The Gravity of Smoke

🌒

Night has a different kind of gravity. In the basement of a dingy college pool hall, this gravity settles into the walls, thick as smoke and twice as heavy. It wraps around one’s shoulders, seeps into one’s hair, clinging to one’s clothes, and it slides into one’s lungs like an old sorrow.

To this day, I still find myself dreaming of that smoky room where I spent most of my college career. Not the way it looked exactly—but the way it felt. Like limbo. Like a lost memory. Like a place built entirely from what we couldn’t say out loud.

We all had our reasons for coming:

Some searched for life.

Some searched for escape.

Some searched for something even they couldn’t name.

Regardless of the reasons, we were all trapped—seduced by the siren’s song, captivated by the murals’ eyes.

The battered wooden door shared a narrow hallway with a set of equally unassuming stairs. They were deceptive partners. The entrance promised shelter. The stairs promised an escape. But once inside, it was the smoky murals that held us, watching silently from the dirty, cool brick walls, never blinking, never speaking—just witnessing.

Every time we paused in the street just before entering, the warm pale light that tumbled from the stairwell felt like the last defiant promise of life reaching through the darkness. The hypnotic music poured out onto the concrete like a spell. They enticed us by promising we’d only stay for a little while: Just one drink. Just one game. Just one story.

And yet, we always stayed.

It wasn’t until I came face to face with the smoky murals that peered down from the dirty, cool brick walls that I began to realize the enormity of their deception. Once we descended down the stairs to the old pool hall, We were always meant to stay.

🕯️

The decaying wooden floors creak beneath the inconsistent shuffle of inebriated feet.

Abandoned bottles and glasses line the walls like forgotten offerings.

The dusty ceiling fans whirl quietly above, maliciously prodding a submissive breeze.

The silhouettes are as varied as their voices. Anonymous faces from every walk of life, their paths converging here, in this half-lit purgatory.

Murmuring voices layer and blur into a mosaic of sound—transformed into a soft, inaudible hum that rises and falls beneath the pounding music from a greasy black box in the corner.

It’s only during the rare moments when someone neglects to feed the machine that the bar breathes. In that unplanned hush, you remember: these are lives. These are people.

This smoke filled room is the thread that binds them. For a few fleeting hours their lives are intertwined. They are the web of life

👁️

Richard steps back from his game of nine-ball for a brief rendezvous with his gin and tonic—Sapphire only, always on the rocks.

He comes to observe. And he comes to play.

He plays like he lives—with an air of arrogance. After the last ball drops, he retreats to the corner booth and lights his favorite cigar. Puffing his El Producto, he stares at nothing in particular. Like the murals above, he is silent.

The first time I saw him, he piqued my curiosity.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” I asked.

“Sure thing, young lady,” he said. “Have a seat.”

I sat and found myself frantically sifting through the unending silence for something to say next.

“So, what’s a young lady like yourself doing drinking alone?” he asked.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I replied. He laughed with me, not at me. It was rare, and I tucked that laugh away.

As it turns out, this fifty-five-year-old part-time philosophy professor drinks alone to escape his perfect suburban house, his over-demanding course load, his grown-and-gone children, and his long-unpublished manuscript. He comes here to escape a life that has stopped making sense.

He comes here for what his house has lost—life.

🎱

Others come in search of the game.

They are the Players.

They talk their shit.

They flash their money.

They never miss a chance to throw out a shark’s name and brag about the last big game they supposedly won. They puff themselves up by stealing another man’s story.

There’s always someone nearby to lend them money—someone who knows that debt comes due eventually. The cost is always more than their reputations were ever worth. But they don’t care. They’re addicted.

These players come in droves to smoky bars just like this one, searching for their fix.

Only here… they find it.

They find him.

🔥

Tommy doesn’t come here for the drinks.

He brings his own Biggie tea from Wendy’s—it’s all that remains from dinner.

After a long day painting other people’s houses, he comes to unwind in the only place he knows.

He is the ultimate game.

He is the reputation no player can steal.

“He should go pro.”

“He’s never been beaten.”

“He won’t play you. Won’t play anyone. Took the wrong one. Won’t risk it again.”

“He’s scared. He knows he’ll win.”

Tommy doesn’t listen. Doesn’t answer. Doesn’t blink.

He plays himself and no one else.

Seven racks. Nine balls. Each sunk in perfect order. Then he leaves.

