Something Unrembered

I did walk as I said I would.  I walked to the gym and worked out, and walked back home, a seven mile roundtrip.  I wanted to be home before I was.  But I had walked there in the dead of winter and was walking back in glorious spring.  It was one of those most beautiful southern days with the deepest and bluest of skies that overwhelm you with the inequity of its beauty.  When I reached home, the Camellia tree had broken into bloom.  It took me by complete surprise.

I have been getting emails again from women I know.  These are wonderful things, of course, for they are fodder for thought and imagination, and when I have responded with some profundity or lyrical miracle, I feel as if I have accomplished something for that day.  It is much different than writing a blog, of course, for you have particular rather than universal things to share.  And the details can be much more inflammatory, provocative, or even raunchy.  I have much missed this writing.  Funny, eh?  Remember when email was considered an intellectual death?  Now it seems a sign of genius.

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That was the morning.  The afternoon lunch and walking down the Avenue was like looking into the store mirrors when trying on clothes.  The lights are bright.  You see the flaws.  Is it your hair?  And the skin looks bad.  You try not to look at your belly, your thighs.  Shit, you think on that fine Saturday in the store, I have to begin living differently.  When did I become this?  I must be outside more. I will ski/surf/bike/rollerblade/run/kayak/climb/play ball of any sort.  I will get fit again.  Everything will be better.  Everything will change.  

That is what walking down the Avenue alone on the brightest and clearest and sunniest of days did for me.  Sidewalk tables were full of happy people eating and drinking and laughing.  I felt my gait that of someone kicking puppies out of the way.  I vaguely remembered better times.

And so I called an old friend to see if he'd like to have an early dinner.  I have known him a long time but have not seen him often in the past few years.  We have climbed mountains in exotic lands, skied in the chiciest of places, played cards at the gambling tables, kayaked wild rivers, fly fished isolated streams.  Etc.  

We met at the restaurant.  I haven't been out like this for years.  I sat waiting for him at the bar and, of course, instantly fell in love with the bartender.  I wanted to marry her.  I remembered that I always fell for waitresses and bartenders the way doctors fall for nurses.  There was a second bartender, shorter, more shapely, prettier in some ways, too, but she was not for me.  No, no, the one I liked--my bartender--she was something else.  

My buddy arrived and immediately decided we should eat at the bar.  "What the fuck," he posited, "I want to sit and look at you?"  And so we ate and drank and began to catch up.  And as the evening wore on, I became more and more depressed.  It was all there, the same customers, the same barmaids, the same witty repartee.  It didn't interest me.  The restaurant was a good one, but the food was not persuasive.  I pour better drinks at home.  

As the dinner disappeared, the conversation wore down.  "You want to go someplace else for a drink?" my buddy asked.  I didn't and I could tell that neither did he.  And so we settled up and stood on the sidewalk talking for half an hour more, people we knew saying hello and joining for a minute or two.  But it all meant nothing.  And then shaking hands, we parted with the obligatory "call me, we'll get together" mantras.  

Standing alone in the night, I knew I wanted to do something, but for the life of me I could not tell you what.  I only knew the contrary.  At least there was that, I thought.  At least I know what I do not want to do.  I was certain.  

At home, everything was the same.  The cat was stretching on the chair at my arrival, too lazy to get up but letting me know she was available for petting.  The cable station was still playing jazz.  There was all that, but I could not think of the other thing.  What was it?  It's been a long time.  Maybe I'll remember soon.  Or maybe that is all over now, whatever it was.  Maybe all that is gone.