But by the time you got back to the thinking part, after the bar, after the work and sore things, it didn't make much sense, what you had been working on.  It all seemed juvenile.  Half-assed.  There were bills to pay.  "What a job..." you said to yourself.  "What a mistake ever to be a bartender."


I knew I had to be back for Saturday.  It was still cold out.  I didn't have much energy, though I managed to take a little walk over the bluff overlooking the still quiet Potomac, a parkway below me, and one in the distance on the far side, coming back to the little market run by the Korean woman with her sister who prepared the food orders, and the sister's husband who also manned the register and the lottery ticket counter.   I had some wine, made some dinner one night, ordered Chinese the next night, Saturday night, and found myself out of wine again, and I needed some more, so it seemed, so I went out, brought my keys on a secret mission, and returned in a cab with a fresh bottle, knowing it would make me feel like bloated and ill the next day, but in the meantime I was quite stressed out and needed something to calm me down, besides browsing erotic Pompeian images in a mix of boredom and lack of energy, sapped as I was, by the workweek, trying to find any energies I might have, or even if I still had any energies of any sort.



It was a stressful time.  Had been so for a long time.  And no wonder, what with the zoo jazz nights and weekend nights, and any night really, up at the wine bar of the old Dying Gaul had an easy potential to turn into in an instant, if it wasn't just a slow long night of long irritations that went on and on, another face to deal with.  Stress.

It had become a year since the big upset of the move from Decatur Place, a week short of it and my kindly Catholic friend Elizabeth the assistant principal and wearer of many hats as a mom and a care-taker of the elderly, who had arranged to stash the bulk of the library such as I could save over at a friends needed the books to be returned.  To add to my trauma, as it were.  The bulk of the library of spirituality had made it to the new apartment and its storage area down in the basement, but...

What had added to all that and the stress I was feeling over my old mom's situation up there an eight hour drive into winter and grey cold, was the lab report from my physical on Halloween, a GGT liver enzyme number of 90, something rather scary to me, given that red wine was really the only thing keeping me relaxed enough to keep up my little efforts of writing, along wth the bachelor housekeeping and quiet hermit life I was now pretty much stuck with.   If mom said things over the phone about being "wicked awful lonely," or 'said "but I'm not home," or wishfully misunderstood geography to ask me to come pick her up in the morning to take her home, or any of the other things she might say that hit like the turn of a knife inside you, I was feeling the same way, just perhaps a bit too overwhelmed to admit it.  Or just tired out, feeling a need for sleep, and sleep was not aided by my bedroom being beside a construction site as well as underneath the flight path of the great airplanes of airliners coming up still rising out of old Reagan National Airport, coming west along the river right in the direction of the old G.I. three story four rent controlled apartments where I had landed, by the grace of God.

In the old days, living on the quiet street, I could have stayed calm by going out on bicycle rides, sometimes long ones, sometimes closer by up and down some hills of expensive real estate.  I would have managed to avoid the stress of the conversations with my kindly landlord with his concerns for me.  I would spend time with my little kitty cat, Miss Kitty, the small spitfire tortoiseshell calico, or would do yoga in the spacious living room of the old apartment, spent time assembling a decent dinner.

But as a I took the bus in, feeling like Jonah, there on the old rattling rumbling D6 bus past the hospital and Georgetown University, I saw a kid, high school probably, running at a jog in the afternoon golden cold sunlight, with red and healthy cheeks the way I use to, the complexion of a young Prince Harry.

Earlier, just getting up, my sinuses congested, I had the urge to vomit, and that too was perhaps a symptom of the sore liver thing.  But I dutifully made my green tea, cooked some eggs straight up in the old Teflon coated fry pan as old as me, so that the yokes ran over the roast beef from the Korean market, already getting old.  No energy to make the next stew, just, yes, Saturday afternoon is your Monday morning.

And at the end of a very sorry night, as I'm writing up the list of wines for the new coworker to bring up from the cave, a familiar couple wandered in, out celebrating the anniversary of their meeting, and she is the proprietor of the small spa on the upper level across the street above the baguette place, who does acupuncture, and spa things like healing massages.  And as we talk and I reveal a little bit of it all, she says, "oh, you're dehydrated;  you need to drink eighty ounces of water every day...."


The couple who is sat at the first two seats of the bar, right as the night explodes with drink orders in all directions and my co-worker leaving me to deal with the nine-top out front...  "You're the hardest working guy in this town..." she says as they pay the check.