The History of Writing (Part Three) A Meditation on Severity: Mr. Jung Journeys Into Town

There is an inarguably alienative impression coming off the bouncer to the Aronofsky Bar & Grille as he moves toward the entrance, the cold nightair and the other anonymous faces on the long, busy sidewalk and their voices separate and yet of a piece and the new clothes that he's wearing and the bouncer's eyes moving over the fugitive, the stranger's bodybuilder face keenly attuned for discrepancy between the counterfeit i.d. and the skinny/confident figure before him. "Birthday?" He didn't change that; too easy to forget. "Bit of a ways from Las Vegas, ain't ya?" "Business trip." "In a bar? At this hour? Good work if you can find it, I suppose." "Depends on what you mean by 'good'," he says. Eyes moving over every letter of the forgery, "You wanna say something about my job?" "Didn't plan on it, no. Like I said, business." "And now the $10,000 question: what business?" "It's actually a fastfood thing. They're thinking a lot of the places by the casinos and in Cali might be getting into liquor-licenses an' some of us lucky ones are like, paid investigators t' go to different places and see how to make the transition a little, you know, smoother." The bouncer is genuinely, if subtly, impressed. Handing Charles Anthony his i.d. back, "Tell them I still drink Budweiser." Swallowing his relief, "Definitely keep it in mind, thanks." 

 He moves into Aronofsky's and the place is packed. Purple, pink, yellow, blue-lights placed around the walls or punctuating from the many, many tables glow into the darkness where they are swallowed into the tall ceilings and the chorus of a hundred conversations or so takes turns with the ubiquitous dance/hip-hop in his sharp but crowded brain as he walks through some light clusters of people gossiping near the entrance and into the denser push of the establishment towards one of the three gigantic bars. 

Bartender with an effeminate, doll-like face and a pretty-boy haircut and a voice as fragile as a bird says, "Good evening, sir. How may I serve you?"

 "Yeah," he says, "how about a shot of bourbon and a Rolling Rock?" 

"We have Russell's--"  

 He's been through this about a dozen times in the last month and it's become more wearisome than the horseshit perpetually bothering tiny god, so his routine is locked in tight when he interrupts to says, "Russell's is fine. Glass pint of beer." 

"Yes, sir. Be right with you."  

 He downs the shot, sips the beer, replaces both glasses to the counter. After taking out his wallet and handing over a 20, telling the bartender to keep the change and buy himself something pretty, Charles Anthony indicates he'll be back once the drink is empty and moves into the morass of the night. 

He's walked something like a hundred feet when some guy, probably in his late-20s, sitting at a table with three others, randomly picks him out of all the other dancers, talkers, people and this guy has that superpower-level of imposing their eye-contact on anyone that a lot of people do and Charles Anthony finds himself hypnotized for the briefest of moments, like he's just heard his own mother's voice crying from the neighborhoods of his earliest years, and he turns to the man and the man waves him over with confident friendliness. 

He's dumb with the feeling of a question and no words to illustrate the thought. 

"Baxter?" says the man, warm with sociability and just a minor taste of weed and a quick drenching of cologne on his person. "Baxter from Utah?" 

He thinks to lie, see what he can get out of it, but in less time than it takes you to ash your cigarette, he's cancelled the idea and he just says, "No, sorry. I'm a Charles, not a Baxter." 

The man laughs without effort. "Alright." The two women and the other man with the guy, whose name is Todd, maintain their own conversation. Todd says, "Well, you wanna sit with us, anyway? Pay for your next drink?" 

It feels like something between a trap and a hassle, but that's basically what he's here for: driving state-to-state with no particular destination in mind takes a certain toll in spite of the positively rejuvenating freedom, and he's spent more than a few nights of the last week getting what we'd like to call heroically-drunk and burning through about an eighth of weed a day... He might, of course, encounter someone a touch more introverted and to his preference of amiability, but Aronofsky's is so massive as to err on the side of the incomprehensible, Charles Anthony figures he'll just play the cards in front of him. "Alright. But I just got here. Don't start shoving jello-shots and a bunch of crap at me." 

"Deal. Sit down, sit down." 

He sits down. 

"So what's your name, not-Baxter?" 

"I told you: Charles." 

"Right, right. You here with anybody?" 

"I'm here with you." 

"Wise guy. Alright." He says, "So what, you just flying solo? Try'n t' snatch-up a honey and head back to the crib? Hope you don't mind me saying crib." 

"No worries... No. None of that. I'm on kind of a business trip." 

"Please don't talk about work," says one of the women, a blonde with medium-sized breasts pushing out of a navy-blue halter-top. "That's the last thing I want to hear about right now." 

"Oh, let him talk about whatever he feels like," says Todd. "We just met the guy." 

The other guy, about the same age as Todd, presents a hand to Charles Anthony, "Robert, by the way."Pointing to the other woman, also blonde but with a slightly stern face, "This one's Shelley." Pointing to the first blonde: "That's Karen," like 'Cairn.' 

"I can speak for myself," says Karen. 

"Hey, Chuck?" says Todd. 

"Charles." 

"Awe, come on." 

"Charles. Or Charlie if that's really too formal." Whenever people called him Chuck he always felt always felt as if they might as well be calling him John, which is to say: He hated it. 

"Fine, fine: Charlie. You live in Texas? You some kinda art dealer 'r something? I know a lotta people wh know people who operate galleries." 

"No, I... I really can't say the name of the company or technically I could get fired--I mean, most likely not, but I don't wanna take the chance... Anyway, we're thinking about putting beer and booze in the fastfood places, you know, like they did with the movie theaters in the last '20s? And so there's a bunch of us driving from state-to-state to get a better sense of what actual people are into by like, by watching them in their natural habitat instead of paying whoever's broke and bored enough to show up for a study."  

 "Those things are such bullshit," says Shelley. "And they always end up fucking you over when it's time to pay up." 

"Mm-hmm," says Robert. 

"Be honest," says Shelley. "Are you with one of the companies that's perpetually fucking people over?" 

The whole near-ineffable rush of exactly everyone that Charles Anthony Jung has ever known slams down from somewhere in his multi-sensory cortex and since he's obviously not going to work out his feelings about his parents or the inexcusably strange habits & practices of overpaid scientists with a gang of strangers he's only just met, he just says, "Who isn't?"  

 Todd laughs with wicked glee. 

 Robert, with some chagrin, joins him. 

Karen is simply disgusted.  

Shelley's thoughts turn the way females generally do immediately before Charles Anthony feels subtly, yet unmistakably aroused. 

"I gotta use the bathroom," he says. He stands up.  

 "You gonna remember where we're sitting, right, funny man?" 

 "Not a doubt in my mind." 

 He moves towards an all-genders restroom he saw on the way in, then just moves right through the exit. 

 

 

 

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