There Have Been

Bad Moments

Paper Bracelet Wishing
I'm all bone; I'm two-toned...
7-3

Darcy sat on the barstool, watching her roommate stand over a pool table with the natural presence of someone who'd done so many times before.
 
Wearing a tank top that revealed the definition of her shoulders and biceps as well as the edges of her bra strap, Anya leaned carefully along the length of her stick, studying the angles down the table. Sometimes Darcy smiled to herself when she noticed Anya trying to balance her feminine side with the macho exterior that she showed to the world outside. Part of the bond that existed between the two of them was built on the fact that Darcy knew how hard that struggle was sometimes for her.
 
This latest stop on Trina Jordan's Saturday night party train had landed them inside of a small bar off of Markdale Street called Manitoba Overboard. True to form, Trina instantly rejected the moniker as silly, christening the place with a name more to her own taste.
 
She called it: Tobaboard's.
 
The air inside Tobaboard's was thick with the aroma of clove cigarettes, Hugo Boss cologne, and the combined stench of all 31 flavors of Herbal Essence shampoo. A single elongated light hung over the faded velvet atop the pool table, its green simplicity dotted with billiard balls of various colors, like so many Easter eggs sitting in a bed of fake grass.
 
Once they had successfully navigated the doorman, Trina seemed to evaporate into the crowd, saying something about a bathroom, a bartender, or a boyfriend. It was hard to tell what she actually meant, as her words faded into the flashing lights of the place.
 
Undaunted by Trina's departure, Anya moved quickly through the bar as if she had been there hundreds of times before. Dodging elbows and barstools, she zeroed in on the pool table hiding near the back of the bar. Darcy followed clumsily, having to stop several times to avoid bumping into people.
 
When she finally caught up, she found her roommate stacking quarters on the edge of the table, making clear her intentions to take on the winner of the current game. Anya shot quick nods at the two guys playing, and then moved back towards the spot where Darcy was standing.
 
Leaning in towards her ear, she asked, "You good?"
 
Darcy started to nod, but a sudden commotion rose from the table as an errant shot prematurely ended the game that was going on. Anya detached without a word, moving towards the rack of cue sticks on the wall.
 
Suddenly feeling the need for an anchor, Darcy looked to the bar.
 
She found an open barstool and waited for the bartender to notice her. The stamp on her hand identifying her as too young to drink glowed brightly in the black lights that hung all about the ceiling of the place. She hated being the youngest, hated having to ask the bartenders what else they had besides beer, hated how they acted like they were doing you a favor by not charging for a Pepsi. It made her feel like a toddler in a grown up place, made her feel like everyone was being unnecessarily nice to her.
 
She had come to college specifically to rid herself of that sort of treatment from people.
 
The bar was full of guys of different shapes and sizes, but they all seemed to have the same hairstyle and taste in facial hair. No matter how many new places Trina seemed to discover each weekend, they all felt the same to Darcy. Absently rubbing the ink on her hand, she noticed how everyone here seemed to know someone else; everyone seemed to have someone to talk to. Even with Anya being a few feet away, she felt horribly isolated. It was like she didn't know the code word, wasn't in on the joke.
 
She felt conscious of her hand stamp and cup full of Pepsi. She wanted to leave and go home.
 
"There you are!" a voice crackled from behind her.
 
Darcy turned to find Trina standing like a beacon of light amongst the drab anonymity of the crowd that milled through the place. She held a Corona in one hand, and dangled a cigarette in the other. These items were held straight out in front of her, almost as if to say, "look at these!"
 
To make matters worse, Trina had an odd habit of turning her head one way when she wanted to take a sip from the bottle, and then the other way to take a puff from the cigarette. Darcy sometimes wondered where Trina found the energy to attack her vices the way she did on weekends. Anya seemed to think that Trina was attacking something else, something back home; but she never said much more than that.
 
It was only when Trina turned her head to drink again that Darcy noticed there was a guy attached to her. His short blonde hair was so perfectly parted that it looked as if it were glued on to his head. His hands were anchored tightly to Trina's hips like two barnacles locked onto the hull of a boat. It was as if he knew that if he let go, even for a short moment, she would soon sail on to the next port.
 
Darcy snuck her an inquisitive look, which Trina answered with a sly grin. A moment later, Trina drained the remains of her beer and then scrunched her shoulders up as some sort of indication that the barnacle could touch her more intimately. Taking the cue, he leaned in to nuzzle Trina's neck. But before he made contact, she surprised him by wheeling around and holding the empty beer bottle up for him.
 
