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Marvin is close to just giving up. Every time he thinks he’s found a way to get it off his mind, he sees something that causes the memories to come crashing back. Marvin can’t stop thinking about him. About everything. About the night they met. About the night he left. About that baseball game and the racquetball matches and the nights in the hospital room. Snapshots and sound bites cycling through his brain like some sort of fucked up supercut. At this point, it feels like he’s tried a little bit of everything. He’s tried distraction techniques, therapy (he finally found a new psychiatrist) and support groups. He even tried meditation when his co-worker suggested it. Once, he tried forcing himself to move on, with some other guy, any other guy. But he could never go through with it. Everything he did, every road he went down, led right back to him.
Tonight, Marvin is using a method he’s attempted a few times before without success. One that requires a shitty bar, and a seemingly endless stream of shitty alcohol. But, like every time before, it isn’t helping a damn thing. Earlier in the night, he was missing him so bad he felt like he would vomit. Now, with far too much liquor in his blood, the only thing that’s different is that the vomit may not be a hypothetical.
“Hey,” some kid says, leaning against the bar next to him, “you here a-”
“No,” Marvin cuts in. He doesn’t even really look at him. But he knows that it won’t make a difference. It’s not like he’s getting many offers, but even the thought of sleeping with someone makes him feel even sicker than he already is.
“Don’t you-”
Marvin shoots him a glare. “I’m old enough to be your dad,” he growls, a noticeable slur in his speech. “Get lost.”
The boy’s expression is a mix of frustration and hatred as he scampers away to the next man that catches his eye. Marvin sighs and stares at the liquor bottles lining the wall behind the bartender. His eyes glaze over as he scans the bottles, not reading the labels, just watching the colors blur buy. No focus, no interruptions, no thinking: just a string of colored glass and labels that promote faux-sophistication. It’s calming. Kind of. Kind of gives him motion sickness. When he reaches the end of the line a few times, he lifts his glass to his lips and finishes it off with one final swig.
He barely manages to get up from the barstool, but after a couple stumbles, he manages to steady himself enough to make it to the door. He looks back into the bar from the doorway, all hopes of finding some peace tonight behind him now on the sweaty, pulsating dance floor. His eyes unfocus again as he watches the gyrating bodies, vague and absent, until it all seems to stop; the dancing, the music, everything. It’s as if time goes still, and now the only thing moving is one man, at the center of it all, turning his head and staring back at him with that cocky smirk and those teasing eyes and the hair that flips so charmingly with every motion. He’s wearing the light green shirt and brown, high-waisted pants and brown leather jacket he always used to wear. And he’s nothing more than a recreation --an apparition of alcohol and longing and regret--, but he’s there. And Marvin feels a lump build up in his throat and he feels his chest begin to tighten and he feels his eyes begin to sting. And then he feels himself smile. Genuine, warm, happy; like he hasn’t felt in far too long. And, after a second or so, Whizzer smiles back.