Thank Heaven for Little Gangsters

Yesterday around this time I was in a different sort of bar. I’ve only ever been to this place in daylight, so I don’t know how it works at night, but by day the only light comes in through the high front windows. The ceiling is 15 feet high at least. The walls are painted in a shade suggesting the bottom of a swimming pool in old Havana, both paint and plaster chipping here and there. From the ceiling hang ornate glass lamps – at least a couple dozen – by long chains. The ash trays are similarly old world, each one a unique glass and brass masterpiece. Batista could walk in, or Hemingway, or Meyer Lansky.

But none of them will, because it’s on one of the few still-derelict blocks in old Denver. The place is nominally a wine bar (of all things) but it’s the dominion of the only master cigar roller in the Mountain states region, a man from the Dominican who makes a tidy living rolling for high-end corporate events and private parties, and maintains this little bar and shop along the way. An ancient Cuban rolling table sits up front, old cigar molds and other aging equipment of the dying trade lay all around. Plus a few other random things – glass cases stand around holding a few hand-made cigar cases, some dusty cutters, an odd line of flash watches for $25 a throw.

The only proprietor I’ve ever seen looks like 5th generation West Side. Ankle-length shorts, new Jordans, knee-length tee shirt, but the man himself is well over 50 with a long gray beard. When Peony and I order drinks, he takes the order from me. You know, or at any rate I know, that you behave yourself in there. I imagine that I can see the sawed-off behind the bar glowing in infrared. If you were going to knock over a bar, this would be the last place you would do, in every sense of the word. It would only make sense to do if you were tired of knocking over bars and wanted the easy way out, assuming that bleeding out on old Larimer street with a fist-sized hole in your chest is your idea of easy.

Needless to say, I love the joint. I can exhale in there. Not because it’s laid back or safe – it’s neither. But I know the rules enough. I show respect. And like I told Peony, I like places like that. It’s unambiguous. They don’t have to even like you, particularly, but you go in and act respectful, pay for your drinks and conduct yourself in a reasonable manner, nothing’s gonna happen to you, ever. Of course when I told her that she said, and rightly so, was, “yeah, if you’re a guy.” I had to pause on that, because she had a point. I mean, she could likely walk in there and own it and be perfectly fine, but she’s a different kind of creature, herself. It was a fair shot. A lot of what I consider to be basic givens in the world are basic givens for a mature, white cis-male with certain knowledge and credibility. It’s fair to remind me that the equations aren’t that simple.

She also said something to me yesterday that got to me a little bit. She noted that I was happier and more comfortable in that old school gangster bar than I am in bed with her. And she’s not wrong, in a way. Like I said, in an old school gangster bar, I know all the rules. I know where all the landmines are buried. In intimate congress with a beautiful woman such as herself? That’s a whole different kind of story.

No more of that today though. I just wrote the intro to for a book I’m starting and I can’t believe what it took out of me. I’ll say more about that later, or not, but the amount of energy it required was genuinely wild. I’m not a writer, really (like you couldn’t tell), so trying to engage with that full-on is a whole thing unto itself. I’m on my last dregs of literary energy as I write this, but somehow I can’t seem to stop. Like the pump is primed somehow, even though I’m not sure anything coming out of it now is even going to be half good.

I dunno. It’s a cloudy day, and Bill Withers comes on, “Ain’t no Sunshine.” I’m down in my usual hang right now, far from the Gangster bar downtown, smoking through an aged Maduro that I got there. Some underworld high-rollers one table over are talking about their collections, their humidors. There’s a biker guy with two fists full of big silver fighting rings, wearing the same pair of blue-blockers that Peony often wears. Across the table from him, a big tatted guy I don’t know is telling a story about accidentally ruining $5k worth of cigars with a humidification error. Sometimes I feel like the only broke guy in the entire world. A fat skater with a man-bun zooms through the plaza outside.

My kids are away. They’re with their grandparents and cousins up in one of the mountain towns. I used to have to go, though I obviously don’t now – those were the in-laws. Every July they go there and do the same things – sit through the same park ranger presentations, go on the same short hike, have the same cook-out. What’s interesting is they all hate it. But it’s tradition. They hate every minute of it every year but it reinforces their sense of identity. They consider themselves strong because they can endure their own self-inflicted vacation.

