A night is only as good as its stories. There’s a main story that unfolds, with little ones in its wake. It’s like throwing a pebble onto the surface of the past. It stirs but never settles. Just like a good song, a story is a heartbreak in reverse, it keeps peeling off layers you constructed with patience and some luck. But nothing is more beautiful than how an evening unravels, and we stand just a little further away from where we started.
We can’t look beyond each other. We’re oblivious to who’s watching. We have a story but no words to tell it with. It lasts for a grand total of five minutes. In reality, it’s lasted much longer. In a parallel dimension to this one, it’s lasted forever.
At another table, He can’t look past her. He’s waiting for a sign, for her to tell her story. Bitter underneath, he asks her why she’s a mystery. She doesn’t hear, and tells him about obscurities and vague generalisations. His face creases with the effort of holding back. To others around, this is spinning to an inevitable end.
Just like an interjection, the past walks in from the right, sweeps us of our feet. I feel inconsequential in light of these new developments. I feel oddly story-less. The others (the new ones too) nod at each other in guised disdain. Theirs wasn’t happy story, some would say. Maybe it’s still being told.
It’s a badly scripted play, for there are awkward gaps in the conversation that even alcohol can’t fill. We take to other intoxicants, but it only makes us worse. Woozy and alarmed, I stand in between the now deeply segregated groups, trying to tell one story from the other. They’ve made shields of their smiles, and I can’t tell despair from joy anymore.
Inside a couple try talking over the music. They’re not the right pair, though she must admit she thought about it once. But he’s part of another story now. But she’s adamant. If you can’t create your own story, then it’s best to begin writing for other people. The opportunity is thrilling, has a muse-like effect. In her mind, there’s a faint recollection of the last time she tried this. How easy, she thinks to herself, how careless. To conspire for happiness, even if it’s twice removed.
Under the white awning, an ingrate, 20-something couple unwind their life’s desires onto us. It makes us think of stories from when we didn’t have to pretend to be grown up. Maybe I wasn’t quite so tall, think the women. Maybe I wasn’t quite so lame, pray the men. We watch, amused and maybe a little envious.
The stories come to an abrupt halt when we find ourselves sitting in a line. There aren’t any cross conversations anymore as we sit frozen in our intolerance for each other. Slowly, a white rage rises within me as I see the story-teller walk away with a wink. He was holding it all together, all the stories were strung through him, like the ends of amateur paper-cup phones.
Suddenly, all I could hear was the blankness of an evening run dry, apart from Jim Morrison on loop. We lost a few stories on the way. Maybe they were making new ones, to tell new people on newer nights. Our stories had grown cold with the early morning air, but the birds brought the promise of a different dawn. We drove back into the city where we’ve all lost our hearts, or will do one day. We drove back into the familiar, into the stories we’d left behind. Sprawled on cane, he looked at me, his face creased with pain and smoke. I felt my heart fold.
It wasn’t even an epic setting for our stories. It wasn’t hot and ripe like summer fruit. It wasn’t blisteringly cold like chapped lips. There was no rain, no thunder, no chance for our stories to fester. There wasn’t nearly enough alcohol. They looked like puppets with cut strings, unable to bring it together, to a crescendo. We didn’t rise and fall, there was no beginning or end to the story. Just a mellow re-telling of the human failure to connect. It’s ironic that a night of so many tales was passed mostly in silence and ill-timed glances.
I look over to my right and I find the oldest story of them all. Of a slap and a love song. That one’s never going to get old.
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