a little taste...

Ruffled hair, wrinkled two-button suit, his eye focused on his single malt, the faint smell of her hair engulfs his nasal passages as a sigh slowly escapes from behind his tobacco-stained teeth. It had been so long that he forgot. He couldn’t for the life of him remember how it came to this. Her green eyes used to focus upon him. A genuine glance of admiration and love lay behind her sultry soul shades as she used to whisper to him, that he was the only man for him. However, that was 8 years ago. He sits alone in the shoddiest of bars, sipping on his 4th straight drink, lost in the thoughts of the woman he once knew. Everything about her was all that was right with the world. Like a gift at Christmas, their love was pure hope and anticipation. The lust was good, but the understanding was great. As he reaches into the inside pocket of his suit, the bartender tells him that it is now last call, and also reminds him yet again that he can’t smoke in here. His hand reappears tightly clenching a crumpled and worn $20 bill, which he slowly places on the counter. The last of his money, meant for bus fare, was used instead on the generous spirits of a shitty bar. It was never meant to be this way. Sent to the Pelican Bay Correctional Facility, he had no way of even consoling her when they lost their child. They were going to name him Charlie after his favorite Uncle, a man who died too young and far too beloved. The innocence of their love had tainted itself in the filth of reality. Pure love, pure ecstasy in the arms of another; he had never experienced it before. Lost in the meandering fortunes of the concrete jungle, his eyes maintained on an unfocused path. But she set him straight. Her long dark hair, her slender frame, a petite nose, and cheeks adorned with the deepest of dimples, she was a vision that had slowly faded from his memory as the days went by. No matter how hard he tried to remember, the look of her face became more and more obscure as the days turned to weeks, weeks to months, months to years. All that remained were random remembrances of her scent and faded sounds of her erratic yet charming giggle. She was everything. And through the years the realization that he now has nothing began to eat at him. Her love is what he took for granted, and now it’s all he can hope for…but it’s too late. As the saying goes, time and tide wait for no man. And after 8 years even the most loyal of the loyal would have no reason left to stick around. Gone on her way, their memories she couldn’t keep from him. He tried to do the best he could, or so he convinced himself, but in the end, ego trumped her love and for that, he will never forgive himself, even if the great state of California had forgiven him for his other indiscretions.