me.  I sat with my back to them as they cavorted.  At one point, though, as the bartender lit a candle, placing it closer to me than to him, I felt a little too confident perhaps.  Maybe that was stymied some by my trust issues.  

Man!  Was that guy ever drunk.  He almost couldn't maintain his balance on the barstool.  He was loud.  Often funny in a coarse way.  What was hilarious to me is that the one big scene with him I remember most is that this particular night was karaoke night.  I signed up.  As did he.  

When my turn came, when the hostess of the karaoke event asked me what song I wanted to limn, I told her, "Little Red Riding Hood", the old Sam the Sham song I had adored when I was, like, 12.  

I got up there and began growling from the stage, really belting it out with my best whiskey voice.  Loudly.  Then, the drunk guitarist joined me on stage, and from behind me, began howling like a wolf.  Steal some thunder while drunk driving like a Sunday driver on the lam while driving blind?  Whatever.  

The bartender complimented me: "That was real good!"  

The drunken guitar player?  He began scribbling weird pictures, supposedly of the bartender: a stick figure with sewn-up gashes all over her.  Yeah, yeah, I got that already.  She did strike me as somewhat wounded; but how much of that woundedness had to do with her behavior or her self esteem?  Women with low self esteem often quietly waste themselves on frippery.  

I asked if I could use a napkin near him, he pushed it over to me, and this is when I began to pen out a crazy diagram: I added the words "Patti Smith" and "Iggy Pop" to the diagram.  

The drunken guitarist seemed fascinated by that.  

The bartender and I never really went much farther than that.  I know now I was not ready, not sophisticated enough to keep up with the pretty bartender.  As a sense of emptiness grew inside me, I began writing on the old MySpace blog about how lonely I was.  I hadn't felt lonely before.  I think that the opportunity for connection, seemingly broken in my subjective interpretation, led me to...trust issues, issues that always got in my way.  

This happens to people who have been hurt too many times.  But I'm not blaming anyone here.  Twists in straight roads occur.  I could have learned to ride along and take the unexpected in stride.  

But rather than bending with the breeze, I clammed up, began to feel outright hurt over the matter.  Always that manifestation of trust issues: I am not good enough.  

One Monday night, I took bus and train to visit the pretty bartender.  I didn't know what I felt, really.  A little hurt.  Plenty of distrust.  

She and I were alone at the bar.  But what had happened?  She wouldn't speak to me.  Seriously confused in many ways, I was unfamiliar with the various ways I could have chosen to see this non-speaking gesture of hers.  She quietly washed bottles and glasses, slid around quietly.  Was she simply spending her quiet moments with me?  Or was she telling me to scram?  

I'm certain the incident could have been seen in one of at least two ways of seeing.  Rather, I ordered no less than seven flutes of red wine.  When that wasn't enough to stanch the distrust and misunderstanding and hurt, I began ordering vodka and lime drinks--doubles.  After two of them, the pretty bartender told me she was calling a cab to take me home.  

I felt like I was being 86ed.  Indeed, I was truly acting out.  Hurt overwhelmed trust.  

When the cab arrived, I told her goodbye, started up the stairs out of the speakeasy-designed bar, then turned, loudly called her a whore or a bitch (I really do not remember), and turned to leave, only to fall on the stairs.  I remember feeling broken that night.  Hurt beyond measure.  Maybe I'd needed to express that hurt--not merely to her, but to everyone.  I really do not know.  I just made the wrong guess.  That's how I now see the flirtation's ongoing commencement: That moment could have turned differently had I simply understood.  

She called an ambulance.  As the MICU paramedics loaded me onto a stretcher (I was nearly passed out from the over-the-top expression of distrust), the pretty bartender fetched my wallet, used it to pay my bill, and then I woke in the emergency room.  Apparently some of my physical chemistry was off.  

I brushed that off.  But I'd hurt my right knee.  And it did not heel.  In fact, my right knee began to swell.  I remember trying to ignore that pain as I tried writing out something/anything to distract myself.  

A special bottle of wine perhaps?  Lifted from the top shelf of the bar?  I do remember that.  

Two weeks later, I was diagnosed with leukemia.  Trust issues plus off-balance bodily chemistry, compulsive recourse to diet Dr. Peppers, and suddenly, in the middle of July, 2007, I was walking to catch a bus to answer an oncology warning that I was indeed very sick.  

Who knows how cause and effect tend to work together.  So much tangled in the end of how I'd sabotaged what might have been plenty of fun with a person I really did like.  

The outburst?  It led to me being banned from the bar.  Rightfully, the owner dressed-me down: "No one should ever speak to a woman the way you did." 

Ouch!  

Thankfully, after plenty of time with a psychotherapist, I've learned to expand my insight enough to function much more confidently in the regard of even flirting with women.  As I continue to make important breakthroughs in learning about a past flurry of sexual traumas when I was very small, I'm beginning to feel fresh air blowing through me.