Thoughts on The Adventures of Sinbad and the Short Story "Checking In"

I think one of the first stories/books of fiction I ever read that triggered a sense of wonder and infinity were the "The Adventures of Sinbad" books. I’m not sure if I brought the book with me on the week-long trip north to Canada with my mom, her fiancé, my sister, and a few friends or if I pulled it from the rental house’s bookshelf (though I like that angle better) but really, I guess it doesn’t matter. What matters is that feeling I got of believing/seeing I could do anything and go anywhere if I just had the guts to get up and do it. Obviously, as an adult, I know it is not so easy to do, but as a kid, as a teenager with seemingly no reason not to think I too could be a brave sailor embarking on wild and extraordinary voyages filled with all kinds of challenges, love affairs, and miraculous escapes - originating from the Arabian Nights - was attainable.

Today, I ask myself, why lose that idea? Why lose that feeling? What’s so beneficial about holding onto reality? Does it get you where you want to go? Ever?

There is no single tale that sticks out to me, no singular moment or line or even character that acted like a launching point that sent me out to write about my adventures, my own life, be it via fiction or travelogues or some other medium but more so that it was down on the page at all. I didn’t know you could do that, and I surely didn’t think you could make a career out of it to the point where you could get paid and that everyone didn’t have the same motivation. But it’s true, and that feeling of wonder, infinity, and never-ending expansion and opportunity/freedom that comes when sitting down in front of a book if I’m reading or a blank page if I’m writing, is still there, albeit not all the time but there enough that I keep coming back. However, in” Checking In,” I tried to capture a little wonder, darkness, and edge in this story. I hope you like it.

Checking In

On Thursday nights, he headed down to his usual bar, where his no one knew him by his name but by his drink. Same old, same old, the locals always joked with him. And they joked with him a lot, calling him the recluse or the Hunchback of Norte Dame. It didn't bother him. Pain - teasing pain - was more of a right of passage. He shouldn't be in a bar if he couldn't take it. Taking a seat, he waved them off like the bar flys, all buzzing wildly and misdirected around tight bottlenecks and wide low balls, the same as their ancient ancestors, the fruit fly.

PBR and a tequila? the bartender asked.

Sure, he said. Why not?

The bartender nodded, went away for a second, and then returned. You look good. He placed the drinks in front of him. You look, rested.

Don't feel good, he says. How about you?

Sure, the bartender says. Ok as Ok can be nowadays.

He nodded.

Why don't you feel good?

I don't know, he said.

The others looked at him, neither worried nor offering help, simply observing. In some bars, people looked at you as if they could see your entire bloodline, almost down to the DNA to figure you out. He wondered if they could and then wondered why they would even care. Silence fell around him as he ripped the tequila back and sipped his beer, then exhaled.

Some evenings, time seemed to stop, and with no time, there was no forward motion, no growth.

Suddenly, he felt trapped in a kind of purgatory, where the past lingered because he could remember it—blessed and cursed to have lived and left his mark on the lineage of humanity. He thought of the few he’d met along the way: the bartender, the barflies, the ones at work, and, of course, his friends and family. Yet deep down, he knew that only a few would truly remember him—and even they, in time, would also be erased.

Finiteness refers to the quality of being finite, which means having bounds, limits, or a definite fixed size or extent. When faced with the contradictory state of time, the universe and all its stars and galaxies, which he knew we named from principles in ontology, epistemology, and ethics, tricking us into thinking we understand the nature of being, seemed like a cruel joke and exactly where he found himself before coming to the bar that night after a few drinks at home.

The bartender leaned into him, so his elbows dug into the wood. He could hear the bone press against the ash or maple, seemingly undisturbed by it. This made him question if the bartender could feel or was real at all, but before those thoughts spun out to a place he could not retrieve it, they said, I read a poet once who wrote,

We all get to be nobodies for a moment, and then we really do, forever.

Fun line, he said.

I thought you’d like it. The bartender smiled, looked over his shoulder at something, and then walked off to tend to the TV.

He sat there for a second or maybe a million sends when he felt something behind him.

Mr. Danger Danger, a familiar voice said.

He turned and saw a face he hadn’t seen since he’d last seen it. There was no emotion at first, just shock and surprise, which only heightened his fear. When that subsided, he gathered himself, inhaling and exhaling, his senses and ego telling him that he was here in the beer, here in the shot, the tequila, and that there were people around him that he knew (kind of), and that this person who called him Mr. Danger Danger knew him well enough to smile and even touch his shoulder and not kill him. Sometimes, that was enough in this world.

Hey, he said. How you been? He couldn’t quite remember where he’d seen or met him but that’s what drinking does to you in the same place for as long as he had been.

