I could tell you a story about a boy and a girl who promised their hearts and souls to each other and how she rolled her eyes at him when he said he would be the best lover you ever had.
“Men always say things like that.”
“I’ll love you longer, harder and deeper in the wordiest sense of the words. If I really give you my heart you’ll never experience anything like it. You’ll get the 1982nd greatest love letters ever written.”
She laughed, called him a dork and asked if she was addicted to him again.
“As if you ever stopped.”
She rolled her eyes again and they exchanged a look that would pass between them forever after. You know the one where you see two people connect on the deepest level.
The one where words are superfluous and you feel like you are intruding.
Wrote the words above on the back of a matchbook in a hotel in Atlanta.
Someone, somewhere is going to read that line and think nothing of it because they remember when such books were common and then suddenly they’ll recognize it is 2020 and wonder if anyone still gives out matches.
They might even ask if I have started smoking and I’ll say only when I watch that fabulous movie Parasite or Bird man.
None of will make sense but life rarely does to those who consider themselves most logical and most rational.
Only the truly practical can follow the madness of a man and his words on a page.
Or maybe Jericho or June can do such things because the ability to solve for X while wearing a ketchup stained apron while making meatloaf provides such abilities.
****
The younger Mr. Wilner marveled at my ability to spin a few yarns earlier this day and asked how I could roll out the tales with reckless abandon.
“Son, it is a gift or maybe it is a curse. Maybe it is a cursed gift but whatever the hell it is I know it to be mine.
I earned these stripes when I kissed a girl with curly hair so hard it straightened out on its own.”
“Dad, I really don’t want to hear that.”
“Ok, you are right, she kissed me first even though she sometimes denies it.”
“I don’t really want to hear that either.”
“Sorry son, the echoes of that kiss are the thunderclaps you hear in the sky. The gods were so impressed by that moment almighty Zeus immortalized it.”
“Dad, you are a little nuts.”
“No, I am a lot and I don’t care who knows it.”
He nodded his head and asked me to stop dancing in the middle of Sprouts.
“Be happy I don’t make tango my way to the register.”
“I’d rather not have to see you get arrested.”
“I said tango, not lambada.”
“Ok dad.”
Final Words
It has been a brutal stretch of time and yet something quite exciting.
I feel a bit like Ralph, you know the guy from The Greatest American Hero.
Got that suit on and am flying through space but just like Ralph I haven’t quite figured out how to use it so I am flying through buildings and don’t ask what the landings look like.
The suit gives some protection but it doesn’t prevent a certain amount of nicks, scrapes and bruises from being bestowed upon yours truly.
I am still mostly bullet proof but not like I once was and so I find myself covered in the dust and debris of the crap I have flown through.
More demolition man than dancer but fighting to learn a little grace and less lumber.
And so it goes.
