Keuyeup

I left early from the farewell party for the funniest, most unhinged, most alive person in the office. And I didn’t really know how to stay in a room celebrating someone who was about to disappear from my daily life without feeling quietly wrecked about it. So yeah. Sometimes we need to lose ourselves. But only so we stop pretending we were ever fully found.

—

I noticed the light before I noticed him. For a moment, I thought I wasn’t alive anymore. Then Barong spoke.

“Why are you staring at me like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“This is a bar.”

“Exactly.”

“Sit down.”

I sat. “Can I get a Four Horsemen?”

He looked at me the way bartenders look at people who are about to emotionally inconvenience themselves.

“Are you mad at your life or just bored?”

“Yes.”

He started pouring. “You know that’s four spirits in one glass.”

“Yeah. I like my drinks like I like my problems. Stacked.”

Four Horsemen is basically four liquors: whisky, tequila, rum, and gin. It tastes like your liver just sighed.

He slid it over. “This drink is not here to support you.”

I took a sip and immediately went, “Oh.”

“What.”

We stood there quietly for like two minutes. I started noticing everyone else in the room also looked like angels, just really good lighting giving everyone accidental halos.

Then I said, “I saw a sewer crab today.”

He blinked. “A what.”

“A crab. In a drain.”

“Why were you in a drain?”

“I wasn’t in the drain. I was near the drain. The crab was in the drain. Don’t twist the narrative.”

He leaned on the bar. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t know. It felt important at the time.”

“How.”

“It was just… sitting there. Like it had — .”

“A crab.”

“Yes. A crab.”

He stared at me. “You’ve had one sip.”

“Exactly. Imagine me at two.”

I continued, “It was — ”

“You’re getting bullied by wildlife now.

“We made eye contact.”

“You made eye contact with a sewer crab.”

“….”

I took another sip. “I think that crab is doing better than me.”

“That crab lives in a drain.”

“And yet.”

He sighed. “You always do this.”

“Do what.”

“You see one weird thing and suddenly it’s a whole thesis.”

“Yeah. Published.”

“You’re yapping.” I looked at the glass. At the stupid halo light.

And my brain went, what if I kidnapped all the sewer crabs and took them to the beach. Just me, a tote bag, and thirty confused crustaceans watching the ocean like, bro this is too much space.