Scar & Salt 001: Shadows, Sex, and Self-Immolation

They say you can’t escape your darkness. But burn yourself alive, and fire casts no more shadows.

I knew when I walked into that bar in the foothills of Western North Carolina, the only shadows to be found weren’t the ones cast by the Blue Ridge Mountains. They were hiding inside mouths—slick with sticky southern tongues and kind and killer, ethanol smiles.

The town folk who never escaped. Poverty and lost opportunities wrap their lips around you tight and deepthroat you whole. Drag you down with cheap whiskey and sweat-soaked summer sin until you’re stuck inside the belly of their endless feast. Leaving you trembling as they keep sucking you in, legs shaking, breathing heavy, asking for you more, but you have no more life to give and you stay, with them, down here, in the American South.

The door swung open, and the humidity of the Southern air followed, carrying thick with the smell of spilt beer, sticky tables, and stale smoke curling in from the billowing chimneys of a dying furniture factory down the road.

The last one standing of its kind, a washed-out polaroid of the past, every other business failed and fled this old town long ago. Industrial rot left behind, empty storefronts on Main Street staring out like dead eyes, someone’s broken American dream for a better future, rotting behind the dirty and cracked glass realities of cheaper labor and materials found in overseas shipping containers.

I slid the metal stool back, pulled up at the chipped-up bar top next a streaked black-and-blonde hair lady in a pink miniskirt with thigh tattoos closing down the bar and closing in on forty. She’s sitting next to her mate, 10 years her senior, greyed beard, eyes darting around the room maybe looking for predators, maybe looking for prey. She looked over and smiled, I nodded enough to be polite but not enough to throw a line out to engage.

The bartender had long straight hair, sun-kissed brunette, probably early 30’s, short, a little over 5 foot, and easily the prettiest in the room, maybe even in a couple mile radius. She smiles revealing her nicotine yellow lower row of teeth and asks me if I want a menu, I shook my head, naw.

“What IPA you got?” An old destructive habit I had for a high alcohol content beer leftover from another life back in New York, spinning drunken Conway and Cash vinyls for northern women who needed to unbuckle a starving artist before they buckled in with their corporate husbands.

“Pernicious IPA”, the bartender points and I accept, hoping its bitter and strong, looking down at my phone, pulling up the notes app just in case I decide to immortalize this night.

She wraps her dainty fingers around the wooden tap handle, jerked it down, and poured me a pint of impending mania. She slid it across the bar and asked me if I need anything else. I shook my head. She turned to tend to another patron, frayed denim daisy dukes, strings of worn fabric trailing down the back of her small, perfect ass, the kind of ass that could launch a thousand rusted down Ford F-150’s, lift kits, with big off-road tires, all revving red-line to defend her honor.  

I took down too long swallows, already imagining running away with her—some redneck wonderland where she smokes her menthols in the filthy kitchen after we fucked, while her babies are with their daddies in the other trailer park across the county.

But, the beer is not as bitter or strong as I hoped. And I will never have a chance.

So I drained the rest in one go, raised my index finger up to the gods of blue balls and lost causes, and silently ordered another when Helen of Troy-Built Tractors locked eyes with me.

As the alcohol began to take hold, my vision softened, and the edges of this world flickered, blurring into the dim fading of my light. The cramped space closing in on me like a warm blanket draped over my decision-making.

I let the murmurs of southern drawls and the low hum of a baseball game buzz around my ears as I thumbed through my phone, finger-fucking the screen evoking my drunken creative spirt for a word, a sentence, anything that would keep me from leaving empty-handed.

Occasionally, I’d look up, take another drink, and side-eye the blonde lady to my right. We exchanged microglances—colliding in mid-air, fired from the corner of our eyes. Both of us pretending we aren’t reading each other’s stories, taking each other’s temperature.

Her slim wedding ring, tapped against her glass, a hazy clink, tiny ripples spreading across the surface of her drink like a warning. I looked up, met her mascara-heavy eyes and purple-painted mouth as she fired off her opening salvo.

“Whatcha writing down?”

“I’m writing a poem.”

“A poem? About what?”

I took another slow drink, placed the glass next to hers, and leaned in.

“You.”

She lit up like only a tipsy soul can, revealing an absent tooth on the left side of her smile.

“Oh yeah? Well you better make it good.”

I felt the corner of my lip curl, this flirtation stoking my mania.

“That’s entirely up to you.”

“You from around here? Never seen you before.”

“Just moved here. What about you?”

“We’ve been here for years, needed more land for the cows.”

“You farm ‘em?”

Her husband’s voice cuts through the flirtation, raspy and flat.

 “We show ‘em.”

She snaps her head back to him, a quick smile, remembering to include him in her games.

“Like at the state fair or some shit?”

“Something like that.”

Her fingers grazed my inner thigh, a deliberate caress.

“Exactly like that darlin’.”

Her man’s barstool scraped against the dirty floor, a coyote’s howl cutting through the bar. Everyone got quiet, I took a drink, bracing for whatever came next. I’ve been punched and kicked and bruised and scared too many times to know what comes next. Me and that girl got too damn close, too damn fast. Her husband was coming over for a Southern style reckonin’.

