Jesus's Son - Denis Johnson

Happy Hour

This short story is about a man who's in love with a belly dancer. The story doesn't actually go into much detail about the relationship between the two of them, but it is more about the days the man spends thinking about her. The main character is a sad "weird" man, who seems to ride the local bus to nowhere and spends two hours every night buying one beer to get another free during Happy Hour, hence the name. The man never tries succeeds in getting the seventeen year old belly dancer, but he does enjoy one night with her. A restless night spent sleeping next to the love of his life, named Angelique. Johnson also explains vividly the relationship that Angelique has with other people, not the main character. Angelique has a "brother" who isn't really her brother. This gives the reader idea that maybe she is emotionally unstable and can't have a "real" relationship for that reason. The reason the main character seems to be in love with the belly dancer is because she seems to have just as many problems as the main character himself. They both seem to be detached from reality, therefore attracting them to each other.

I thought that Denis Johnson did an amazing job at describing a bar scene in a poetic, unique way. Johnson uses a lot of devices that make his writing sound better and help the story to become more "alive". He uses a lot of alliteration and even rhyming, something that is usually seen in poetry, making this short story so unique. "Souls who had wronged each other were brought together here. The rapist met his victim, the jilted child discovered his mother. But nothing could be healed, the mirror was a knife dividing everything from itself, tears of false fellowship dripped on that bar." (101) This is an amazing description. Johnson uses this style of writing throughout all of his short stories, even in the last one, Dirty Wedding. He is describing the bar as a place where the "drop-outs" of society gather, although he says it in a way that almost makes the reader gasp, a reaction that most writers dream of.