The Car Crash Effect- Chapter Three

Ryan Masters was a white guy from New Orleans. He was intelligent, hardworking, sensitive and responsible. But he wasn't all bad- He was awkward, resentful, obsessive, petty, narcissistic and healthily depressed.

All of these qualities were radiating brilliantly from him as he withdrew into the murmuring, almost inactive din of twilight in the bar.

He sourly whisked down another whiskey sour before unhappy hour could draw to a close. He grimmaced as his least favourite song burst into life from the jukebox's random selection, and the soft notes mingled with the haze of cigar smoke and drunkenness to give the distinct and unsettling sensation that he wasn't floating. He wretched wretchedly and placed another drink order.

"Ryan, stop drinking, man- You've had way more than enough." He heard James tell him from a distance and felt his hand clasp his shoulder.

Ryan turned to face him and was so stunned to find his friend only one bar stool away that he almost fell, but saved himself from humiliation by clutching wildly at the floor for stability.

Looking up at James, it was obvious to Ryan that it was in fact his friend who had had too much to drink- He was swaying unpredictably from side to side in a different direction to the general direction in which the rest of the bar was heaving, and was even so inebriated that he was beginning to blur at the edges. Ryan concluded that he had never seen anyone so drunk, and proceeded to eloquently and subtly inform his friend of this.

"Fuck off, you abortion" he announced. He clambered back onto his throne of a barstool. That damn song was still playing. He had to be the only person in New Orleans who didn't like jazz music.

He grinned elatedly to see a whiskey sour waiting for him on the bar. The door opened, and the quiet from the quickly darkening street outside poured in, followed by two dishevelled looking young people.

"Look, Ryan, it's obvious that you're in a bad place right now, but this isn't the way to deal with it" he heard James saying, again sounding so far away. The drunkard.

From what Ryan could see, however, he was in quite a wonderful place. The mahogany surface of the bar was glossy and beautiful and with as many whiskey sours as you could pay for. The padded, mottled red carpet blissfully broke all falls and no glasses, and showed none of the unsightly stains that had been trodden into it over the years. Almost entirely vacant, the bar was accordingly peaceful and spacious. The only other inhabitants were a grisly old gent with a cigar, untamed white hair, a stained white moustache and a wrinnkled blue suit who sat at the other end of the bar, peering into his glass of scotch looking for his dignity through extinguished eyes, and the new arrivals, who sat at one of the unoccupied tables.

Neither of them looked older than twenty. There was a very slight woman who was drowning in a grubby cream sweater. Her lifeless hair was seering blonde and she had a tragic face adorned with humble, glacier blue eyes. Her male companion had generic brown hair and shifty, brown, generic eyes. He looked remarkably unremarkable.

The room that was spinning increasingly rapidly above them was a euphoric blend of oak oanelled walls and billiard lights and ornamental road signs and liscense plates and comfortable looking pool tables and wainscotting and relaxing lighting. The backs that the barstools lacked made slumping lecherously over the bar exquisitely comfortable, and the footrests that extended from them were set at just the right height.

Ryan concluded that yes, he was in fact, indeed and actually in the most wonderful of places, and he proceeded to eloquently and subtly inform his friend of this.

"Shut up, or I'll punch you in the nipples" he slurred.

James looked at his shell of a friend; admiring Rachel's handiwork. She really had screwed him up. If he could dismantle people this effectively, then he'd have been less of a failure as a teacher. Or at least a better failure. Perhaps even a spectacular failure, assuming he worked hard at it.

Born in 1976, in the kind of August that you only ever hear about in blues songs and need photographs to recall, and even when you do so you do so only nostalgically, Ryan Masters was the classic un-American youth.

Having been born too late for the cause and movement of the sixties and too early for the change and rebellion of the nineties, he had endured a film-noir childhood amid the riotous apathy of the eighties. His father, John, had been a labourer on an oil rig and his mother Louise was a gossip. Together, they brought in just enough money to keep him in clothing and out of luxury. They wanted the best for their son in the worst possible way; that way that only parents can achieve. They undermined, criticised and pressured him, as a loving and supportive family does.

Being an adolescent in the eighties, Ryan was a member of the first generation priveleged enough to be able to enjoy their childhood memories in technicolour.

It was in this colourful manner that Ryan Masters reflected on his mother during his father's absences on the oil rigs out in the gulf.

He vividly recalled her, strong stanced and stern faced, hands agressively locked so hard to her hips that they must have left notches in her waist. Her beehive of black hair was unfashionable even then and enhanced the intimidation that emanated from her accusing, raven-black eyes. Her pallid complexion and hooked nose were always in an indignant rage about something, and her thick lips were tinted an angry scarlet. He could never picture her clothed in anything other than an unfashionable fifties style red-on-white polkadot dress beneath a flawlessly pressed red and white striped apron.

She would ominously manifest herself in such a guise before a backdrop of either the kitchen or a judgmental discussion with a neighbour over the garden fence.

"You don't study enough" she would shriek lovingly; concerned that her son would end up on drugs if he were to venture onto the streets. "You're letting your grades slip, Ryan. Are you taking drugs?"

The boy's father, John, grew increasingly concerned about how smooth around the edges his son was growing up to be.

"Boy, you study too much" he'd drawl condescendingly. "Shit, it's almost as if you was on drugs." Ryan's only recollections of his father involved him bestowing this judgement upon his son from the door frame of the boy's bedroom as Ryan perched over one textbook or another.

The week long visits with which John Masters graced his family every four months always began with his inspection of his son in such a manner; his six and a half feet of slenderness silhouetted from the hallway. Clad in uniform blue overalls and white t-shirt with uniform grease stains, he would run a hand through his receding mousey brown hair and analyse the room silently with his pale green eyes, set weakly upon the crest of a tide worn and wind creased face, noting his son last of all.

He was a bust of passivity and would spend the short time he was in the house creating static electricity and body odour on the threadbare fabric of the couch, drinking beers in the systematic fashion that only a peon on a production line of some kind could have mastered so thouroughly.

And now; following in his father's footsteps, Ryan sat in the same hunched posture, efficiently drinking so as to mask the taste of his profound dissatisfaction, and wearing the same powerful scent of Day Without Shower, safe in the knowledge that it wasn't bedsweat as long as he was out of bed.

Rachel had really left him, like he always denied knowing that she would. And now he had nothing left.

He despised the woman, and no longer felt love when he thought about her. On the other hand, he couldn't unleash his anger and hate her, because he was madly and pathetically in love with her. Her lawyers had won her a Hilton's ransom in alimony payments, and perhaps almost as badly, she had taken his children and forced him to take them back two weekends out of every month.

His face was a bust of passivity as he slumped over the bar and put down an empty glass loudly.