This dirty, dingy bar, once again, choked with the broken-hearted and lost, the dregs of a society that produces luckless lovers and hopeless romantics. Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, a jukebox old and tinctured with age and stale cigarette smoke. I wish I still smoked. Be easier than being here alone.
This isn’t my place, not really. My place is in the world, the real world of guns and violence and shake, bad guy, shake. Normalcy. This is the bar at the end of the world, the end of any rational world anyway, and all I want to do is find him.
(Find him where? Here? He wouldn’t be caught dead here. You know that.)
Sure. Sure I know that. Just as sure as I know he wouldn’t be caught dead where I really want him, where I really need him. This is love, I think, though how I can be sure? I thought I was in love once, with a woman named Stella. Maybe I was, maybe that’s who I was then. What am I now? Why am I here?
Hermannn Hesse calls love sweet anguish, and when I read that in school it never stuck with me. It’s ringing in my head now, sweet anguish, love like a hunger that consumes and devours and is never satiated. I won’t find him here, no, but every night I come to look anyway.
Down by the jukebox, that could be him. Maybe. If you squint. “Only the Lonely” becomes “In Dreams,” and when the man turns, he becomes someone else. Not Fraser. Not like he ever was to begin with. Not like anyone ever is.
Beer, good, drown it all down. I never gave up drinking and tonight that’s a good thing. Tonight, this bottle is dark with compassion, heady with confidence. God, surely this is blasphemy to ask, surely I will be struck dead for such a prayer, but please God don’t let me go home alone tonight. Please God let me be with him, or someone near enough. I don’t know if my heart can bear another second without his lips on mine.
(Wet your lips. Come on, drunk is good. Drunk is better. Drunk is forgetting.)
“If I know what love is, it’s because of you.” More Hesse. I should never read before hitting the bars. If this is love, then why does it fucking hurt so much? This anguish is sweet, yeah, but it’s bitter. Bitter. Another swallow and Roy Orbison singing “You Got It,” everything you need, everything you want. Why, God, why can’t I be everything he wants? Why can’t I...?
Him. In the shadows, standing by himself. Black hair, dark eyes. Red shirt that looks like serge. And the smile, oh Jesus, that smile that hurts my heart and warms it at the same time. More beer, please, and maybe I’ll be drunk enough to pretend it’s him. To pretend it’s not him. To seek solace in a stranger and know who I’m sleeping with.
“Don’t see you around here much,” he says when I approach. I hope it’s not a pick-up line. I can’t abide pick-up lines, not tonight. Not when my heart is lying on the floor, just ready and willing to be picked up and squashed.
“I’m new,” I tell him, and it’s not Fraser, of course it’s not, it never will be. I can’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. God, I don’t want to be alone tonight.
He tilts his head and in the glow of blue neon, yes, yes I can see him in it. In those eyes and the cast of his face, that proper stance. I can see goodness in him, goodness when the rest of this whole fucking world is so dirty.
(You’re seeking decency, righteousness in this hell, Ray. What do you even hope to accomplish here?)
“Ray,” I tell this man who’s not Fraser. “Kowalski.” His shake is firm, strong. I think that if I close my eyes, he could even sound right. He’s not him, he can’t be him, but tonight, just tonight, let this man be enough.
He says his name but I can’t hear it. The jukebox blares “I Drove All Night,” and when we kiss, for a bare moment, all the secrets that slept deep within me come awake, everything is transformed and enchanted, everything makes sense. Then it’s gone. Then he’s gone. Loneliness is like a serrated blade, slicing into me, carving me apart.
(You deserve this, you know.)
The thing is, I do. What right, what goddamned right do I have, begging for a companion in this torment? What right...
Then he’s back.
“Are you worth it?” the man asks, and I want to tell him yes, I want to promise. But that’s too much to ask.
“I don’t know.” If I mouth I love you, he’ll take it the wrong way. He won’t understand. I don’t understand. “Please, I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
And his eyes, so kind, close slowly and his lips are on mine again. Maybe, just maybe, this can be what I need more than anything. I can’t hurt like this anymore. I can’t need him anymore. Soon enough, sweet anguish turns sour, and love blossoms into hate. I can’t hate you, Fraser. Never that. I can’t hate you so I’ll love him. Is that enough?
“Make me warm?” I ask him, and later in the night I’m warm, I’m warm inside, and that’s more than I ever dared ask. I suffer now, but maybe I can learn to love my suffering. To not resist it, to not flee from it. And I can plunge in here, plunge into this man who is not Benton Fraser, because it’s aversion that hurts, nothing else. Give myself more than what I can’t have.
I love you, Fraser. I whisper it so softly. I love you, Fraser.
And the man who is not Fraser pulls me close in his sleep, and maybe I can start the painful business of loving him instead.