Down At Mephisto’s Cafe
The other night I went out to get some drinks with a couple friends. We went to our usual spot, a dirty dive off Lake Austin Boulevard. The scene is simple as these scenes typically are. Long faces and longer moods. From time to time I would think that this is a place where people come to die, drowning their sorrows in a mug or in a plume of illegal smoke and finding solace only in the companies of others’ misery. Its our place, but in so many ways we are the pulse of such a dead locale, our youth and happiness evening out the air of indignity and malaise.
Yet on this particular night, I was caught in the great sepulture. It began when I went to the bathroom, having broken the Seventh Seal I needed greatly to relieve myself. In times passed I had read the inane scribbles upon the wall, here and there picking up pieces of poetic greatness from scribes whose name will never be known. But on this day I found myself reading an august dirge dedicated to a man I will never know, a man I could never possibly know–for he was long dead. The author’s words sang out the memories of a dear friend. His elegy upon the bathroom wall was the only fitting eulogy for such a loyal fellow patron.
The whole thing saddened me. A man reduced to lavatory remembrance. A life nothing more than Sharpe upon old walls, which shield the masses from the obscene scene of our biological soliloquies. I wanted to touch the great message, but common sense forbade such a personal moment in these halls, so I departed–a bit less human.
I turned the corner and approached the bar. Only another pitcher could calm these feelings of pity and sadness. I sat on the edge staring blankly as the bartend served others. I looked down the row, long faces and longer moods. A somber cold piercing the tired men, lining up for another gulp of Mephisto’s brew. I forced myself to look away, to find anything but the mass of walking dead in front of me, and my eyes found a photograph pinned up on the wall behind the bar. A man, shirtless, enjoying a bright afternoon out to sea on a boat. His gay smile almost made me forget how exhausted his body looked. His skin hung loosely off his bones and betrayed the golden glow of a working man, for on this day he was a proletariat at play. I noticed writing above the photograph and I squinted my eyes tightly to bring them into focus…
“John Vosacote August 17th, 1947 - September 12th, 2007″
This man was dead. And possibly all that remained of him was this dank photograph, tucked sweetly above the beer taps and mugs. I thought of my dead friend in the bathroom and wondered if it was this man’s panegyric that I had read.
I noticed that there was writing below the picture and again I pulled my lids sharply together to make out the sacred glyphs…
“Gone fishin’.”
In those two words I learned so much about the man, this dead John Vosacote. Maybe he loved the sea. Maybe he loved to fish. Maybe he simply died that day out on the blue waters, under bluer skies…
I stared at his photograph and saw in him the life which evaporates from us all, radiating out from the creases of a smile that’s long ceased. I remembered the sad words from earlier, and the sad words I had read in the past in more decent settings. We all live so fiercely and with little regard for the aftermath, but in the wake of our departure there is suffering, even if it can only be expressed with Sharpe pens and frameless photos. I sat there, on a bar stool that so many had sat on before, and I realized that if you live the right way and do right by people, there will always be a place for you. The entire experience reaffirmed my belief that memory is the most eternal thing we possess.
Yes, if you live a good life, there will always be a place for you…you will always have a “home…”
I only hope mine isn’t on the bathroom wall of Deep Eddy Cabaret.
But hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
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