I mean, fuck me, sometimes I just want to take a baseball bat to the whole fucking edifice. I don’t even know what it is I want to smash. Something, anything, everything. I’ve been smashing it my whole life. I’ll be smashing it with my last breath, and it won’t make any difference, but I often feel like that’s the only authentic, ennobling thing in my whole life. That and raising the boys, but how to approach that as a parent?

And just then a little girl, maybe four or five, skips up to the window of the bar and smooshes her little button nose up against the glass and grins at me. I wave, but she just grins and smooshes. So I put down my cigar and slowly, dramatically, lift up a hand with my forefinger extended and gracefully, swoopingly, BOOP her nose through the glass. I can’t hear her, but I see her convulse in giggles and skip away.

Fuck it. I’m tired. The writing took it out of me. Tomorrow’s a long day, then I’m off to Florida – two days and ten hours of flight time for an hour meeting with somebody, I don’t even know who. In the bar, the local gangsters disperse. I realize the biker is wearing Sons of Silence colors. Supposedly there was a contract out on me with them once, but that’s a story for another day and anyway, the fella seems personable enough and isn’t apparently trying to kill me, so we’re good.

Another Sunday afternoon in Seamus’ world draws to its end.

Good Aim

The sky background is that same cross-hatched blue, but with less blackboard showing between the hatch marks. And there are two brief pink streamers of clouds, pink bubbles floating along the lower, longer one at small intervals. Sections of my hair are now dyed that very blue; something between a faded peacock and a turquoise.

Like her predecessor, the woman’s long black hair streams up to the right of frame at a diagonal, and has little opalescent bubbles sprinkled throughout. Her bubbles are pinker. Like the one who came before her, a bird sits on her right elbow. But in this case, the bird has already alighted, and is a red-winged blackbird, not a phoenix. It sits calmly, wings folded, on the woman’s lifted elbow, arm perfectly aligned parallel to the bottom frame, as she pulls the arrow, nocked in the bowstring, close to her face to aim. She’s wearing a brown leather archer’s glove on that hand, and it and the arrow’s fletching covers half her face, but one can see her dark almond-shaped, Asian-seeming eyes calmly focus off-camera at whatever it is she’s aiming for. Her dark arched brows are neither raised nor frowning, but perfectly serene. She sees her target calmly, surely. She aims, frozen in chalk, in time.

She’s thinner than her erased predecessor, wearing a charcoal-grey doublet, sleeves of a white shift tufting out at elbow, shoulder, and almost boyish décolletage. A quiver, bristling with many more arrows, is half visible behind her, hanging low at her back, while around her tiny waist appear a pale pink lily, here, there.

Five more red-winged blackbirds flurry around her, four of them pointed and flying in the precise direction at which she aims. The fifth has its feet beginning to curl downward, nature’s landing gear. It’s just above and to the left of the bird that’s already sitting there, and one can see this one’s wings brake for landing. One wonders whether it will join the other, adding weight and ballast to the archer’s elbow, or whether it will attempt to replace the already-sitting one, causing a fluttering disruption.

There is a dark yellow disk behind her dark-haired head: halo or late afternoon sun, it’s hard to say. In the lower left hand corner, nestled just beyond the artist’s signature, is something I don’t understand.

It’s a spiral shape, with what looks like some of the lilies’ foliage unraveling out here and there. It could be tightly coiled foliage, I suppose, as it’s the same green-grey color, but it looks almost like a whirlpool or similar natural vortex. In the center of the vortex is a single pink pearl, echoing the bubbles in the sky and in the archer’s hair, but painted more solidly, the sheen very pearl-like. I feel echoes of this pearl with the amber jewel embedded in the phoenix’s and the other woman’s breast, but this. This is different. It feels more active. Maybe it’s not a pearl, but a marble. Maybe the pink bubbles aren’t so ephemeral but are made of shining pink glass…

The young blonde server, who is a brilliant mathematician and has come to me more than once for life advice, she who is dating good friend Mathematician Hank again, kisses me on the cheek as I sit in the booth, preparing for my Thursday ritual of horoscopes and FYIPA. She sits across from me for a moment, and I tell her I’m describing this new chalk painting on the wall, and she says, turning to the painting and indicating it with her narrow shoulder, “Oh, this badass bitch?” She nods, smiling, turns to me with her sea-blue eyes and declares, “They should paint *you* on the wall.”

Taken aback, I scramble for a semblance of decorum as I softly laugh and answer, “I’ll pose with one of my swords.”

How strange.

