On Consistency...

*I wrote this in July 2012 and recently rediscovered it.*

"Fuck."

I put my martini glass back down after spilling it all over my hand. I've never understood how they never spill them in the movies.  

"Ugh, what are we doing?!"

My friend is trying to ask me what we're doing tonight but I don't realize that at the time. She catches me in the middle of one of many space-outs and I can't help but consider her question in rather different terms.

I suppose I can't speak for all recent college graduates when I say that it's the strangest time of our lives thus far... but I'm fairly confident that I can speak for most. I've tried, and failed, countless times to translate these emotions into words. (You can imagine what that does to my self-esteem as a writer).  

My mind just fails to analyze feelings that my heart simply does not recognize.

Just as I'm about to answer, I snap back to reality and remember that we are currently sitting at the bar she works at, at 9:00 at night on a Saturday.

"Do you mean tonight or in life?"

"Well, I meant tonight," she takes a long swig of Jameson, "but I guess life, too." We let the word, "life," hang, suspended, in the air.

Like this.  Except she was wearing pants... I think.

The rest of the bar zooms forward in time. I feel like I’m trapped in one of those time-lapse film; instead of people, I see smears of color as everyone rushes around and I, inevitably, remain stagnant. It’s loud and stressful and overwhelming and I can’t make it stop. The only thing that seems capable of moving at all is my heart and it pounds on my chest and all I can hear is buzzing and pounding and murmurs.   

But then, all of a sudden, it stops.  

The noise dies away and all that's left is the quiet hum of silence. I feel like Sookie in TrueBlood the first time she sees Bill and all the voices in her head slowly die away. She hears nothing but the soft plucking of a harp.  

Unlike Sookie, however, I find myself staring not into the eyes of an incredibly sexy vampire but instead at the ass of an incredibly cute Irish bartender.

"God, he's got the perfect ass." I exhale sharply and realize that I had been holding my breath.

"Literally," she doesn't miss a beat, "it's the only consistent thing in my life."

We burst out laughing and allow the burden of consistency to fade from our thoughts.

Few things in life are consistent and while humans, as creatures of habit, often desire some form of it, they are often left dissatisfied.  Money disappears, people die and love fades.  As I'm sure someone much wiser and much more famous than I has already noticed, the only truly consistent thing in life is inconsistency.

So when something as rare as a consistently perfect ass of a consistently perfect bartender comes along, it's important to take note.