This faded world in which we live

November 20, 1980

The bar is bathed in red lights by which I can just see my drink in the dark, lights that circle around the ceiling of the room advertising this place as some kind of whore house – which it is.

For enough money or cocaine, any of the men around the bar might be able to buy a little joy for a night with any of the women dancing on the stage.

Even if we can’t, we want to think we can. Everything is illusion and lust. And the darkness and the red lights hide as much as they reveal.

I have seen this place in daylight from the outside, the concrete exterior the flood lights this time of night do not fully expose.

Daylight shows all the flaws, the shoddiness of reality that is invisible inside and outside right now.

A slightly brighter and whiter light highlights the dancer’s moves, she as limber as the trees that fill the space behind the bar – a large park of sorts that serves for parking during Sunday mass in the Polish church just beyond the rectory which sits just across the alley from the bar.

Sinners and saints occupying the same space although at different times of day or night, drawing some of the same faces that try not to show themselves when they come in here.

We all watch the dance – which is not really dance at all, merely movements the dancer knows each of us will follow regardless of how clumsy or out of time with the music.

The dancer watches us watch her.

I wonder where the dancer ends up in the daylight when I walk down the alley to the park where young kids gather before, after and sometimes during school hours.

This is an old-fashioned neighborhood with old fashioned people living in it, and old-fashioned stores such as the butcher, the barber, and the baker, where by day I go to get my meat, haircut or bread.

 Even the park isn’t really completely a park, crossed over by old rail road spurs that once fed the factories along Eighth Street and ran cross the river via a stickle bridge to factories on the Garfield side.

These tracks haven’t seen trains since before I was born, not counting the rusted freight train along the side of the park on which the children climb, green and brown paint long flaked into dust, bare metal exposed under the rust where the kids hit the cars with rocks.

Stands of trees fill the park near where the rail line crosses the river, and I sometimes wander there by day, crossing the rail bridge thinking the wooden planks might give under my feet – I never go across it at night, fearful of mis-step and the muggers that sometimes prey on the homeless that sleep near there.

Drunks that wander into those woods from this bar or the others across the street sometimes don’t come out on the other side.

When I leave here, I go the other way, across the misnamed Wall Street to Eighth Street, passed the house Loretta Swit was raised in and her parents still occupied until her father died, to my apartment building on the other side of that.
I’m often less drunk on the drinks I buy than on the feelings I’ve stirred up inside myself by being here, trying to cure loneliness with a heavy dose of teasing – since I can’t afford the cocaine or the night’s frivolities with any of the dancers.

Sometimes, everything loses color outside, bar and street, so I feel like I am walking through one of those old movies that has turned too dark or too tan from being projected too many times.

Sometimes, I just stay here until my money runs out from too many drinks, tips to the dancers and the barmaid, feeling exploited, and lost, feeling as if I can find no salvation in this place I live by day or night, in bar or church, hearing the echo of children’s laughter against the rusted sides of the trains long after the children have gone, and the bartender has announced last call. Sometimes, I don’t go home at all, but walk over to the Wall Street bridge and stare down into the churning dark waters of a river I can barely see, the stench of it even in winter telling me it still flows invisible and powerful, and deadly.

Tonight, I have just enough money to get myself drunk, and make myself feel just a little less lonely – something that lasts right up until I sober up, then I’m even more sad.

Tonight, I won’t go home. I’ll stare over the top of Rose’s bar on the Garfield side until I see the sunrise, bringing a bit of color back to this faded world in which we live.