The Rose Colored Bottle

The Rose Colored Bottle

He relives his glory days through a rose colored bottle. With a muddled
grasp at memory, he swallows another drink and despite the waning years
of age, he becomes youthfully handsome again, strong and
vigorous.
He conjures up old girlfriends, some gorgeous, and some during lapses
in taste-borderline awful. There was a reputation he honed for
recklessness, like the time he rolled his old car purposely, or when he
jumped off a friends balcony to impress the girls at a party.
His hand caresses the bottle as he stares off in the distance, then
more tightly as his mind fixes on an image.
It is a girl, a beautiful girl, but the image is distorted from the
passing of time. Yet he remembers the dark shiny hair. Oh, and the
eyes-mysteriously dark and brooding. The lips are full and pouty, and
the body&;#8230;he just sighs.
He called her his renaissance girl. She reminded him of a painting he
saw in an Italian art gallery. He remembers it vividly as he raised the
bottle to his lips.
There, framed in his memory was the painting of an Italian peasant
girl, bent over slightly at the waist picking tomatoes in a field,
while her ample bosom was modestly covered behind a tattered knit
sweater, exposing a very discrete cleavage.
If one looked closely at the painting, you could see a tinge of red in
her eyes denoting flickering passion; the painter's symbolic design to
portray her with a fire of determination to change her station in
life.
Her name was Renee. She was strong, passionate, and possessed with a
fiery temper. And she was always striving to better herself, but was
never totally satisfied with her station in life. Maybe that's why she
left him, he sadly realized.
He takes another drink, then brings the bottle down on the table with
hard thud.
He knows she must be middle age by now, like himself. But he still sees
her, as she was then; soft, young, and pretty. He longs for her and
wonders if she ever thinks of him.
He takes another swig from the bottle and is disgruntled to find it is
almost empty. One bottle a night is his limit before his stumbles off
to bed. He might be too tired to remove his clothes, but he always
makes the effort to slip off his shoes, as if salvaging some measure of
his dignity. But, he'll make the most of his last drink, savoring every
swallow as it burns it's way down, and numbs his brain. He expects the
pain in his soul to diminish, making his sleep more bearable.
But inevitably, his memory regresses even further back to a time not so
pleasant, but extremely painful; to a time that only rears it's ugly
head when his demons appear.
There were those eyes again, not dark and alluring like Renee's, but
dark and ominous. They were the pupils of a lifeless and cold monster,
like the eyes of a predatory shark. He's looking into the eyes of his
father.
Now his body is rigid with anger and fear as he squeezes his hand
tightly around the bottle. He takes his last gulp-quickly this time and
his face becomes contorted with rage.
Now he's at the final stage in his inebriation, the blaming stage.
He'll blame his father for all the accrued pain and suffering of his
soul. With thickly slurred accusations he cries out to his father, "Why
do you hate me so much?"
Then he leans forward, gesturing wildly with swinging arms, as if he's
flailing for his demon's unseen. The accusations grow louder and more
acrimonious as he rises unsteadily from the couch and punches a hole in
the wall to match yesterday's, and wonders if he broke his hand this
time. He then falls on his knees, weeping and begging forgiveness for
not being a better son.
After crying himself hoarse, he looks up at the ceiling and with a
barely audible whisper from a completely dispirited heart, asks, "Why
Dad?"
Though his father has been dead for years, he still sees his face, hard
and glaring with condemnation.
With tears pouring from his face, he reaches for the rose colored
bottle on the table. It is empty. He wipes his eyes and mouth with his
sleeve and staggers off to his bedroom. Crashing to bed fully clothed,
he forgets to slip off his shoes.