The myriads of tribal servers flow in eddies by, each of them cheerfully greeting me by name. Blondie (name of Sharon), gently and joyfully smiling, says, “Everybody loves Peony,” before hustling off to do her job.

What on earth to think of this? Any of this? I’ve been tossed the most random compliments from many people: strangers, servers, acquaintances, and friends, lately and I’m collecting them the way I used to collect marbles when I was a child. See, the more you have, the more you win, as you have more to choose from when in a match. Some have better aim, some are heavier, some better at jumping, others less accurate to aim because of decorations or flaws in the glass.

But I also used to take my collection of marbles out of their bag (a soft purple Crown Royal bag, of course. That’s the best receptacle for marbles and D&D dice, as anyone knows), spread them out on my bedspread, and admire the way each one sparkled or shone or felt heavy or whatever it was that each had that made it special. Some I had bought with my saved pittance of an allowance, some I had won fairly in a match.

At my high school graduation, the graduating class was 475 people large. I know this because my real last name (it’s not Rosette, duh) fell very very last of all of the names being called that day. About half of us seniors played a prank on the principal that day (for the life of me I can’t remember whose idea this was, or even if I ever knew): all 250 or so of us in on the joke had been given a single marble. We hid said marble in our hand, and so as we received our diploma and shook the principal’s hand, we would leave the marble there.

The principal, bewildered and yet not willing to stop the proceedings, kept blinking in confusion and wonder, and would pocket each marble. Marble after marble was left in her hand, until her blazer pockets were both chock full. She had to empty the marbles out of her pockets, then, and she did so, spilling them over the front of the stage and the stadium grass in front of that. The emptying gesture roused a cheer from the audience, or at least from the half-ish of us who knew what was going on. The rest, I recall, laughed nervously.

Brilliant fictional detective Lieutenant Columbo of the LAPD would sometimes describe the way he’d mull over details of cases thusly: “You know, sometimes I just get this idea in my head and it rolls around and around in there like a marble…” to which the murderer once replied, “You act like you’re empty-headed. But I don’t think you’re empty-headed at all.”

I guess, as Seamus so deftly put it, I’m not the one I need to convince. Looks like I’m doing an okay job of convincing everybody else of my badassitude. I hope Seamus isn’t one of those, though, because he knows so much better than that, so that me seeming badass to him only makes him rightly suspicious.

Well. My inner reality is tenuous, wobbly, shaky, on the brink of tears, terrified, and done. But every time, lately, I have felt this inner life begin to wash over me and take over my brain, I am given another marble, by someone. So I pocket the marble, after admiring its individual sparkle first. This collection is giving me a good grounding weight. Like a pocket full, or like a bird sitting on my elbow as I aim for whatever’s next. I’ll keep collecting them as long they are given.

Or maybe I’m just losing my marbles….

Run

As I crossed the open plaza toward the cigar bar I felt, as much as heard, the rain starting to intensify around me in a whispering crescendo that said “run.” I picked up my steps and reached the door just as the sky opened up proper-like. Inside, the familiar rich smells and indifferent service.

Now I don’t smoke a lot of habano, I don’t smoke a lot of high-priming ligero and I don’t ever favor a v-cut. Today I chose all three, not sure why, but the smoke is fine and strong and smoothly muscular and offsets well against the stiff rain outside.

This week I went down to what I’d always thought of as my ancestral homeland in southern Colorado. I took my sons, to adventure and hike and soak up sole atmosphere. A long line of seers has proclaimed my family’s town a portal of sorts to other realms, and a complex grant program in the 1990s made it a home to a dozen or more spiritual centers, from Irish monks to Zen. It’s a different kind of place, and my people run a lot of it and I’m always being asked when I’m coming back. But I don’t know.

In the past I’ve felt different ways about it. At times I’ve loved being there. Other times I’ve wanted to stay far away. This time I was looking forward to going, but once we got there something was off. I don’t know that I could put a name to what it was – I just felt unwelcome somehow.

Rationally? It’s just shame. Shame and unease in my own skin. The ancestors don’t care one way or the other. But it’s not hard to imagine me superimposing a miasma of external disapproval onto my own embedded discomfort. Still, it irked. And it was hot, and mosquitoes assailed my tender and juicy young at every turn.

Oddly, the little guy, the baby goth, the dancer and city kid, kept us there. Even itchy and without wifi, he didn’t want to leave. I’m not sure I know why. We stayed an extra day to indulge him, but when we finally got out we shot out of there.

