Vodka Tonic
I’m drinking my third or fourth or fifth (depending on where you start measuring the beginning of the night) vodka tonic and I’m staring at the stage in this bar, where someone is singing karaoke. Into the microphone! the bar shouts like a chorus. But back to the stage, which is covered in rich and tacky blues and golds. It looks like Kylie Minogue’s Aphrodite tour. My friend recently told me about a poet who rearranges letters in pop singers’ names to make phrases. Kylie Minogue’s is I like ‘em young. I love that, so I shout out loud, I like ‘em young! Some guy looks over and starts talking to me, pre-interviewing me like they always do and it’s so boring. Well, hey, where are you from? There comes a point when you know you should stop drinking vodka tonics, but you order one more anyway because you’re thirsty or stupid. The bar is already a beautiful parade of colors so why not. Lake Erie, kind of, I say, filling in the blank. It’s as exotic as it sounds. Well, hey, at least you can swim away then. Sure, I say, then make a terrible joke. If you even want to swim in there, I say, since you might grow a third limb. I’m drunk so even I know that doesn’t make sense. But he perverts my joke anyway and says, Well, hey, wanna go for a swim? Come on, let’s swim. I’m not kidding, he keeps making this awful joke! After a while I turn my attention back to the stage, where the same quiet-voiced singer begins a new song, but this time he’s belting from somewhere so deep inside of him that it’s either demonic or religious, really reaching for it and shouting, With somebody who loves me.
