The Drunk Lady

She hadn’t realized how drunk she was until she stepped out of the door. For a woman of her class, she appeared, jutting out distinctively in a dull masculine den, dressed in relatively expensive boots – or they weren’t, who cares about the price of women’s boots – a tight fitting blue trouser and a cheap sliver-colored jacket. She also had a baseball cap, perhaps signaling her lack of patience in a salon, listening to women drone on and on about their marriage woes. She is too free and free spirited at that for idle talk spun by women under the cage of a masculine authority disguised as love.

You watch her walk out and stop by the door, her weak legs slowly giving in like faulty springs unable to sustain the weight above it. You watch her summon the last of her energy towards the wall and leans against it with all her might. With soaring empathy, you want to help her get home safely. She is mumbling under her breath and your vain attempts at lip reading – that’s why footballers cover their mouths when talking to one another – tells you that she saying; ‘shit. I am too drunk. Shit. Shit. I didn’t think I’d get to this level.’

Before you make your mind to help her, her guardian angel appears by the door and walks her out of the dinghy bar.  You can tell how much relieved she is for bringing a long a companion who’d become her feet when the toll of inebriation would disable her locomotive ability.

It is as if you know her. But your knowledge of her does not extend beyond hearsay. But then again, just like a church, nobody really knows anybody. He or she goes attends to church regularly, but you don’t know the demons they hide in their closets. You probably know who they are married to, and their children, and nothing beyond that. And for her, they said she is a soldier’s wife. And that she’s a Cleopatra in that den condemned by Christians for eternal condemnation. They said the soldier is in Somalia, probably a service man deep inside the heart of the devil.

You remember thinking that if it was true, that indeed her husband was indeed a soldier posted in Somalia, the he got a raw bargain. He’s dodging bullets to earn a living and support a wife who checks into a bar as early as eight in the morning. Every damn day, you will find her, ‘removing’ lock. On the rare days you checked in during such earl hours, you found her. As a man unable to project the same kind of moral standards on yourself, such a woman does not the definition of a true woman.