Night after night, he does the same.

Always seven. No more.

He walks home under the stars to let out his cocker spaniel, Buddy.

He brings no beer. No money. No bets. No trash talk.

Just pure, unmatched talent.

Practiced perfection.

🍺

Not everyone comes searching for the perfect game. Some come here in order to escape the consequences of their choices.

The first night I met Sarah, she tried to convince me that God had made our arms long enough for a reason—so we wouldn’t need a man for anything.

I didn’t know it then, but she tells that story to everyone after her seventh or eighth beer.

Every time I see her, it’s as if she never left. In my mind, she will be nursing the same Labatt Blue for the rest of eternity.

She’s usually loud, confident.

But tonight, she is slouched on her regular bar stool, defeated.

I slide onto the one beside her and greet her in my chirpy, annoyingly sugary voice.

“Hey Sarah! What’s up?”

She looks up at me as though nothing in the history of the world has ever changed and says flatly, “Not much. I’m pregnant.”

She doesn’t know who the father is. Doesn’t care. She is sure her baby doesn’t need a man either. They, her dogs and her unborn child, will be just fine on $5.75 an hour in their one-room apartment.

Despite her self-assured words and her defiant tone, we all know the truth.

Sarah, in silent desperation, has come here tonight to drown her fears.

🕳️

Then there are those who can’t seem to escape at all.

Steve is one of those.

He’s good. Too good.

He can win—but only beer. And that’s all he wants.

He is pale, thin, and dirty. He can’t afford to feed himself, but he has a hundred-dollar stick and just enough hustle to keep his glass full.

You always know when he’s had a good night. He’ll come up behind you, lightly touch your hair, offer a sincere compliment—and vanish again.

Everyone vanishes for brief periods here.

Even the bartenders.

Chris was the first to come and the first to disappear.

Bartenders aren’t allowed to drink, so he takes his breaks in the dark alley behind the half-empty parking lot. He nervously scans the dark lot, takes one last drag off his joint. It is as if he hides from some unknown.

He’s is trapped behind the bar. He can’t escape. He needs the tips. He has no other options.

He quenches his cottonmouth and dusty dreams with bottled water from the bar’s tap. He is forgotten talent.

He used to dream of making movies. Even chased those dreams to Los Angeles once. But he came back. The big city lights frightened him so badly that he now only works in the dark.

He stands behind the dark and sticky oak bar and watches. He is alone, separated from everyone else. He fills other people’s glasses while his remains empty. He listens to everyone’s problems but never speaks of his own.

At the end of the night, he collects the abandoned glasses, dumps the overflowing ashtrays. He knows that it is time to go home when he hears the muffled sounds of birds singing. But, before he goes, he pours himself a double of Seagram’s Dry Gin and toasts the sleeping murals. Then he disappears again.

Lisa takes his place. Then Brian. Then someone else whose name I can’t quite remember.

🕊️

And me?

I couldn’t resist the stories.

Tons of stories I recorded on borrowed scrap paper and dirty bar napkins. Stories I normally discarded in the light of the new day.

Still, I return night after night. Still here. Still sitting. Still listening. Still writing. Night after night.

But tonight is different.

Tonight the room feels tired. The smoke thinner. The silence louder. Heavier.

Tommy’s gone.

Richard’s booth is empty.

Sarah’s bar stool sits cold.

Even the jukebox hums with hesitation.

I sit with my back to the the bar, facing the murals, feeling their gaze. Waiting for them to blink. Waiting for something to change. A good old staring contest.

And then I realize—nothing here will ever change.

I’ve built my life inside other people’s stories. Collected them like bones, framed them like relics. Pretended I was studying, documenting, becoming something more.

But I was hiding.

And the smoke knew it.

There’s a kind of inertia in this place that masquerades as gravity. It convinces you to stay. To haunt instead of move. To remember instead of live.

The sun is rising. I can feel it in my lungs.

Someone feeds the jukebox one last song. A bartender flips the stools. A broom begins to scrape the floor.

And I don’t stay.

For the first time since the begining, I rise before the music ends.

Climb the creaking stairs. Step out into the new dawn slowly dissolving the dark in preparation for the new day ahead.

The murals can’t follow me here. The stories are still with me, but they are no longer mine to carry. I carry only what I choose now. And I choose to leave.

I choose to carry on in the light of a new sun: The path forward illuminated.

🌅