For a Bouncer

I walk around the corner through the puddles, letting first my shoes and then my socks soak through and splash up my pant legs. Before I left last year, people knew me here.

It’s hard to explain, but I was that guy, that guy everyone knew. Even when someone didn’t, I was able to somehow transfer the confidence of knowing that they should into conversation. Who knows why me, but I’m telling you I could talk to people with a sense of entitlement back then. I could walk up to anybody, anyone at all, and talk about anything I liked. That sense is part of what made me feel more normal back then. That’s not something that exists for me anymore.

I walk past my car in the public lot and turn up the street toward home as the rain bounces off my head. There was a time when I walked for hours like this through Paris, rain dripping off my nose and my hair and into the back of my coat and down my neck. I walked for hours, through streets and alleys and over and back across the Seine two, three and four times at least. I don’t remember. It’s the same feeling though. That foreign feeling. Walking past buildings, people, signs, all of them meaningless, all of them deaf.

They forgot about me when I left, forgot how important I was. This schmuck at the bar is just the latest extension. My pants are starting to stick to the fronts of my legs. I sidestep into a patch of mud.

I’m not dealing so well with this anonymity. When I was well known, well liked even, I could toss my associations around like salt over shoulders—names, dates, relationships… these were other people’s priorities. It seems that back when I was important, other people didn’t have to be.

I don’t know anyone here anymore. I never made the effort. I don’t know whether to leave the house, and if I do leave the house, I don’t know where to go. The places I used to spend my time feel empty to me now. They feel unimportant.

I drop my coat in a wet crumple by the door and set my wallet and keys down on the table beside it. I’ve lost my place here. I’ve set aside and closed a massive book with no chapters on a Sunday afternoon and come back to it drunk on a Wednesday morning. It’s ridiculous, I know, but my mark here is fading. Maybe it’s already gone.

And I’d so looked forward to coming back to this place. I guess I’d taken it for granted that it would look forward to me.