A Drawn-Out Death

There was a time when I could walk into a bar wearing yesterday’s shirt and leave with somebody’s phone number written on a cocktail napkin. Sometimes two.

Back then, people laughed too hard at my jokes. Women leaned in close when I talked.

Women bartenders remembered my name. I thought that was proof of something permanent.

It turns out it was mostly proof that youth is a currency nobody tells you is expiring. Now I sit in a small room lit by a computer screen and the blue blink of a router that works harder than I do.

The clock ticks loud enough to sound judgmental. Outside, the neighborhood carries on without me.

Cars come and go. Dogs bark at nothing, and somewhere nearby, a couple is probably arguing over where to eat dinner, which is still better than eating alone and pretending you prefer the quiet.

I used to know how to enter a room. That’s a skill people don’t talk about.

It’s in momentum. It’s like walking through a door, like life has been waiting all day for you to arrive.

I had that once. I wore it like a good leather jacket.

Natural. Easy, and dangerous enough to seem interesting.

Women liked me then, or maybe they liked the version of me that existed under dim lights with music playing and alcohol smoothing the edges off everybody’s disappointment. Hard to say now.

Age is a strange thief. It doesn’t rob you all at once.

It takes little things first. The long conversations. The returned calls. The random invitations. And forget about sex; I can’t even get cuddle time.

Then one day, you realize nobody has touched your arm while laughing in a very long time. You become invisible in stages.

I still go out occasionally. Now and then, I’ll catch my reflection in a window and see an old fuck staring back at me like I’m looking for somebody I used to know. Gray hair, tired eyes, and a face weathered by Nevada wind and too many years watching people chase things that never loved them back.

Young women look through me now with the cold efficiency of airport security scanners. Older women are kinder, but kindness is not desire, and a man knows the difference even when he pretends not to.

So I write. That’s the last seduction available to some men.

Sentences instead of smiles. Paragraphs instead of parties.

I sit alone at night, building stories from memory because memories are cheap company and they rarely interrupt. Sometimes I remember the women themselves.

The waitress in Reno who chewed her gum loudly. The blackjack dealer who laughed like she was getting away with something. The redheaded bartender who once told me, “You’re trouble,” in a voice that sounded suspiciously like hope.

Most of them are grandmothers now, probably posting photos of dogs and grandchildren somewhere online while I sit here talking to ghosts.

The ugly truth is this: people are shallow. They always have been.

Men. Women. All of us.

Beauty opens doors that morality can’t even knock on. Charm forgives sins that character never could.

The world runs on attraction, and pretending otherwise is something people only do after they stop being attractive. I understand it, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Still, every once in a while, I’ll write a line so honest it startles me. Something sharp enough to cut through the silence, and in that moment, I remember there’s still one thing age hasn’t managed to take.

My voice. Not the smooth voice I once used across bars and tangled bedsheets.

Not that one, that voice is gone. The newer version is busy being disregarded by the opposite sex.