After a moment's pause he took the hint, smiled, and then motioned for the bartender to come over with a new one.
 
While he attended to this task, Trina spied Darcy's cup.
 
"What's in there?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.
"It's just a soda," Darcy said, holding it up.
"What?" Trina said, seeming not to hear.
"It's a soda," Darcy repeated a little louder, but Trina still seemed unable to register.
 
Strange, Darcy thought. I can hear her just fine...
 
The blonde reappeared with fresh beers, and then quickly reattached himself to Trina's hips. She took a long pull from the beer, and then leaned into him a bit. He took the opening, and edged in for a kiss, which she returned with enthusiasm.
 
Darcy tried not to watch.
 
Once they disengaged, Trina gave Darcy another quick grin, and put her beer on the counter next to her. "Here" she said, holding the cigarette out for Darcy to take. Darcy gripped the butt lightly, not really sure what she was supposed to do with the thing. But before she could find out, Trina and her blonde were headed towards the dance floor.
 
A moment later there was a tap on her shoulder. She turned to find Anya smiling at her. She snapped the cigarette out of Darcy's fingers and took a quick drag.
 
Exhaling upwards, she asked, "Where's the party queen?"
 
Darcy shrugged. "She was here a minute ago. She went to dance with some guy."
 
"Tell me something I don't know." Anya sneered. A bottle of beer seemed to magically appear in her hands.
 
A while passed in silence. Anya smoked; Darcy nursed her Pepsi and kept an occasional eye on Trina's drink. They traded words, but never really found common ground. Despite the bonds between them, nothing resembling conversation ever took root.
 
Back at the dormitory, Anya was usually more than willing to discuss things, to open up her darkest secrets, or espouse her latest opinion of the world outside. But when they were hopping the bars she seemed to take on a tougher shell, seemed uninterested in talking in anything more than three-word sentences. Trina was more open in private as well, but whenever she got in a crowd she had an equally evasive habit of running off at the mouth about everything and nothing at once.
 
It was like they were different people sometimes.
 
Darcy had always seen the friendship that existed between her two roommates with optimism, viewing it as a positive statement about the ability of people to rise above outward appearances and social trappings. Aside from the occasional catty comment or difference of opinion, they were open with each other, accepting of the individual traits that might have placed them at odds anywhere else. It made Darcy comfortable to be in a place that didn't have a specific dress code. Perhaps that's why she felt so disappointed in Anya and Trina for raising their own personal shields whenever they went clubbing.
 
Or maybe it was because Darcy didn't have another persona to slip into when they hit the town. It had never occurred to her to adopt a shell for social occasions, but her reluctance to do so made her feel like she was sometimes "in the way" of her roommate's fun. If her being too young for certain bars wasn't bad enough, she didn't exactly fit in with the crowds that eventually formed around her roommates. It was hard not to feel like a third wheel...
 
Anya struck up a conversation with a guy at the bar who looked like he had just finished working on a car somewhere. Darcy scanned the room, not sure what she was hoping to see.
 
Anya tapped her shoulder again. "I'm gonna go play some foosball"
 
Darcy shrugged and smiled. Anya took her hand, and placed the beer bottle in it. Darcy started to turn so she could put it next to Trina's Corona, when Anya grabbed her shoulder and shot her an accusing look.
 
As if a window shade had suddenly been opened, Darcy realized what was going on. Glancing over her shoulder to the bottle that Trina had left for her, she suddenly felt like an idiot.
 
But even as she cursed her own thick-headedness, the last thing she wanted right now was alcohol.
 
She scanned the bar again.
 
What she really wanted was to find a way to not feel like a child in this place. She wanted to somehow rid herself of the nagging feeling that she didn't belong here. Perhaps that's what Anya and Trina were trying to accomplish when they snuck her their drinks, but there was so much more to it than just that…
 
There was a pause in the music. Then, familiar drums began to explode from the speakers on the wall.
 
Nine Inch Nails.
 
Dark, longing, and unashamedly hungry - the music of one of her favorite groups comforted her in its familiarity, as if an old friend had just pulled up a chair beside her.
 
Back in high school Darcy honestly felt like she the only one who liked, appreciated, and understood the music that Trent Reznor created. It was a private treasure that she kept from her friends, a bomb shelter against the dance pop and gangster rap that her classmates played incessantly from the speakers of their cars. She actually reveled in the knowledge that most people didn't like the music. Somehow that made it more personal for her.
 