And there’s a place, north of Fairplay, where on the way down you come over this dramatic rise and this whole broad valley opens up below. There’s a sense of crossing over when you hit that spot. Geographically you are leaving the front range behind and moving into a different zone. Cell service drops off – there is a dramatic change. I’ve always liked it, but this time, for the first time, I couldn’t wait to cross back. When we did, without thinking I let out a long exhale and felt my shoulders drop. I loved the time with my boys like I always do. But outside of that, all i wanted, right or wrong, was a smoky bar and some city noise.

Well, who knows. I thought of Lou Reed: “Don’t know which of my selves will show up…”

Now in a couple hours I’ll meet Peony downtown. God bless the girl – she doesn’t know which of my selves she’ll be meeting, and she shows up anyway.

Anyway, it rains, and the bar gradually fills with decent smoky, drinky people. A beautiful young liquor rep is hawking high-end scotch down the bar. The muscle-bound, friendly bar back/enforcer is having a beer. Sweet aromas wreaths around in the cool air and Blue Oyster Cult comes on. The Reaper, naturally, and Death himself takes a break for a smoke and a whiskey. Was it him chased me out of the valley? You never know. But once in a while, a whispering crescendo says “run.”

The Fight is the Story

Denver Comic Con isn’t exactly a bar. There are several bars within it, though, and a yearly geek themed beer, brewed by Breckenridge and name chosen by vote of the geeky masses (this year’s was called I Am Brewt). There’s also the Stout Street Social Club, which is normally where I go for pints after, and the Embassy Suites lobby bar, of course, along with the upper floor room where the Page 23 cocktail party happens.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Or is that behind? Or do I not know where I am?
An actor walks into a bar…

…and asks, “Can I get some glow tape on this, please?”

But seriously. Denver Comic Con is an emotionally fraught event for me. Nearly every year, it’s something. Nearly every year, I end up walking around the costumed crowds with a lump in my throat and a steel coated smile riveted to my face.
Except this year. Sorta. But there’s always such baggage. I mean, that’s to be expected, with all the history…

This year was the first year I actually truly spent most of my time alone. I didn’t go Sunday, but Friday and Saturday I wandered around, looked at the merch, bought a couple gifts for Seamus and myself, and poked my nose into one of the panels, till I got kicked out. That’s another story, which really isn’t one, so let it be.

That was Friday: I ran into The Brit (he’s the head IT guy at DCC), and we enjoyed pints at the aforementioned Social Club, where I learned he is back together with His Woman, monogamous, and happy. He had shorn completely his long, curly hair, and shaved his beard totally off. He looked like a completely different person (though his crude, rude, British snark was still intact), and I found myself glad to have one friend salvaged from the giant seething mess of a relationship that that was. I glimpsed Cyberdude (speaking of); saw him take a breath (did he call my name?) and lift his hand as I flowed with the crowd past his booth, but. Let him look. I am free now. Myself. Fuck anyone who will bring me down.

Saturday was the panel on which I presented, and I was genuinely interested in the other gentlemen’s bits (the panel was titled Smackdowns and Superheroes so natch they were all men but me). Topics included: using fight games to teach narrative, the Black experience in pro wrestling, problematic Black fighter characters in early aughts superhero cartoons, and mine: The Fight Is The Story.

Afterwards, more than one teenage man came up to me, questions and observations bursting out of their heads and eyes, so quickly and forcefully they could barely get the words out; filmmakers and creatives and “I never thought of it that way before!” and so so so young…

Then the cocktail party. Page 23 is the name of the academic branch of DCC, and their cocktail party, post-panels, is a place to hobnob with the nerdy intelligentsia, and I am a pinnacle of scintillation in a party of that type. It reminded me… wait. Back up:

Last year’s Denver comic con:
I presented that Saturday, and actually had a hotel room that night, as I still lived remotely enough in Boulder that bussing home was impossible, and taxis not much cheaper, if that, than the room. The beer that year was called Snapericot Ale.

That year, I took my three-day pass myself and used it, thank you very much. I saw many panels (wrote about them on my personal blog), and barely looked at the merch, let alone was able to buy anything. And why I am this much more financially stable alone than I ever was with my husband as a partner, I don’t understand. But I went to all those panels with The Brit, who was freshly heartbroken off his breakup with His Woman. Cyberdude had planned a pint with me, but reneged on it that Saturday, and I knew then that that was the last time I was going to let him blow me off. And it was.
Actually, I was relieved, free of that personal burden, as I was going to the Page 23 cocktail party with Seamus, and I needed to get ready.

