LOVE ME LIKE ART

3

셋
Imani L. Crawford.

I REMEMBER WHEN I stumbled into this rusted bar by mistake, a few months back. I was looking for bar, any bar, where I could sink my lips into cheap alcohol and there wasn't this onus on me to be gregarious.

I could be an aloof patron or a talkative one, depending on the manner that my day ended. The guy who mans the bar, Willy, was hospitable and the drinks have enough of an alcoholic punch that it doesn't taste like juice.

And they are hardly expensive.

He doesn't know, but he made me feel less alone in a city as vacuous as London always is, that day.

MacIveys is a bar, pinned in East London's bedlam with cracks in the mortar, addicts—a mainstay on the high road and the visceral smell of street garbage. But, it has something that most places do not.

Community.

People dutyfully come to MacIveys for one drink or two or to burn some 'shish every week, no matter the day, even if there might be better places for your buck around.

I like it here because their backstreets don't know me as Bambi the escort. I'm just a stranger, sitting on a bar stool as I cup my glass of whiskey. I wear the face of a woman who is bored to death, waiting for a friend of mine to meet me, on a tame Friday night.

If I really am candid, it depends on who I ask.

Some would say that they don't know who I am, whilst others won't admit but the small tug of their lips is subtle proof that they know.

Willy, with grease in his man-bun and tattoo ink dotted across his face, approaches me.

I tap the sticky wood and his rough timbre greets me.

"Hey, love. What's your poison?"

I raise my head and meet his dutiful brown eyes at this intersect. "Hey, Willy." I adjust my bum to the stool, as I turn my head over my right shoulder and vet his beloved bar. It is quiet and ominous, especially for 9:43 PM on a Friday but knowing what I know, it is due to pick up later. "A double whiskey sour, if you would... please. I'm trying to do something reckless." I hint at him, as the sour tang of sex claws at my tongue.

"Reckless, ya hear?"

"Mmhm. We don't live forever."

He nods at me like he knows the thorn of recklessness well. "Happy to help you on the course, pretty thing. Are you from around here?"

"I'm from Tottenham." My sins haven't reached his ears and I hope they never do, otherwise I have a hunch that he'd probably bar me from his bar.

"Tottenham, huh?" He raises an eyebrow, like they're worlds apart.

"Born and raised, baby."

"What brings you to our side of the tracks?"

I lie and out it comes, tumbling. "I'm waiting on a friend of mine. She doesn't live far from here." There are two reasons I've ventured to this side of the river—Mr Rolt's apartment is like two stops away and this bar is one of the few places that crafts my double-shot whiskey sour to perfection.

He can probably smell my lies, seeking into my pores like a putrid scent.

I re-tap my fingers against his bar's sticky wood, impatient as I try to route my mind away from the glorious smell of tobacco that swims in the air. I quietly count because I've been told that it helps but it isn't doing shit.

I have two very bad habits.

Weed.

And smoke.

I've been trying to wean myself off the the cigarettes but my heart can't yet give up the 'bis. Back in the walls of my adolescence, weed patched my wounds. You know, the deep ones that you don't know that you have until you're triggered?