Hey Baby

"Did you hear the big news?" My friend nudges me and shows me the picture on his phone. "Phillip and Jennifer just had their baby."

I look at the photo and smile. Phillip is holding his firstborn and makes for such a proud father, a man I have known since first grade who is now all grown up. His wife holds their child and cries, and a new family is born.

While Phillip and his wife are celebrating the greatest moment of their lives surrounded by friends and family, I am polishing off the first round of a long bender in some blues bar in east Atlanta. A bottle of Old No. 7 rests on the counter beside me, freshly opened but already destined for the trash heap by the end of the night. I look around the bar and see my Dothan  boys already packing into a booth at the far end of the bar. 

"Come on Bobby, it will be fun. We've got to get you out of that lonely apartment and take your mind off her." After some feigned protests I relent and join them for a night of drinking. Months have passed since last I took a drink, but before they finish their first round I am already half a bottle deep.

In my newfound euphoria I see the flashing neon lights announcing the house band, yellows and reds blurred together like some artist's brush streaking paint across the canvas. The music starts soon, blues of course, a fusion of deep bass guitar and saxophones framing the raspy voice of the sturdy woman who struts across the stage and curses the microphone like a jilted lover. "Mama Brown" they call her, and she belts out the blues with the fury of a woman possessed by demons that only her words can exorcise. My foot taps in rhythm to the unknown yet familiar song, while my right hand slams down an empty shot glass with every beat of the drummer's snare. When her song ends the regulars in the back of the bar whistle and clap before returning the bar to relative silence, save for the music that still plays in my muddled head.

When my bottle runs empty I approach the bartender to request another when a sultry voice whispers in my ear, "Hey baby, can I buy you a drink?"

Before I can turn around she has already laid her hand atop mine, grasping it firmly around a shot glass as she lifts the drink to my lips. The charred whiskey stings as it slides down my throat, but not as much as the memories her presence elicits when I gaze upon the face of my unexpected suitor. Her eyes, dark and alluring beckon me closer and feature prominently against the olive complexion and midnight hair that frames them. They are eyes of the desert, Middle Eastern it seems, yet with a hint of European roots that place her lineage further west, perhaps in Greece...or somewhere just across the border. She edges closer and presses her body close to mine, wondering if I notice the single bead of sweat that slides down her chest and disappears between her ample breasts. I notice. She brushes the raven's tresses from her brow to reveal a face that I have not seen in two years. She looks just like her...just like her...and when she places her hand atop mine I feel your touch for the first time in two years. She leans in for a kiss, expecting the evening's intoxication to take us away together, but I recoil, for she is not you...and even now there is no other woman I would choose over you.

Two years apart and I cannot so much as even flirt with another woman without feeling as if I am being unfaithful to you. I am in love with you and you told me that you are still in love with me, words that have lifted my soul to heights I dared not imagine. More than anything I want to hold you right now, but I am here in this dive bar in Atlanta while you are up in Boston with...I take another drink and remember nothing more.

I drink until I can't remember your face. I drink until it doesn't hurt anymore. I drink until the world disappears.

And then I wake up, in my own bed as I look over at the clock that flashes 4:00 a.m. I don't know how I got here. I don't even know if the night's proceedings were merely a dream. As I look around the room to collect my thoughts, my phone buzzes from a voicemail that had been left hours earlier. For a moment I hope that I will hear your voice, asking me to see you again, asking me to come back, but when I hear the unfamiliar voice of the woman whose unwanted advances I abandoned only hours before, I toss the phone aside and let the message play itself out, where words of fidelity speak only into the open air with no one to hear their pleas. 

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One of my dearest friends had his first child today and all I can think about is you. It should have been us. Te dua.