He stood 6’4, a beer belly pushing against his faded, house-paint-stained construction company t-shirt. Tattoos of Jason, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger clawed and slashed their way out from his sleeves. He didn’t bother with the stool, rose from the dead silence, slow and deliberate—like a monster in a 1980s slasher flick.

On second thought maybe he’s going to take a piss, on third thought he wasn’t. He slowly stretches out his arms to get his blood flowing and muscles loosened for whatever he was planning to do next and moved behind his woman, claiming her with that same cold calm. His giant, calloused, sunburnt hand tangled in her hair, tugging just enough to draw a slight moan from her.

I hear his work boots headed my way and look forward and make eye contact with the bartender as she looks on, darting her eyes over to one of the cooks eating his dinner before closing time. Another coyote yelp—quicker, louder—right next to me.

I grab my beer and finish it off because, well, it could be my last if I need my jar wired shut tonight.

The big man takes a seat and orders a Southern Comfort straight from Helen and looks over to me. I keep my eyes forward and let out a sigh. He says there, burning a hole into me for what felt like forever, but I’ve seen this kind of posturing in bars before, so I just look straight and say, “I’m not here for this.”

Helen breaks up the tension bring over Big Man’s drink and tells me it’s Last Call and do I need another one before they close up.

I start nodding. Slow, steady, like a metronome ticking, like I’ve danced to this type of music before.

I asked the bartender why do they close so early, bars in New York stay open till four. She nervously told me they used to be open until Midnight but the unwanted kinds caused too much trouble stumbling looking for drugs and mayhem.

In old towns like this, the unmedicated dead shuffle the sidewalks, searching for their past selves until the methadone clinic opens.

Big Man takes a drink of his whiskey, then slides the glass closer to me—testing my space.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you. Talk to me.”

“We can talk.”

“Why ain’t you looking at me then, Chief?

“I guess I’m afraid of what may happens next if I do.”

I take another swig of my beer down, drunkenness is creeping around the bend.

“So you from up north then huh boy?

“I never said I’m from there. I said I’ve been there.”

“Well we do things different ‘round here. Where you from then?”

“Virginia, near the border, and they do things different ‘round there too.”

“Is that so?”

“My friends in the ground would say so.” I smirk, lifting my left lip, trailing the tip of my tongue over my chipped teeth from impacts long passed.

I have always had the bad habit of needing to know how stories end if if they are to my detriment. Throwing out blood in the breath to see how predators respond. If their instinct will kick in or if I can net them in. This is a problem I’ve had my whole life but when you suffer from such curiosities you learn how to control your increasing heart rate which for a long time I interpreted as fear, anxiety, or cowardice. It wasn’t until I truly found out who I was, how twisted I am in these situations. I learned it was good ol’ fashioned pre-orgasmic excitement and I tend to lean into it and edge myself when I drink. It’s something that rarely can be felt unless a giant of a man is truly sussing you out, his fist already a promise.

“Hey baby, finish your drink, time to go.” The lady to my right speaks through my face to her man.

That’s my cue ride this lightning tonight and finally look over at the big man and lock eyes with the red-lit inferno surrounding his dilated pupils. I ever so slightly raise my right eyebrow like a gunfighter tapping the butt of his pistol before the dirty duel.

He takes his big hand and squeezes my left shoulder. It took everything I had not to punch him right there. Every fight signal rushed through my drunken veins but were suppressed by the overriding kink of curiosity of storytelling to spit out.

“Take your fucking hand off me.”

A fight then and there would have been too easy, too expected, too cliché. I wanted more substance, I wanted an ending I could fucking write about. This big block of concrete is not taking the only identity I have. Take my ego with a beating, my masculinity with some bleeding but no man walking this earth will ever stop me from finish my own story.

He grabs my shoulder again, this time to make me feel the full strength of his blue-collar grip.

“Easy chief, I’m just gettin’ to know you. This is just how we do it ‘round here.”

His girl reaches over the front of me and jams her tit into my shoulder pushing shoving her man away, “That’s enough. Don’t make me say it again.”

Big man leans back and starts laughing.

“It’s all good baby. We’re just havin’ some fun.”

He finishes his whiskey off as I turn my head back to the bartender and his girl, leans close, her voice low, apologizing for him.”

“I’m sorry, he’s had a lot to drink tonight.”

“No problem. So have I.”

Big Man pipes up. “My girl is a wild mare man. She’s tough to break in, I tell ya.”

I pulled off my broken-in worn-down baseball hat to reveal the scar trailing down the side skull from when a bucking horse almost took my life.

“Some never get broken.”

Big man got quiet, and we find ourselves empty in the bar, all the rest went home to their kin.

I put my hat on, reached back to my pocket and grabbed my wallet and told Helen, I’m ready to square up. She nods and heads for the cash register as I stack my phone wallet and keys in front of me. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch his woman nodding at him, mouthing something. I assume it’s a verbal berating for the scene he almost caused tonight.  

I tossed some cash on the counter, a little extra for Helen’s part in tonight’s show. I grab my things and begin to stand up from my stool and then I felt big man’s hand on my shoulder again. I immediately tensed up, disappointed–this night was going to end with two people going home broken tonight but he leaned in and began his pitch.

“I want you to fuck my wife.”