|
|
|
Loneliness
By Ms Alisha
Charlie's Bar - all glass and brass fittings around a solid wood bar. It's early on a Saturday evening, and I sit here among a handful of people. Most of them are in pairs or groups, talking, swapping idle small-talk over glasses of dry white, or half pints of ale.
A juke box sits in the corner - unusual as it plays CDs and not singles. Three gleaming disks rotate above the selection window, reflected a hundredfold in the mirrors which flank them.
I sit at one of the tables by the window, and look out over Victoria Square, watching the sky darken over the buildings which surround it. I sip at my beer - a Toohey's Old - remembering how I first cut my teeth on its rich, burnt hop taste. I've tried a lot of beers in my time, but this one seems to always tempt me back to relive my past - to go back to memories of happy times. Fighting the urge to reminis, I drain my half, and wander up to the bar.
I am served by a tall, brown-haired barmaid, who is attractive in a horsy kind of way. She wears the standard sort of outfit for this type of bar - a green t-shirt, with the Charlie's Bar logo printed over her left breast. I order a Redback - with lemon, of course - and she pours it with sure, deft flicks of the tap, leaving a solid inch of foam on it. How could she know that that is exactly the way I like my beer?
I take my glass back to my seat, resisting the desire to play sad songs on the juke box, and gaze out instead over the intersection of Victoria Square and Grote Street. My eye is drawn to the fountain which dominates the Square, under the watchful eye of Old Queen Vic.
The lights have been lit on the fountain, their illumination reflected by the water which laps around its base, casting rippling waves of light over the dull copper. A young man clowns around on its rim, in an attempt to impress his girlfriend, then they walk away, unaware that I have been watching them.
"Like A Prayer" comes on over the juke box, its lyrics mirroring my thoughts. Memories come back of two young men - wonderfully in love - feeling like children again. "It's like a dream - no ending - no beginning" - an ideal life of love - a love that was cruelly shattered over eight years ago.
I tear my thoughts away from their destructive cycle - what is done is done.
It's totally dark outside now, with only the windows of the bar throwing their light out over the surrounding pavement. Young couples walk past - possibly on their way to the dance clubs of Rundle Mall and Hindley Street - their dress an elegant mix of stark white against jet black. A posse of homeboys pass, sporting baseball caps and jackets, their feet encased in basketball boots, looking as if they would be more at home on an athletics filed than on a dance floor.
Another Madonna track comes on - "Vogue" - and she sings of the elegant dance floors of a world that might as well be thousands of miles away from me. I haven't been clubbing for months - not since my regular dance partner decided he had become "too old" to do "that sort of thing". I wish he were here now - it doesn't feel right to be listening to music without him - for it was he who showed me what modern music is - and gave me my eclectic tastes in it.
Almost reflexively, I drain my glass, as if to quash my thoughts of him. I am never sure when I have upset him - his emotions are always hidden behind his biting, sarcastic wit - behind his implacable screen of a face - his eyes unyielding behind his glasses.
"Welcome to the jungle" blasts forth from the box, as I sip my pint of dark. I pause and think about why the number "711" comes to mind while I'm listening to it - then I remember that this was the program call number for the song on the Mess' Video Box. It's strange the associations these songs can have.
The dying strains of Guns'N'Roses fade away, leaving the bar frozen in a blur of half-caught conversations. I hear snatches of the Bosnia Conflict, intermingled with the worn phrases of old lovers, the two combining to yield a strange, hybrid result of how much Bill Clinton loves Milosovic running his fingers through her hair.
A tram pulls into the terminus opposite me, disgorging its cargo of passengers into the darkness around the spill of its own running lights. Most are in pairs, very few are alone, as they set off into the night. Maybe those who are alone are meeting someone in the City - I would not wish my loneliness on anyone.