A bar isn’t home. It doesn’t feel like home; it can’t be home. That’s obvious, though, isn’t it? Hardly an observation worth stating at all except to call attention to just how far from home it feels.
You’re nursing a watery drink drowning in ice, sitting on a seat that’s just barely on the wrong side of comfortable, smelling someone else’s cigarette smoke and trying to appear vaguely approachable because social interaction is the reason you’re out here at all, right?
A bar is for drinking, sure, ostensibly, at least.
But you could drink way better at home, or you could grab a bottle of something halfway decent at a liquor store and take it back to your hotel room. Instead, you’re here. Surrounded by strangers and aimlessly uncomfortable.
You know why you’re really here, but you don’t know how to get it.
How do you tell someone you’re looking for home at a bar like this? That this is your hope to connect with anyone else who’s like you, who isn’t one of those humans you’ve been stuck trying to imitate.
Hell, just this little step scares you, and it’s barely anything at all. You could’ve found and visited a bar like this at any time in your life, but you waited until you were a thousand miles from home—in a city where nobody knows your name—before you mustered the courage.
You’re so afraid of me, aren’t you? You’ve finally admitted you have to embrace me, but you still haven’t worked out how. Are you hoping someone will just look at you and see me hiding inside and tell you what you need to know? You have to know it won’t be that easy.
It’s a miracle anyone takes pity on you, but he does, breaking away from the friends he arrived with to offer company to the lonely fool at the end of the bar.
Give thanks to the god of your choice; someone must have put their thumb on the scale for our sake.
He isn’t even all that charming—and not at all your type—but you were looking for an excuse to confess the truth to someone tonight, so he’s everything he needs to be.
You pour your heart out to him, and he…well, he’s kind of awful, but he’s not awful in the way people are.
He drags you away from your shitty drink and your lonely seat and anything like a comfort zone, out to where a small crowd has gathered.
Right there, a moon-drunk girl gives in to her primal urges. Right there, in broad view of the whole bar.
Gods above and below, it’s not even a full moon, but she’s putting on a show of going full feral for the crowd.
You can still see the lunys residue on her nose. Nobody cares about the drugs here, it’s all about the show.
Some poor fucker who was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time, already dead, throat ripped out, almost as much blood on the girl’s face and her dick and soaking into her fur as there is pooling in the ground around the body.
You’re ashamed of how aroused you are while you stare at her fucking that body to pieces.
Even here, where such things are celebrated, where you came to find others like yourself, you can’t let go of your shame, can you?
Your face flushes crimson while your new friend grins at you, baring his fangs, admiring the effect this show has on your poor repressed ass.
He tells you that he knows where you can get some lunys yourself, and for the first time in your life you consider it.
You came there looking to find someone like you, but you ended up going home with a guy who isn’t really the same as you at all. You probably shouldn’t just trust him, but you just need to know what it’s like, at least once, to feel as free as the girl in that bar.
Besides, at least he’s not human, right?
His apartment feels not that different from the bar. It still smells like someone else’s stale cigarettes and oozes discomfort. You ignore the piled dishes in the sink and the overflowing garbage can he leads you past.
He takes you to the room where, you guess, it’s going to happen, where he removes a little bag from a little drawer, lightly tossing it onto the table in front of you.
Like crushed moonlight, the contents of the bag shine and pull your attention from the stains on the sofa.
Before you even feel like you’ve properly worked up the nerve for it, he’s pushing something into your hand and guiding you to the line he cut. You wish he’d go first, but it’s not for him. Of course, this stuff wouldn’t do a thing for his kind. It’s all for you.
You snort it all—it goes down so easy, doesn’t it?—and then you’re out of the picture, and I’m finally out of my cage, and I’m ready to destroy this shitty little twink.
He’s not what I wanted. He’s not what we came for. He’ll have to do, though.
A creature like him is at least more durable than the typical human. I can tear into him almost all I like, and he keeps begging for more.
He barely bleeds, but he sure does scream while I knot him and bite deep into his shoulder and claw his back to ribbons.
The next day you wake up with a nasty hangover and another flood of that absurd shame of yours. You can’t decide whether you should regret this, if the fact that this was an affirming experience outweighs the fact that this was really not who you wanted to leave the bar with.
It doesn’t really matter, though, does it? It’s the first little crack in the wall separating us, and you’re out of your damn mind if you think I’m not wedging that crack wide open as hard as I can.
See? Even you can smile at that thought.