Saturday night, cocktail party night, and Seamus and I had drinks at a bar I don’t recall (Corner Office?) before the party, and he told me a story about the Power Ring he was wearing. I very nearly met his wife that night.

I didn’t meet her, but we did meet The Raven Oracle, a woman nearly as tall as me, in a skirt with a slit up to here, who strode up to us and proceeded to tell us how beautiful we were together, how our eyes looked alike in expression, and how powerful we were as a couple… and walking back from that we saw policemen hosing off what was surely a crime scene, in a nearby parking lot. Seamus stumbled with me to my room to keep me safe but that was all. I slept alone that night, between the cool hotel sheets. I remember being angry about that.

The next day, the Raven Oracle came to my solo presentation (The Fight is the Story), and after the Con was over, as we watched the Denver Pride and Comic Con costumed crowds mingle together by, The Brit begged for me to return to him. I refused. I would not let anyone drag me down into their junior high level drama. Not anymore. And because now, there would be only Seamus. Because,

Rewind: the year before that:
I stayed only one night at comic con, in the hotel room with The Brit and His Woman. Not in bed with both of them (that unfortunate event was to happen later), but in their couch pull-out bed. Awkward energy? You betcha. The Brit was trying to make me a part of his family. Neither of us knew, that summer, that he was failing miserably. The beer that year was called Hulk’s Mash.

I had shown up rather late on Friday, just as the day in the convention center was winding down. I met The Brit in the Embassy Suites lobby, in my red classic Star Trek dress. Who should walk in with her posse but Nichelle Nichols, Uhura, herself. As I minced up to her, stuttering some kind of fangirly thank you for her work, trying not to interrupt her dinner, she exclaimed to her group: “Look! Look at her dress! She’s wearing my uniform! Look!” I got free pictures (and an accidental video), taken with my phone right then and there. You know how much pictures inside the con with her would have cost? Besides the long line? About a hundred bucks.

My presentation was called The Fight Is The Story. That was on Saturday.

But wait; back up: the year before that.
I had gotten two Saturday passes from the newly renamed Page 23 (last year they had been called ROMOsomething), instead of the three-day pass they assigned me. I wanted to share my reward, so I asked for the two. Either Husband or Sociopath was going to claim one; I had thought it would have been Husband.

Late the night before, however, Husband and I had the worst, most vicious, emotionally violent fight we’d ever had. And that’s saying something. I gathered the balls to note that we were awful, this was terrible, had been for a long while, and was not going to get better, and it was time to choose divorce. He agreed. This at about three o’clock in the morning. Then, at eight, The Sociopath came to pick me up for my presentation at DCC. It was called The Fight is the Story. The beer that year was called Brews Wayne.

My presentation went well. No idea how, as I could barely see around tears, both dry and fresh. I couldn’t enjoy anything I saw around me afterwards, as it all reminded me of Husband. Sociopath and I ducked out early to a late lunch, and that’s when I saw (bc DCC famously has zero internet access of any note) the public Facebook messages about divorce posted for all to see by Husband, and my mother’s multiple worried-sick vms about same.

“I should take you home,” The Sociopath, uncharacteristically empathetically, said.

“No,” I replied, vehemently. I would not let Husband manipulate and control me any more.

That night was the first night since 1999 I slept in a different bed.

Rewind: the previous year. Husband and I go to DCC together, without our girlfriend (we had saved up for tickets), and we geek out: him about Legos, me about Sherlock, and both of us about Doctor Who. It’s our new perennial tradition. I did my panel (called The Fight is the Story), and got us both day passes for the one day. We scrounged up ten bucks for him to get his picture taken with Erin Grey. Fanboy moment big time. The beer? Caped Brewsader. I guess Batman continues to be popular….

But rewind once more: the year before that.
The inaugural year of comic con in Denver. Beer name: Fantastic Pour. Husband and I go together–normally we did the Great American Beer Festival for our anniversary event, but we changed to this, even though it was further away in date to our wedding. DCC was much more us. We choose Saturday as our day, as there’s much more going on.

The weekend before the first DCC was another con, a lit con, academic in nature, called ROMOCOCO (rocky mountain conference of comics), at which I presented solo a brand new concept I had recently come up with, based on an article I had just written, called The Fight Is The Story.