Pleasure or Pain? (Poetry)

Barstool

September 15 marks the completion of my fifteenth full circle around the sun. Frankly, I wish that it lacked a meaning. I wish that this day was treated as any other day.

My birthday reminds me that I'm still here, and that I'll remain here until the inevitable day where I land in death's powerful grasp.

My birthday brings me back to that bar. There, my father shouted out to everyone there that I had completed my eleventh circle. To the men in the bar, this called for a celebration. The start of my twelfth circle was something worth celebrating. The thing is, though, that I did not want to be celebrated.

Despite my pleas, the off-key bellows emanated from the drunk men within that bar. To my father, the purpose of having seventy-five drunk men sing to me, the only sober person in that bar, was to embarrass me for something I had done when I was little.

The difference, however, is that I was five. I do not remember what it is that I did. I didn't know better, anyway. My dad, on the other hand, knew what he was doing. He made an excuse to justify deliberately humiliating me in public when I was twelve. He was forty-six.

Those two words; those four syllables, they bring me back to sitting on that barstool. It reminds me of the familiar odor of various liquors amalgamated into one horrific stench that burns my nostrils and makes my head pound. They bring me back to the sounds of loud, inebriated men; ice being poured into shakers that are so violently throttled from side-to-side. They bring me back to the sight of my father downing his fourth scotch in one hour.

Being sung to creates a pit in my stomach that slowly fills with dread and haunting memories.

And today, for the sixteenth time, I will be sung to, whether or not I want to be. And for the fourth time, I'll find myself back on that barstool.