I could go on and on and bore you with paragraphs describing my current whereabouts, my feelings, my general opinions on life. But I don't like being that verbose. So I'll keep it simple.
I sat in a shitty bar in a shitty city. Despondent patrons surrounded me, drinking their drinks, forgetting their worries for a while. Pretty standard setup, if you ask me. It was appropriately dirty, dingy; "wretched" would be another good adjective there. Certainly not a place you would bring the wife and kids. Not that I have to worry about that. Never had a woman for that long. Not that it's any of your business.
Women aren't important to me. Getting from day to day is. People tell me that I'm not living life to the fullest. I tell them there's nothing to live in a world as boring and harsh as this one. So I go each day working, drinking, sleeping. It's fine for me. But I'm not totally apathetic towards the fairer sex. I've got my baser desires, and there's no shortage of women wanting to fulfill those. But they're all meaningless.
Except for her. She's been attributed as The One, my Soulmate, my One True Love. I called her "Anna." I met her earlier in life, in my twenties, when life was still entertaining. I've wised up now, seen the errors of that time, but she was always the shining gem in the disgusting refuse. She had long, midnight hair, down almost all the curve of her back, shining for all its shade. Her eyes were a sort of gray-blue, the color of stones in a forested river. She had hintingly-dark skin, but I don't remember the nationality. I didn't care. She had curves like an artist's dream, a body almost too perfect for this hateful world. In short, she was beautiful. More so than any broad since, and maybe even to come.
I met her at a friend's party. We weren't initially attracted to each other. But we kept running into the other, kept having conversations near each other, despite never having met. Then we dropped the act and talked directly. We kept talking well into the next day, a sign of how inseparable we were to become. For months, we shut out the world and dreamed up our own little paradise. It was as blissful as it could be. But, we kept our pasts separate from each other. We both had our share of troubles that we wanted to keep secret. We were both fine with it. We had the present to be happy with, and the past to ignore.
How did it end? She left. Just up and left one day. Wrote me a letter, dried tears and all, saying that she needed to leave. Couldn't be with me anymore. So sorry, and all that wash. A part of me was angry by how clichéd it was. But the rest was devastated, angry, depressed, all the feelings you know so intimately when you've been left by the wayside for no adequately-explained reason. I sought her out, without success. She simply vanished into the night. Her disappearance was so complete that I started to doubt whether she was really with me at all. That day was the beginning of the man you see before - or rather, beside - you. The rest is history. A history you don't need to know.
Just keep the drinks coming. Play the tunes I remember so well. Leave me alone.
A woman enters the bar. Long black hair, down most of her back. Grey-blue eyes silhouetted by tinted sunglasses. Black clothes outlining a wonderful figure. Legs that could make a priest renounce the Good Lord. A woman I hadn't seen in years.
Of all the bars....
Shit.
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Inspired by my watching of Casablanca last night. Not that good a story, but I need the experience.
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