Street Scene: Little Five Points

I have a bird’s eye view of Atlanta’s thriving center of counter-culture from where I sit.  I’m at a patio table at the Brewhouse Pub on the corner of Moreland and Euclid avenues.  I can see a new age crystal shop, a palm reader and to the right is a second hand, no, make that vintage clothing store.  Across the street and to the left, a city police sub-station shares a storefront with a jewelry store.  The store is called “Fetish” and I ponder for a moment exactly where one might wear the sparkling pieces on display in the window.  A block east down the street is Sacred Heart Tattoo where a guy named Sean delivers amazing artistic individuality with needles and ink.  He’s a frigging genius.     

I’ve been sitting here drinking for a while now and my patio space has been shared by a changing cast in these hours. 

There’s the table right out by the sidewalk where five college guys guzzled pitchers in the company of a lone blonde girl.  She was not particularly cute, clearly someone’s girlfriend and the default designated driver.  They were quite loud until an amateur rugby team settled at the next table.  Then they seemed to intuit that their drunken sophomore sharp wit was no match for the sweaty testosterone cloud rising from next door.  They ended up leaving and sticking the girl with the tab.  She ended up sticking with one of the rugby guys.     

There was the twenty-something couple in the corner with the wirehaired puppy.  He was dressed in an expensive three-quarter length wool coat and tennis shoes.  She was wearing a knee length sweater, cut off short-short jeans, black tights and boots with crimson socks.  She should have looked atrocious but didn’t.    

There was the too-pleased-with-himself business type out for a faux biker weekend in leather chaps and Harley tee shirt.  He sat sipping single malt and smoking a cigar with his overly maintained and overly made-up upwardly mobile biker-mama-wife-not-quite wannabe.  

There was another young couple at the table directly in front of me.  They were both dressed in boots, jeans and hoodies.  His was green and hers was blue.  Together they shivered from some phantom and I suspect drug induced breeze.  I envied how they seemed to be the only two people in their world.

There were bicycles and backpacks and bums and a girl with a sousaphone.  There was an apparent African grizzled grey god in a gold and black dashiki with three hundred dollar Italian loafers and there was an undeniable Nubian princess with coal black eyes, a hypnotic smile and legs as long as a Georgia summer.

 Darkness doesn’t fall around here at this time of year. It creeps into the corner of your eyes just slowly enough that you don’t really notice.  At some point the sun’s light must have shaded to shadow, its warmth must have shifted to shiver. But when?  Rush hour is over in most of the city.  But here the traffic remains heavy, the glint of sun on chrome having morphed into blue halogen glare.

As I said, I’ve been drinking here a while now and evening has settled in.  The crowd has changed with the lighting.  Gone are the cookie selling Girls Scouts that shouted at cars and passers-by like sideshow barkers.  There are no more young parents pushing strollers or walking dogs and most of the khakied cultural voyeurs from the suburbs have also disappeared.

As amber warmth begins to envelope me, my eyes adjust and their dilation gathers in so much more than lost light.  I see that the college boys were visitors here.  So were the faux biker couple and the twenty-something guy in the expensive coat.  But his girlfriend who should look atrocious seemed organic here among the body piercings and tattoos and purplish hair and half shaved heads.  So did the shivering young couple and the African god and Nubian princess and the bicycles and backpacks and even the damn sousaphone. 

Here, disaffected sneers and guileless smiles mingle.  Hemp sandals and Doc Martins walk together.  Here is the disenchantment of youth still in possession of innocence.  And here is its not always youthful result, a counter-culture life that rejects the perceived suffocation of conventionality.  All is kinetic here and from this place the rest of the world seems only so much restrained potential.  But restrained by what?  Mortgages and careers and appearances?  I doubt the question is considered.  Here it simply seems that some amorphous consensus has been reached that conventionality is conventionally dull.   

So, as I said, I’ve sat drinking for a while now.  About nine o’clock I noticed someone else alone and not moving.  He was completely unremarkable with reddish brown hair, a three day beard and blue eyes.  He was dressed in jeans and a “Flogging Molly” tee shirt and seemed to have spotted an acquaintance through the glass that separated the bar from the patio.  What seemed like a dozen lightning quick expressions flashed across his face as he looked into the warm glassy glow.  I followed his gaze to the source of his turmoil and understood instantly.  She was tiny and shiny against a dark wood and leather background.  A silver ring on every finger, a pierced lip and delicate tattoos disappearing up her arm into a gauzy white shirt announce that she was in her element.  Yet she remained distinct, among but not of, pearl in oyster. 

Her green eyes fixed on something the neither I nor my surreptitious new friend could see.  My gaze switched continuously from lovely her to uncertain him.  He stood too tense, so focused that I wasn’t sure that he would be able to retain any semblance of composure when she finally spotted him.  Her head began to turn, a delicate jaw line and full lips forming a smile as my friend’s hand raised to a soft wave.  He began to move forward and then froze in half stride and half smile and half wave as another guy intruded into our private scene.  He, like this place, somehow combined dark heat and openness- an amiable and disjointed jumble of inexplicable charm.  He stepped smoothly between her knees as she sat on a barstool and gave her a light kiss and comment.  She gave him a soft smile and shined even brighter. 

As her life continues, my new friend’s slams to a stop.  I watch him closely, a vulture looking to feed on shock or disappointment or anger or disgust or loathing or ANY pain.  I wait but he stands there, frustrating me, angering me with his lack of response.  He just drops his hand and casually rubs his neck as if that’s all he was doing in the first place.  There is no scowl, no grimace or cursing under his breath or appeal to his god or even defeated scrutiny of the sidewalk before him.  My mind screams at him to do something, although I have no idea what.  And I don’t care what. 

But instead of defeat or anything else, I recognize the vacuum.  I see that he’s yet another that has found the switch, the ability not to feel when the only experience available seems to be pain.  He thinks that numb is better than pain.  He thinks that numb is not dead.  I see that in his blank expression as we watch some other guy’s darkness light her.  He turns and continues down the sidewalk. 

She should have hurt him.  Not intentionally or casually or thoughtlessly.  Just naturally.  But she didn’t.  She couldn’t.  He’s gone.  Perhaps one day someone will bring him back.

In the mean time, I like it here.  Think I’ll have another drink.

Note:  Sean's really good.  Check him out.
http://www.sacredhearttattoo.com/Artists/Little5Points/SeanRains.aspx