Impress Me With Your Cartwheels

A very drunken man has just left my bar. I accidentally gave him alcohol before I realised how drunk he was. He looked at me too intensely as if he'd forgotten himself. His mouth twitched like there were words inside that wanted to come out.

"I must've seen you a million times before - what do you do in this town?" He finally gets out.

"Dogging." I think, but say, "Work here." I ask him the same question and God knows what he thinks but he says, "I'm unemployed at the moment."

I take a sip of my soda water and start to wonder what I'm going to drink next. The drunken man is still looking at me.

"Have I done something to annoy you?" He asks aggressively. "Am I annoying you? Because if I am I'll leave, I'll leave right now!"

"No, it's fine." I say.

"I'm probably just being paranoid... I suffer from terrible anxiety... But I've drank too much, I've had too much vodka... I drank it before I came here." He sounds almost proud for a tiny second, then says, "I must go."

He slides his pint over the bar to me and I nearly say welldone, but stop myself. If I said it he'd know that I thought he was doing the right thing, that I'd thought about him.

I pour the beer down the sink.

"D'you want some water instead? Or coffee?"

"No, no, I've drank too much, I'll have to go..." He leans closer to me and in a quiet voice asks me if I'm upset. "I've not done anything to annoy anyone have I? I haven't upset you? If I'd upset you I'd..." He trails off and kind of jerks his neck in a way that makes me think it would really kill him if he had.

"I'm not really very impressed with the world." He says finally, pressing his lips together and raising his eyebrows expectantly. And I wonder if there's room behind this bar to do a cartwheel.