I have seen many first moments. You work behind a bar night and day and you see a lot of them. In literature there is talk of a thunderbolt or a shared look and then it is all over. Star-crossed lovers, blam-o right then and there. But, in my humble experience it is a little different.
Firstly, someone sees the other one first. Like a game of visual tag and yet no one knows that they are playing. One of the individuals spies the other one and the game is on. I have heard tell of the ‘3-second rule,’ where you need to make up your mind in three seconds. I think that’s all moon-dust. What kind of crazy person knows what they want in three seconds?
It also defeats the importance of the next part: Courage. It takes guts to talk to someone face-to-face these days. Heck, what with the technology we have you never need to see a person ever if you really didn’t want to and some don’t. So, the old-fashioned stuff. Like, walking up to a boy you like the looks of and introducing yourself takes courage.
There is battle courage, sure. I have seen enough of that and individuals have spoken on that subject with far more eloquence than I ever could. No, this is a different type of courage. It is accepting failure, but hoping for the best possible outcome. It is steeling yourself against your enevitable demise, but allowing the winds of fancy to push you forward towards doom, destiny, or both. Courage is slugging back some cheap whisky and then making your fool-hardy move. I can say that it is rarely executed well, but sometimes there is charm in that too.
That’s the true romance of the moment and you can’t help but get close to it and listen in. Especially in my position.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“I, uh, was hoping I could buy you a drink, or uhmmm if I could introduce myself. I’m K. Hi”
“Oh. Well I already have a drink and you just introduced yourself.”
“Right… and, right.”
*Silence pervading the noisey atomosphere*
*The Moon spins a little more slowly*
“Well, I introduced myself… What’s your name?”
“I’m T.”
“Hi, T what brings you here? I’ve never been here before.”
“Well, the whisky is cheap and this place never seems to get shut down. Plus, my friends dragged me here.”
“Oh, well it is sort of the same for me my friends got me to come here too. That’s them over there.”
“Yeah I can tell by the gawks.”
“Are you sure you don’t want another drink? I, uh, don’t really know anything about whisky, but I will drink what you are drinking.”
“Fine. Just ask for the rail stuff. It’s not the real stuff, but I like that.”
“Okay. It’s better if it’s not real?”
“Oh damn. That’s not easy to answer and if I got it wrong and someone overheard they might kill me.”
“Ah you look like the dangerous type. T, the whisky spy.”
“You have no idea, K.”
The occupants of the bar all blur and become static as these two drink their whisky and indulge in each other’s company. They have time. It is a speakeasy after all and closing time is some hours off. They go slow, but there are moments of extreme honesty that catapult them further along with each other.
Who knows where they will go from here. They sat together and in those moments their world was confined to a two meter cubed space. They drank and there was some laughter. They were both shy in their own way and also both courageous in allowing a stranger intimate time in their own lives.
As a seasoned barkeep I did my part: I left them alone.
The Lunar Speakeasy 