Dive Bars and Assholes

The bar is dark and smells of sweat and stale beer. A place where nobody asks you what you do or what you’re supposed to be. They’re just trying to drown something inside them–usually themselves.

I’m no different. I got a drink in my hand and a cigarette hanging from my lips. The woman next to me smells of old perfume and failure. She keeps talking about how she used to be somebody–used to be something.

I don’t care. None of us do. We keep moving, keep going.

“You ever think about getting out of here?” she asks, staring at the bottom of her glass like it will change the world.

I laugh, a rough, sour sound, like a bottle cap scraping on concrete.

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “I think about it every damned day. But where do you go? The whole world’s just another dive bar with a different set of assholes.”

She looks at me like I’m the first person who ever said it aloud, and then she nods like she gets it.

I light another cigarette because I have nothing else to do. My hands are shaking a little, but nobody notices. Hell, I don’t even care.