Dave's Rhyme - 1. Chapter 1

Dave

 

 

The most successful?… confident?… messed up?… guy I know in many ways is Dave. He runs his own plumbing company and owes a bar. He learned the plumbing business from his father. And he learned the bar business working as a bartender when he was on the outs with his old man. Actually he has two bars, both in the same old building… a renovated bank located in the small, commercial area of one of those forgotten for decades, up and coming, trendy, rediscovered, neighborhood paradises. The larger bar is called Upstairs and has live bands and a dance floor. The other bar is in the basement and is a kind of a neighborhood, sit for hours and talk bar. Did I mention?… also in his spare time, Dave makes welded steel sculptures in his studio.

 

Before I get too far into all of this, let me say straight up, Dave isn’t perfect and neither am I. Yeah far from it. We both have past regrets and mistakes a plenty. Right now after three divorces, Dave is single again. He swears never again to get married. The last divorce quite recent, like finalized only today. So here I am sitting downstairs in the basement of Dave’s smaller bar called what else but Downstairs having a coke while my friend has a few beers and muses melancholy. I know what is coming soon though. The horny old goat is going to start reciting his poem. That horrible, simply horrible poem, that everyone cheers to hear from him. Except me, I don‘t cheer. He does this at the oddest times. It’s entitled: 500 Women I Have Fucked. Before you all get self righteous, it is often the women who cheer the loudest to hear this lunacy of his. I remember long ago when the poem was only about 100. He actually has the first 100 names memorized. The rest are in a book he keeps. Some don’t have names just a physical description and a place and date. I don’t understand this honestly. Because why? Don’t get me started on this right now. The one time I seriously complained?… questioned?… got pissed a little… he only looked hard at me and asked. “You want to hear my other poem? I call it The One Guy I Fucked 500 times.” Well that is the crux of the matter isn’t it. What this is all about.

 

I met Dave in college back in the stone age. We both hung out in the art department, if you want to call that having an art major. Dave was all about the visual arts, that is sculpture, and was a senior. I was a freshman and I seriously thought I wanted to work in a museum, so I was taking art history along with painting and drawing.

 

Dave was tall and lean with broad shoulders. He wasn’t huge huge but he made the wide hallways seem narrow. I was tall and skinny with hunched up shoulders, scared of my own shadow. That was how I felt and was seen in high school. I hadn’t realized I had changed a good bit in the year I took off before starting college. At nineteen I had bloomed and apparently I didn’t realize it yet and no one had volunteer the information. Everybody in the art department wore jeans, boots and T-shirts. Even the girls, I found out.

 

Speaking of those wide hallways, that is how I first met Dave. One very long hall ran the length of the visual arts pavilion. Walking down that hall made me anxious all the time. Cause often it was completely empty almost like all the students and staff disappeared off the face of the earth. There were no windows, just doors regularly spaced along walls that were designed to hold various forms of artwork in exhibition. It took forever to walk all the way down the hall to the student lounge, store and small sandwich shop. On one of those empty occasions I started down the long trek and noticed another person was coming the other way. I hated that, it meant hours (actually minutes) of slowly approaching someone who could be thinking about anything and yet have nothing to look at but me approaching from the opposite direction. This daily exercise of walking down empty halls seemed too frequent to me and often had me in a sweat. And this time it was worst because I wasn’t alone. In a crowd I could hide. But me alone approaching another lone stranger was… It was like… I was in one of those old westerns where two gunslingers slowly march down the deserted street of a ghost town toward each other. All while the perspective switched back and forth. The bad guy. The good guy, me. Huge guy. Little guy, me. Brooding mysterious hunk. Shy anxious unhunk, me. Finally after hours of dread, when we got close enough I could of looked him in the eye, I watched my feet instead and tried counting steps until I would be passed him and okay. Then I could breathe again and my heart could stop racing and I could feel relief and escape. And that is what did happen… we passed each other and he was past me no longer a source of fear. Except that was not the end for the sudden sound of words followed. “My name is Dave and I won’t eat you, you know.” Punctuated by his laughter.

 

 

7.2.14

 

 

But written some time before.