The Magnet

I was 28 and crawling out onto 18th Street in D.C. The smell of marijuana laced with early morning air hit my face. We had been at it all night until the bouncer had enough of my new buddy's girl. She was drunk. I had met these folks from Michigan a few hours earlier at the bar down the road before we were forced into this one.

This shit bar didn't even have a name on the front. It was a white painted building. It had a section that was clearly added on with plywood that was painted peach. It was special but I was too wired to know why. Before I knew it, we were on the street in front of my hostel saying our goodbyes. Six fast friends, five of them practically in tears, all promising to stay in touch. One of them knowing full well that would be the last time they spoke. It was nothing they did, nothing they said — in fact, I really liked these people and had a high time tonight. However, I am a transient. I cling only to the good times, not the ingredients. I know that the ingredients weren't going to like me as much the next day. They never do.

Later that morning I woke up in my bunk. I pushed over the curtain and saw a man from Oxford sleeping in a top bunk with a Black kid from Florida sleeping below. They couldn’t have been any different, but we got along just fine. The evening before, we watched rats from the fire escape fighting over garbage in the alley below. I got dressed as fast as I could without making a sound. Then I was downstairs scrounging for free coffee left behind. After a couple of cups, I was off to do the transient’s work: crack jokes to the tourists, read in all of the parks, scrounge for food. It was a full day.

It was dark, I knew it, and I was back floating between the crowd on 18th Street. Nothing was working out. I sat on a bench and watched the party move by. I finally surrendered to the night and started the walk back to the hostel, but didn’t reach the door.

An Italian kid with a bald head and mustache stood in my way. I had shared my found coffee with him in the morning. We had made plans to meet at the hostel and go out for a drink that night. I had forgotten all about it.

If two people are truly after the same thing, life often pulls you together. I could see in his eyes we wanted to explore the night.

Before I knew it, I was standing in front of that same nameless shit bar across the road. When you looked at it from the street, you got the feeling that if the Italian and I were to walk in, we might be the only white people in the place.

I’d known him for five minutes, but I knew from the look on his face he felt the same way. I didn’t give him the time to think any further.

Now inside, without the flow of the night washing over me, I was able to get a better look. There were three Creole people running the whole place—one bouncer and two bartenders. The bar was backed by plywood offcuts that supported upside-down soda cans and plastic bottles of liquor. The woman looked at me with sullen, half-closed eyes. The way she looked at me made me think Voodoo curses and satanic hexes would be almost certain if I said the wrong thing.

I shouted, “Whiskey and ginger ale!” In a few moments, she set three shot glasses and one of those cheap squeeze bottles of ketchup in front of me.

“Thirty,” she shouted, and I forked $35 out of my pocket and handed it to her.

“What is that?” the Italian said.

“Whiskey”

“I don’t know whiskey”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“Like ahhh, I’ve never had whisky”

I laughed and squeezed the whiskey and ginger from the ketchup bottle. The shot glasses clanked, then I turned to take in the place that I couldn’t get away from.

Two tables ran down the center of the room. One was two sheets of plywood placed end to end, held up by only God knows what. The other was a pool table covered with a blue tarp. I felt it, and instead of being shiny and slippery, it was soft, faded, and furry from use.

Both tables were lined with young women.

Behind the two tables, a line of booths hugged the wall. They were the kind of booths that were a little too big for one person on each side and a touch too small for two to a side.

I turned back around and looked at my new friend. “Woooow, I like whiskey.” I laughed, and before I knew it, we were squished into a booth with a young couple from France.

They looked like they had been on the road for a while. They both wore loose-fitting hippie clothes and faded smiles, with lips full of Zyns on their faces. In broken English, they told us about their travels.

This bar was a magnet that attracted everything I loved and repelled all that I hated. I was instantly sure that I had been there in a previous life. Something big had happened here.

I don’t know if I was born in the back room. Maybe I had fallen in love. Maybe I met death. Something big had happened on this hallowed ground—I was sure of it.

It wasn’t long before the ketchup bottle was empty, and when I went to the spigot, I ran into a girl. She was from Texas, and before long I had filled her ears to the brim with my spiritual ramblings.

Before long, I was breaking up with a lover and sending my best friend off into the night. They were sure we would see each other again. I agreed, but knew this wasn’t true.

I can always come up with the down payment for a friendship. The recurring future payments almost certainly cannot be remitted.

People are amazing. They make life fun. However, sucking the marrow out of life is a full-time job. It is a lonely job that only the few—cursed and blessed without attachment—can enjoy, and even fewer can hold down by resisting the world that constantly tries to attach to you.