your nemisis is waiting in the line at the bar of underage drinking

hello folks-


a quick write from the word nemesis about me walking into my old undergrad bar of beginnings.
enjoy and thanks always for stopping by!


Nemesis. My own nemesis might not be a spandex clad villain trying to fuck up my ability to do good and fight evil on this earth. No, that might be left to the simplicity of super heros and the story lines in their confinement. No, my nemesis might be me. Me. You wake up, you roll over, you open your eyes to a younger version of yourself. You think you have evolved so much that you now have somehow changed and transformed into a more liberated non-caring this is me kind of lady- take it or leave it.


But one day. One day you walk into a bar. A bar of before. Before. The earlier you. That has exited before. The bar might have a new name. But the smell of beginning adulthood still musky particles of years past drift up to your nose. You breathe in and smell the smell of you. Your younger self. The one who had to underage drink before. In this bar. The room changed. Now with animals heads upon the wall. Expanded -walls taken down. The physical bar-the same-stretches long like the years past. Years. But living in a way right now. Right now. Food now available not left to the confines to the pizza line next store. It stops now. The flooding of what was and drifts away as I order no bud light or heineken or mixed drinks of my younger self. Kahula something-vodka this-all swallowed down in one sitting. Now instead. A more sophistication order of black ipa and a tecate. For I am driving. Shots, shots, spatters around us. No I don’t do shots. But before I did. Did in a way that killed me. Later.


But I was in the midst of figuring it out. Figuring out how to be me in the middle of this bar. In the beginning of being my own. Figuring out how to be. Without apologizing later. Or right now. Time passes quickly away. Away this night. And then its time to go. Go. This would be the first time I left this bar without the non-sober of drunken sway. I walk back up the dirtied wooden floors up the ramp and touch the bathroom door. And as I place my fingerprints upon the green smudged door and press my fingerprints, weight moves it open with it, against it, a downpour of it all comes back. Back. The lines. The lines I stood in. I am standing in again. The dress. The obsession of how to dress. The how to get in. And the nervous-forgotten. The waiting in line in this bathroom I had spent so many moments waiting. Waiting. Making sure to look pretty. And skinny. And happy. And not too bitchy. And not hurl. And not pee. And smile enough but not too much. Waiting in that line. But there is no line. Not now. No line for me to try and dance in and out of and through.


I walk straight to the stall. And lock the door with a bolt. The lock is new and heavy and hits the stall door hard. Hard. It shakes. I hover over the toilet and remember. Barfing here. And peeing here. And crying here. And as I flush, stall door slamming. Wash my hands. Clean. I walk out the door. There still isn’t a line. I didn’t have to wait like I did before. Before. I was thankful. And somewhat relieved to have visited her here. Now. Because there was no line of acceptance I had to wait in. Not again. Not in this bar. Not ever. Again. The line of waiting lived inside of me. I just stopped caring how I looked while I stood there. As I glanced at the mirror out the door. Back into the bar.