The Door (PDF)

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If I go through the door, I’ll be 25 years old again. I have no desire to do this. The others are watching, though, waiting to see if I will. They lounge at cocktail tables, drinking and smoking under a low tin ceiling. I don’t like the looks of them. Any of them. 

 

Don’t like the look of the bar, either. It’s fashioned to resemble an old European cafe, with its dim lamps and cane chairs, its worn wooden fixtures and tiled floor, but I know better: Just wait, I tell a young couple seated near the door, until they turn on the house lights. Then you’ll see this place for what it really is.

 

Laughter ruptures their faces, which are already indecipherable, distorted, obscure. They hide behind the many glasses and bottles that litter their table. I’m immediately moved to pick up one of those glasses and throw it at the others, to watch them all shatter and explode, just as I’d once done at another bar, another age: 25. 

 

Before I can do anything, however, I’m suddenly outside, watching the cops arrest dozens of the bar’s patrons. 

 

For pissing in the street, a passerby explains.