Sundays and beer go together in downtown Laguna

Sunday afternoon and The Marine Room on Ocean Avenue smelled strongly of beer from a block away. Lots of middle-aged men and women eyeballed one another, either contemplating a roll on the mattress in some nearby apartment, or walking away to sober up for Monday's work, the sensible choice but so monotonous perhaps. Inside, it was noisy and the beer was flowing---the band was on a break but not the people. So nice for me to not be inside, but to be strolling past with my son, happily married at long last. The tipsy Sunday crowd with their sexy tops and flashy shirts reminded me that I hung out on Sunday afternoons too in bars, not often, but enough. It was in Manhattan Beach and I was much younger than these hardened but hopeful LB players. Yeah, it was fun, but the music, drinks and sexy banter wore off with a sickly taste at sunset, like cotton candy when you're hungry, sweet fun with an aftertaste of emptiness.
I don't judge single people as hard as many married people do, because being single is damn hard sometimes and we are not meant to be alone all the time. As much as I enjoyed living alone and my solitude, which I truly did because I am just made that way, there were times when loneliness would gather like an unseen mist, filling the air in my apartment and although I was mostly a sensible girl with strong willpower, which saved me from a lot of mistakes, now I understand how people might do things to push that alone feeling back for just a short while, 'til they can go to work Monday morning and forget it again.