Can I sit? they asked.

He nodded without saying anything he could understand and looked at the bartender.

The bartender nodded and brought him another usual.

He stared at this individual and recognized his hard brow, etched as if with a chisel, along with his chapped and ripped lips and big ears and smell of tuna melt and stale beer. Red cheeks, too, blood pink like farm salmon, and eyes that had always been forced to say yes because they were always in the wrong place at the wrong time, usually by their own doing.

Long time, huh?

Could say that, yeah, they said.

He sensed he only knew them through drinking, and as they settled in, he remembered tiny details of their lives, almost like gathering small bits of sand dollars to make a whole.

How have you been? They asked, somehow already with a half-finished beer in front of them. Still writing?

He noticed a crescent moon scar on their hand. Its edges were faint and white and thin, curling just saw at its ends. A honk from outside made him instinctively turn and look. After a moment, he realized no one else had. The TV was playing a re-cast of an old sports game, and as they raised their hand to point at something he couldn't care less about again, he saw the crescent moon scar, still unable pinpoint where he’d seen it before.

But he knew it from somewhere; he knew he did.

Yeah, he admitted. Every day. It’s like a sickness, but I suppose most writers feel that way.

Everybody got to be cursed by something, they said. Imagine if you weren’t.

He thought of sweet cherry wine in the middle of a meadow on an afternoon that felt like it had fallen into their laps. They had stumbled upon a church or monastery, untouched by cell phones, emails, or any other connection to the outside world. In that moment, he felt he had found what he’d been searching for.

And yet, something held him back—perhaps the inability to understand what it meant to be truly happy. As she asked him about his life, his dreams, his past, and his future, he realized, sitting there on that barstool, that love always demanded good answers. But when he couldn’t give her a straight one, it became clear to both of them that he wasn’t in it the way she was.

So, he left.

The bartender came over and asked something, something neither of them paid much attention to. Maybe something about the game but sports lately had turned gray and meaningless, all sportsmanship so deluded by the dollar where even the crafter and efforts of mastery felt cheapened, deadend in some way. No, he didn’t like sports and how he noticed they didn’t budge or say anything in return to the bartender he assumed they didn’t give a damn either.

How you been then man? he asked, feeling the warmth of the tequila transmute into a psuedo-energy to socialize.

But they didn’t answer, at least not in the way he thought.

Don't give up, they stated flatly. Don’t let them take you to the other side of mediocrity. They finished their beer. Don’t.

He sat there, speechless.

You never know what to say, he remembered her saying. And I think that's why I love you: you're lost in life, making you so present in beauty and ugliness. It makes you speechless. But what are words but breathy symbols that don't come close to what we see with our two eyes? he remembered thinking, even as she held his hand so tight as one.

I gotta take a piss, they said, getting up. But listen to me, listen to what I said. More importantly, listen to yourself. Because if you want anyone to listen to you, you got to do it first yourself. Hear that, if you hear anything.

He was taken by their sudden flash of truth and brash, and seeing they looked like shit and barely knew one another, the honesty was jarring. They strolled to the bathroom, and he sat there, stupefied by it all. He tried to collect himself by taking a drink and looking around and at his phone, but his reality, at least the reality of what was now his past, was changed. After a few minutes, expecting them to return from the bathroom, he realized they were still in there.

He had to pee, so he got up and checked, but they were gone.

The bathroom was empty, and seeing there was no back door or window—not that the older man could ever get themselves up there—he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. They were gone

Where’d they go? He asked the bartender behind the bar, unaware of what he was going through.

Who?

The old guy I was talking to?

What old guy? It's just been you and Frank all afternoon. The bartender checked their watch. Late afternoon, I guess.

No, he insisted. The older man was sitting right here. He pointed at the empty bar stool. This was his fuckin’ beer, man.

He held up the bottle.

That’s mine, you somma’ bitch! Frank yelled from across the bar, tucked away like a hermit crab in their shell in one of the booths.

No, that's Frank’s, the bartender said.

Before his mind could tumble and fold within itself, the bartender poured him a tequila and winked.

One of those days, huh?

The bartender poured himself one, too, and as they met glasses, he noticed a similar crescent moon scar on the side of his own hand, identical to the one they had.

Don't give up.

He heard these words come from some other place.

Don’t let them take you to the other side of mediocrity.

He looked around, desperate for foundation when all words were gone. He knew that tone. He knew that voice.

That is not where you live. That is not where you are going. That is not your destination.

You always sound so serious, she would tell him in the middle of the night and early morning before they were off to work. Sometimes, it feels like I'm walking on eggshells, but I know that's you. I know that's you.

That is not where you want to die.

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