My Life with Death

Robber's Hole Pub, M Street, Washington, D.C., January 25, 2019, 6:36 p.m.

 I entered a seedy bar on the corner of the street. I passed groups of local regulars and a jukebox playing country rock hits from the 90s. I sat down on a metal bar stool with a torn leather seat. I waved at the barman, occupied by a group of bikers, with whom he was drinking pints of chilled beer. I was wearing a leather jacket, so I pretty much blended in with them, and since I didn't have a badge on, I looked like another criminal on the run from the law - which was true. A gangster's gun was warming my hip. I looked dangerous. I put my elbows on the bar and waited for the bartender. I looked around me. I looked at the people sitting around me. I listened to what they were saying but only heard snippets of the conversation. The room was so noisy I could barely hear my thoughts.

"One beer and a whiskey," I said to the barman, who was staring so slyly that I was waiting for him to start drooling. "with ice," I emphasized.

He nodded in agreement while leaning back and still rolling something in his mouth. Maybe some gum. The moment he placed a chilled beer in a brown glass bottle in front of me and right next to it, on a napkin that had probably been lying on the maple board for several hours before me, he placed a smaller glass half-filled with a bronze liquid with ice cubes. I drank two shots of whiskey. I turned my stool with my back to the bar, took a beer in my hand, and watched what was happening in this den of vice.

9:48 p.m.

I drank and on more beer, whiskey, cigarettes, weed, and cocaine. I didn't remember much from the later part of the evening. Everything somehow turned into a fog and, above all, great joy. The amount of everything I consumed finally made me feel euphoric. I have flashbacks of hanging around the bar, laughing, or dancing to the jukebox.

Another flash I remember is when I got into a car but wasn't alone. There were several of us. Everyone laughed so hard. Everyone smelled of alcohol and cigarette smoke. We left. We've been driving long enough. I didn't know where, and I didn't care. I fell asleep for a while. Honestly, I was blown away when we got into that car. Darkness and laughter, an unpleasant hum replaced small flashes.