ALL GOOD THINGS

(Original Image by Ryan Moreno)

I walked along the pier as the sun set over the Sacramento River. I leaned against the chains that separated me from the water and tried not to think. There was a whole world waiting for me back home. A wife. A toddler. A career. Each with their own joys, their own strife, their own sleeplessness which adds up over time. I looked out over the river, at the ferry boats full of tourists, at the speed boats with their topless women and loud music reverberating through the clean quiet around me.

I knew where the underground bars were. I knew the right alleys to turn down, the right lamp-lit doors to open. But, I was altogether uninterested. It wasn't that I had quit the bottle, far from it. It was more that I didn't know what I was looking for. Women? Booze? Those had become simple, shallow answers I could no longer cling to.

It would have been easier to lose myself with company, especially a fellow drinker with the same shaped hole in their soul. Last person I could think of was L. She flamed with fire. She took me on a ride through Old Sac I’ll never forget, but she demanded commitment in her own way. As we would walk, she'd pass her cigarette over. I told her I didn't smoke. She'd tell me about her bag of mushrooms. I told her booze was the only drug for me. She’d asked if I could take her home and fuck her. I told her my wife wouldn't appreciate being woken up so late. It was a fun night, but now she's somewhere else finding the fulfillment she needed as I stood alone facing the water.

It was too dark to see a reflection. It was more or less an apparition slithering in the waters below. I wanted to jump in and strangle it. I wanted to drag the serpent, the unholy leviathan to land so that the common folk might marvel at my prize. Then we'd drink the night away, merry and unafraid of the ever-receding life before us. But, I’ve lived long enough to know happiness doesn't last, even in the best of circumstances. Friends and family and frivolity far-removed leave a crater in you, and you often spend the rest of your life attempting to fill that hole left when laughter was free and time seemed infinite.

It all comes to an end eventually. I only wish I knew what it was I wanted, why I was alone, looking out at the moonlit water. I suppose no one was going to come around the corner to tell me.

I felt like a drink standing there. I had $20 left in my wallet. After the sun fell, I continued along the pier to a riverside boat, the Delta King, where L had once leaned up against me and breathed upon my neck. I figured they would recognize me though I was alone. I decided before I got there that I would take the same booth and order the same Zinfandel as she had, and I would sit there and think of her and how all good things must end.