On Friday nights most of her classmates would crawl their cars down Franklin Avenue, blasting bass grooves out of their open car windows so that everyone could hear what they were about.
 
Those same nights would find Darcy in her mother's Nissan driving around Pellinger Beach with the car windows rolled up tight and the stereo turned up as loud as she could stand. She would drive those back roads for hours, singing along with her favorite songs. She had never told anyone about those late night trips, never allowed anyone to know that she sang along with the music while she drove.
 
It wasn't something that people would understand, she told herself.
 
When she got to college and suddenly found herself among scores of people who knew and loved the music she had once seen as her own, it made her feel strangely small and ordinary.
 
She didn't like that feeling.
 
She looked to the dance floor, as the beat continued to call to her. Bathed in flashing lights, the floor was alive with bodies and shadows. She wanted to believe that one of those shadows might be hiding a personality that would offer her shelter from all the self-conscious stupidity that she could feel brewing inside of her, and for a moment she even considered just going out there by herself. But in the end, she couldn't help but look out at all those people dancing to her music without feeling some of the same distaste that she had previously reserved for the kids who used to cruise down Franklin Ave.
 
"Why can't I just let go?" She wondered to herself. "Why can't I just allow myself to have a good time?"
 
Why can't I find someone that I can tell my secrets to?
 
She tried for a moment to imagine herself a free-spirit like Trina, or assertive like Anya; but the images that appeared in her mind felt plastic and loose, like a cheap Halloween costume.
 
Frozen in her hesitations, she continued to sit at the bar, silently mouthing the lyrics in her mind...
 
It took a moment for her to realize that someone was trying to get her attention.
 
"Can you reach me one of those?"
 
He motioned to a basket of matchbooks on the bar next to her. He was tall; the kind of tall that seemed like it would be awkward to live with. His mottled and curly hair was a reddish-brown color, and occasionally broke away from the crudely fashioned ponytail on the back of his head in wavy tendrils.
 
A cigarette appeared and the matches were put to use. Darcy hoped she wasn't staring, but somehow the fact that this person seemed so out of place with the surroundings fascinated her. For a moment she started to suspect that she was looking at someone who'd left their club facade at home. Maybe even someone who, like her, didn't have one to begin with.
 
He smoked for a moment without noticing her. Then, as if he'd realized something he forgotten, he turned back to her and said "Hey, thanks."
 
She smiled, not sure of what to say.
 
Awkward in the silence, he contemplated his cigarette. "You want one?"
 
She shook her head no. He shrugged easily, seeming not to be bothered one way or the other.
 
"Well at least let me get you a fresh drink for helping me out," motioning to plastic cup full of ice cubes she gripped onto like an anchor.
 
She smiled, trying not to seem too eager. He motioned for the bartender.
 
"So what were you drinking?"
Absently she held up the empty cup. "This? Oh, it's just Pepsi"
 
Suddenly she realized that her hand stamp was in plain view, highlighted by the purple lights overhead. His smile changed a little.
 
The bartender placed a new cup of soda on the bar next to her, inserting a tiny red straw into the liquid. She picked up the cup, eager to take a sip to take away the dryness that had suddenly taken over her mouth. She raised the drink to her lips, but had to move the red straw out of the way before she could take a decent sip.
 
Everything she was doing was over-exaggerated and clownish, and she seriously considered bolting for the door of the place rather than continue to look like a moron in front of what might just be the only person worth talking to in this entire place. She smiled in her embarrassment.
 
He smiled back, and offered a hand for her to shake. "My name's Will, I bartend here on Fridays."
 
A thought came into her mind, one so possibly risky and embarrassing that she hardly believed she was actually considering it. But if she was ever going to break out of her shell, she was going to need help. Something about this wild-haired bartender made her feel that he was worth the risk.
 
Releasing one of her hands from the drink, she shook his hand,
 
"My name is Darcy, I sing in my car."
"What?" he said, seeming not to hear.
"My name is Darcy, I... I sing in my car." she repeated uneasily.
 
He nodded slowly, but still seemed to turning the idea over in his mind. She waited, somehow knowing that he wasn't going to let her down...
 
A moment later he put a hand up to his ear, shrugged apologetically, and said,
 
"I'm sorry, What?