The overnighters

(from Noise in a Silent Room)

November 22, 1980

This is only still Saturday because I have not yet gone to sleep and so night spills over into early morning like a burglar, stealing something of value I will not miss until I wake up to daylight again.

The Central Diner – named after a theater that no longer exists except in the ghostly letters on tall brick side of the building behind it – glows out into the dark, harsh, blinding, a mean little island of civilization against the backdrop of decay.

I am here because I do not want to go home, although I feel as lonely here among the overnighters as I would in my own two rooms ten blocks down and three blocks over in the apartment complex where I live.

I keep thinking about my girlfriend and how I rolled the dice and lost in this high-stakes dice game called love.

And I hang out in heart break city, this night time downtown too-bright diner in Passaic with half-drunk miserable men hanging their heads over half-drunk cups of black coffee, too scared to stay stoned or sober up, while outside, the back beat from the black clubs spills out onto the street in a carnival of artificial joy nobody really feels, feeding quarters to jukeboxes filled with nostalgic songs we care barely remember, each of us staring down into our mugs at the mugs of people we thought we loved, and loved us, with me, thinking maybe the girl back home may be crying over what I said on the telephone, or worse, so enraged she might never want to see me again.

I’m always a little stupid this way, pushing people into a corner until they have little choice but to strike back at me, though like the others who stare into their coffee cups, I hope to read the coffee grounds on the bottom the way fortune tellers read tea leaves, desperate for some new and better fortune to emerge, when I already know it’s not possible.

I’m always boxing myself in, leaving myself no back window to climb out of when things get too hot, more the reason I’m hiding out in a light place like this rather than in some dark alley, where I know no one will look to find me.

She’s not my only worry; I am a black hole of misery, drawing everything into me, the vice grip of the universe gripping me, so I cannot move.

Kathy White from college is here, giggling in the booth in a booth near the window, but she does not see me, teasing her lover, playing the role of flirting waitress the way she plays similar roles up at the college – especially in the pub, where she holds court queen-like, staring at herself in the mirror as all the men – including me – stare her, just as many of the men here do, thinking how lucky the man is who happens to be with her tonight, and wondering if any of us might take his place tomorrow, though none know where she will scamper off to – in fact, I’m shocked she is here, at the same time I am, a strange bit of fate that only makes my self-loathing worse, me aching for her across this tiled purgatory while pitying myself for what I said or did with somebody else.

Kathy’s always talking trash even when she’s trying to seduce someone, perhaps seducing all of us at the same time, and I hear her laughing about all the lonely men she just met at the one of the bars she’s just come from, about how foolish guys are always looking in those dismal places for some quick fix, some even looking for love as they lust after underdressed women like she is, and she mocks the old men, the most desperate of the men who stare hardest at her, sizing up her body parts as if they might add up to something, never noticing me at that moment, just another dirty old man who isn’t yet so old not to be able to do something about it, lost in my own lust, drinking down the same miserable caffeinated brew as the more legitimate dirty old men who fill the stools along the counter to either side of me.

I keep thinking how an hour with Kathy might cure me of the ache I feel for somebody else and hear the old hippie song about loving the one I’m with, stung by the fact that Kathy – and maybe the girl I should be with – are with somebody else.

I stare at the swell of her breasts as they push out from the low-cut sweater she is wearing, and at the curve of her lips, and as the shine in her eyes as she stares across the booth table at a man I know she will go home with, sleep with, and then leave alone later when morning is really morning, and there is a new sun to prove it.

Then I notice she noticing me, across the bright room, the along the line of men hovering over half empty cups, her gaze sparkling with sudden surprise, as if she’s just thought of a new trick to play, and this time on me, knowing from classes we’ve had together just the kind of man I am and how attracted I’ve always been, and always savoring it, making the tension linger, her sharp red fingernails tapping on the table top as her eyes narrow, thoughtfully, recalling perhaps the phone number I once gave her in case she ever needed a ride, pondering perhaps a call later, to let me hear her moaning in the background from love making I’m not meant to have.

For some reason, I find this funny, finally getting the punch line to some old joke I could never get before, thinking how silly we both are ending up in the scalding place in the center of Passaic, both of us handing out with the overnighters, she pretending she isn’t one of them, when we both know better, her giggling as sour as the coffee we both ingest, all of us, too scared to get sober too quickly, and terrified to get stoned alone.