Nothingness haunts being

           The only man sitting at the bar smelled sour, like curdled milk.  Sweat saturated his t-shirt and left a jagged line of evaporated salt along the collar.  Maybe he had been touring the city all day? Maybe he had been standing in an interminable line for tickets to a Broadway show? Maybe he had been loading crates headed for Los Angeles?  He wore still white running shoes with dark blue and orange lightening bolts on the side.  A tourist. It seemed odd that a tourist would be drinking alone in a bar on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Where were his companions? Only his slightly used walking shoes led one to presuppose this man was a tourist.  He did not carry a camera, nor did he have with him any shopping bags emblematic of Soho.

The middle-aged man appeared to be waiting on someone to walk through the front door.  He leaned on the bar and propped his face up with his right hand, so that, he could easily check the door every fifteen seconds.  His watchful gesture was a mere tilt of his chin to the left.  Like a tomcat greets a breeze. He was so close to the door, he would sense the moment it cracked open.  Was he looking forward to this person’s arrival? The man finished his pint with three gulps.  Was he anxious about the person(s) coming through the door? Was he drinking alone to avoid a confrontation with who ever might be coming in? Possibly the intention of the meeting was a hostile confrontation, rather than a happy reunion.

The visitor did not wear a wedding ring.  This smelly bachelor may have been waiting to meet a beautiful woman and was drinking to loosen up, release his authentic self. He sat with his legs winged apart, his head in hand, hardly the posture of an expectant lover.  A dark V-shape of perspiration from his shoulders to the small of the back accentuated his stout frame and protruding belly, making it possible to apprehend this man’s indifference to his being and his impact on his surroundings.

Nonetheless, this man sat in the way of a phenomenon. Something would happen, as we know from experience.  A woman with strong perfume crosses your path causing you to sneeze. You look up and spy a thief freeing a woman’s handbag from her shoulder.  Behold this man who was drinking a beer at this bar on a Saturday afternoon!  Whenever the door should open, when desire should manifest in the doorway and through the bar, this man, his being, would become a part of the background to the phenomenon, the same as the stool under him.  After six pints, this pungent bachelor left the bar.  Subsequent events in the bar would not negate that our hearty binge drinker who left moments before had sat on a stool close to the door.