The Evening

This is a place of family, a tight knit community of strong and dedicated people. Tonight we lift, hard and heavy, and then we dine, on Maine's finest delicacy: fresh lobsters from beneath the black waves. We devour the large red insects, slurping out the smallest pieces of protein dense muscle, splattering brine across our shirts and shorts, laughing as we crack the toughest shells and knaw at cartilage. We young litters eat the most, in fact I personally had five of the crimson beasts. It was a meal fit for a king and large enough for the court.

And as the sun goes down, Ivan hands out carefully kept Cuban cigars from a polished mahogany case. German and Nick take them eagerly, clipping them with careful touch and bathing their tips in fire. They puff slowly, savoring the foreign taste in their cheeks.

Then, Ivan pours the rum, a Guatemalan rarity one would never find on US soil. Its from his private collection, an eclectic variety of expensive liquors from around the globe. The lifters sip and puff, and I sit and feel the cool yet remarkably humid evening air. We talk of lifting, and heavy weights, yet as the sky grows dark we forget about that world for a bit. Our aching knees and sore hips vanish from our minds, and amongst the coming night we are free from the kilos, released from beneath the bar.

In this place, just a shallow dip into maine's vast borders, we live in a world all our own. The red plates, the boiled lobster, and cigar smoke make our lives, and allow us to live in peace with ourselves and those who share our love.

We are together, under the bar, and the rising moon.