The Paddlewheeler

CHELSEA COMEAU

—for Lara

It’s the kind of bar where the doors stick on the bathroom stalls and you crawl on your hands and knees across the tile floor to get out. It’s the kind of bar where everyone taking pictures in the mirror above the sink has been waiting all night for the perfect lighting and Snapchat filter to finally feel beautiful. Your friends request Bob Dylan because it’s your birthday, and the house band plays Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.

It’s not the kind of song you would usually dance to, but you do because it’s Bob fucking Dylan.

There’s a carved helm from an old boat mounted to the wall above the front door. A spider nests between the spokes and gives birth to a thousand eight-legged specks who spin and hang from their own silver threads like small black stars. You order a beer called Bodhisattva because the name resonates with you on a spiritual level.

And at the end of the night when no one has come over to your table to ask for your number, a friend’s mother drives you home, and you strip down to your underwear in the dark in your bedroom. There’s no one sleeping next to you, but the window is wide open, inviting in the night, the clipped-nail moon, the smell of a man walking by below smoking his last cigarette.