Method of Mancy

We’re twirling and tumbling about, riding a social high that crept up our noses and down the back of our necks to make our hearts beat faster. We’ve been up and down the blocks already, chasing after a ghost, only to turn around and settle on something easy, familiar. Now we’re seated at the bar, and a pair of men push a shot glass toward us. Free booze. My friend takes a sip and swiftly sets it back down in disgust. 

I forgot I hate vodka, he gasps.

I down the rest, indifferent. It’s smooth, but still white-hot in my chest. The bartender makes me… something. It’s fruity and blue. I don’t know what it’s called, but I sip on it lazily. Hazily.

We move deeper into the room, the sea of bodies becoming thicker around us. The night has been wild and boisterous, full of merriment and friendship, and I’m just riding the wave. Our little city is hard at work to prove its smallness, calling friends from all corners to the same rooms we stand in just to give us the chance to be human. To say, how have you been? To say, it’s been so long.

There’s a particular area of the bar My Friend fancies. He likes to be near the speaker, shoved off to the side in constant threat of being prodded by the backs of pool cues. I’m eyeing up the karaoke and he asks me if it’s cool if someone he knows comes to say hi. No doubt. That’s what this evening seems to be all about. Everywhere we have gone, there have been friends waiting, whether we expected them or not. 

–

I’m deep into my mystery drink watching someone drunkenly sing when my attention is pulled on by some unseen force. I look absentmindedly toward the west and there is a young man pushing through the crowd. Tall. Dark. Handsome. Unusual for parts like these, for a place like this. His eyes are focused, his hair pushed back, his arms bare. I eye him in wonder, my rum-laden mind murmuring what’s a pretty thing like you doing in a place like this? into the halls of my own skull. 

I’m watching him move I can’t look away and inexplicably he stops not three feet from me, having found what he was looking for. I struggle to fit both sides of the picture together as My Friend cheerfully greets the handsome stranger. He brings him over to me for introductions and I’m still stuck on the idea that somehow, this is who we’ve been waiting for? I was expecting a group of kids out on the town, stopping in to say hi as they continue their night out, simply because they were nearby and knew someone already inside.

Instead, I am face to face with this Stranger, forced to produce real, actual words. To find language buried deep under the weight of my mind. I manage a quick greeting, the words tripping out from my lips, flavored with blue curaçao. He offers a round of drinks, and I agree recklessly, despite not being done with my own.

Neither of us are really prepared to drink more, but we are still following the night wherever it takes us, so My Friend and I accept the strong, grape cocktails The Stranger returns with. The rule around these parts is that we must drink the entire glass dry in one go, and I generally ignore this. But when The Stranger looks at me with a playful glint of challenge in his eyes, I can feel the fire of competition flicker in my chest, a stranger to me herself.

One.. two.. only five gulps down and my throat is aching from brain freeze, but there is only ice left in my glass. Success.

The boys decide to play pool, seeking out other bar patrons to battle. I guard the beverages and watch their sport, chatting back and forth with whoever’s turn is over. I dig through my barren social library for things to say, even asking The Stranger about his beer just to hear him speak. He plays the game with such surety but barely holds his own against the competition. Ultimately they lose, and I convince him to give karaoke a shot. We curl into little shrimp, sat side by side on the barstools, scrolling through our playlists for ideas.

I enjoy watching drunken karaoke because no matter how it sounds, you can see the joy bursting out of people clearer than ice, and it’s always contagious. He goes up, singing the song without a care in the world, not even the care of hitting the right notes. We shower him in applause when he’s done and return to our idle conversation. A short time later, The Stranger disappears into the crowd with a girl and My Friend and I wait for my own karaoke turn to come.

When I step behind the microphone, a crowd of boys appears around the “stage” like a cartoon fog. It’s an easy, well-known song and everyone shouts the words back at me as I go. The uproar of cheers and applause is a familiar comfort when my song ends, and I push through the wall of boys back over to My Friend. 

One of the guys we met earlier during the pool game hovers around me when I return to my spot. I enjoy chatting and try to follow along, but I’ve had another drink and I’m mostly focusing on the stool I’m sitting on, waiting for some clarity to come back to my vision. He wraps around me like a snake and I don’t know how to extricate myself. My head is heavier than usual, and frankly, my body can use the support, but he’s too close. There’s too much body in my physical space, too many smells, and too many strangers.

As abruptly as I can manage without tipping over, I grab My Friend and haul him out, done for the evening. We pass his Stranger on the way out, still chatting with the girl he met, and My Friend says goodbye while I wave dizzily, more focused on getting to the exit. Finally, we are back out in the fresh air, the smell of cigarette smoke like an alarm clock in my nose. 

We stumble through the city in the dark, so much farther away now from where we started. We trace our steps back to the parking spot, carefully stepping over the memories of the night we left scattered on the sidewalks. The eight friends we saw, the eight new people I met. The four hands I shook, the three drinks I didn’t pay for. The four different locations we visited, the four hugs I gave to people I don’t actually know well enough to hug.

The car door closes with a rattling crack, and I sink into the seat in exhaustion. The lights of the nearby gas station are smeared across my corneas, and My Friend pours some sort of snack mix into my hand that I shove past my teeth obediently while we sit there in the dark. As the salt lights up my tongue, I hear a voice in my mind like a backseat driver singing her favorite song to me like a hymn: