Down

Writing from the heart can be dangerous; blowing off steam by doing something constructive such as going to baseball practice, blowing routine plays, kicking your glove over the fence, recovering your glove, making routine plays, and then chilling with friends and watching them eat McPuke's is a good way to bringing blood pressure down from volcanic to Cedar Rapids. Well, some of that may not be part of the right way to do things in this regard.

With that said, the language in the following post is strong, and could irk some young and impressionable readers. I don't recommend kids read this blog, so soon after my Winnie the Pooh piece, therefore click and read something else. Thanks for understanding; I'll try to keep from boiling over as I write.

This is a blog what happened on Tuesday night, and in effect what never happened throughout one lifetime.

Unexpectedly, the restaurant side of the neighbourhood Boston Pizza was full, so I waddled through the crowd waiting for tables and entered the bar half of the restaurant. Eating out and alone is nothing new in my experience; people ask for my cellphone number, never use it, and then delete it from their cellphone memory, their personal memories, or in most cases both. Exactly whose design it is by remains a mystery, but I spend most days and nights alone; "if anyone really wants me around, I would already know that" is a common refrain when asked about my 'loner' tendencies.

In any case, I sat alone at the bar of the Boston Pizza restaurant and ordered a Diet Pepsi. After sifting through the menu, I felt someone's eyes walking all over me as I wore brown dragon shoes, jeans, N98 Brazil track jacket, and classic Brewers baseball cap. The person was close - really close, perhaps a couple feet away. The penetrating stare was all one could take, but that person did pause to gulp from the second bottle of beer the bartender offered earlier. I tried watching the massive mega screens of TSN and Sportsnet channels above the bar, but the eyes were still glued to me, literally. Unable, or perhaps unwilling to speak, the person's stare shifted from gaze to awkward winking to all-out creepy behaviour. Instead of a full meal, I ordered French Onion soup, changed my seat, paid the ball, and booked it for home! It was the most humiliating moment of my life, not because this blatant, awkward, inappropriate, and open show of "affirmation" came from a man, but because he was also a drunkard.

At first, there is embarrassment: To be the subject of a dehumanizing and destructive experience like that. Upon second guessing the event and what took place there is second guessing of the subject of the terrible experience. To read more into what happened is a mistake, but what happened must be put in proper perspective: A drunk found me 'attractive'. When people are sober, no one says a word to me, or at the very least knows who or where I am. I quit Facebook because in getting people to care who or where I was, I discovered how annoying and difficult I really was. That was six months ago, and it comes as little surprise how little I am missed. However, if you get a man or woman intoxicated, then I have the potential to be their next squeeze.

Reduced to nothing, spirit crushed, and identity questioned: No young woman EVER looked at me, and the best I could do was a drunkard who wouldn't otherwise. I can't tell you the number of high school dances and formals and prom events I skipped because no girl would EVER want to go with me, but like the awkward, obese high school kid with the nappy hair and horrible fashion sense, I am 'good enough' for the weird intoxicated fool staring at me from the end of the bar. I can pray, like I have for the last fifteen years of my life since the beginnings of puberty, but when I open my eyes the score remains the same, and nothing EVER changed.

If there must always be a winner, then there must definitely be a loser. No matter how much a person desires and enables the mechanisms for change, it never comes. Perhaps I will remain down FOREVER; after all, no young woman up there would EVER think of coming here.