By Sadie Cracker, Coma News Daily Columnist
Recently, the publisher at Coma News Daily asked me to write about something other than “a sad bar where no one goes anymore.”
So I walked around town. I went through the Blair Witch walking park where you can’t go anywhere that isn’t either scary or Starbucks.
And I kept walking. And walking.
Until I ended here, back at Bear’s Biker Bar.
My dad, Stan, is talking with Bear, who is 32 and a former skate rat. I don’t know how they became friends but there they are.
“What would you differently if you had life to do over?” Dad said.
“You know, I probably would’ve loved more,” Bear said.
“No. You wouldn’t. You would have failed again,” Dad said.
My father doesn’t know much anymore. He forgets his name is Stan. He forgets his pants.
“You know who would’ve done something differently? Sadie.” My dad points to me.
It’s that point where I spit beer down my front because that idea is comical.
How could it be different–without the human beings I brought into the world and the love I felt for a man? That happiness and pain.
Charlie Chaplin, a guy known for not talking, once said, “A man cannot go back. He thinks he can, but other things have happened to his life. He had new ideas, new friends, new attachments. He doesn’t belong to his past except that the past has, perhaps, made marks on him.”
Then Judge Alan Pezzati and Dr. Jimmy walk in. They’ve just gotten off of coaching the boys on how to run bases. And of course they flank me–I’m the only woman in this bar.
“Sadie needs a guy to love her,” Dad yells.
Bear laughs. I give him the one-finger salutation.
“Oh yeah, let’s hear all about Sadie,” Pezzati said.
Not Jimmy. He’s making the cut-her-off symbol.
“It’s supposed to be happy hour. You don’t want Sadie’s story,” he said.
I look at Jimmy and wonder if Micheal would’ve remembered how to love if we’d made it to our 40s and been together. If he hadn’t died on me and left me alone to figure this out by myself.
And I realize that I wouldn’t do this life any differently. I would make the same choices and embrace every single one.
Bear yells from the far end of the bar, “Sadie’s too good for all y’all. She’s love.”
I laugh and am saved by Charlie the Coma librarian walking in with his guitar. He’s been reading some bad YA lit book at the library’s “Cool Kids Books for Adult Kids” session
“Let’s play Eva Cassidy’s ‘True Colors,'” I said.
Charlie winks and starts tuning his guitar.
“I’d like to introduce Sadie Cracker on bass, who would’ve loved bass no matter where her life took her,” Charlie said. “And who is so old now she can only play three to four songs from memory, folks.”
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