Holidays

I went out late yesterday for a stroll on the Boulevard to see the holidays in progress.  I've not found the time before.  I should have.  Oh, people were pretty and happy, full of money and holiday cheer.  I ran into a friend of mine who owns a couple of businesses including a reportedly very cool lounge above his downtown store.  I say "reportedly" because I have never been which is a source of some friction between us.  He was with his wife and daughter sitting at a sidewalk cafe table having hot chocolate.  I sat down for a moment to chat.

As we talked, I watched the beautiful women stroll by.  There may have been men.  I don't know.  I don't think so, though.  Not many.

"You need a girlfriend," my friend said.  "We've got to find you a girlfriend.  Why don't you come to the bar?"

"I don't stay up that late," I told him.

His wife said, "Come at nine."

"He'll be the only one there," her husband spat.  "Everyone will think he's a cop."

And so we chatted as my eyes went here and there, his nine year old daughter wanting all the attention.  She put her phone to my face and took a photo.  Then she put it into an app.

"Let's see what our baby would look like if we got married," she said.  She put her picture with mine and pushed a button.

"Who gave her that?"

"She downloaded it," her mother said.

Next she told me to put my finger on a square on the screen.

"Wait!  What are you doing, taking my fingerprint?"

"No.  It's a poop predictor.  It will show what your poop looks like."

In a second, a big, night-vision image floated across her screen.  That's when her parents yelled at her and told her to sit down.  She's a beautiful little girl.  What the hell?

"You should meet the girl we just hired to run the Boulevard store.  She's single and looking for a nice guy."

Her husband started grinning and shaking his head.  "Uh-uh," he chuckled.  "She's not your type."

"Why?" asked his wife.

"She's. . . an alien."

I tried to look serious, like a fellow who cares nothing for looks but only about the person inside.  Of course his wife was looking at him as if he were Goering or worse.

"I'm O.K.  I'm not searching for anything.  Somebody will find me. . . or not.  But I don't get a kick out of dating.  It's awful."

"You need a girlfriend.  My stock broker, the guy that helps me lose all my money--he works right upstairs here--he looks worse than you.  He's a Jewish nerd [my friends are Jewish], never been outside, skinny, awful.  He hasn't kissed a girl in twenty years.  So he goes to yoga and meets this beautiful woman and they start dating.  I haven't met her, but everyone is talking about her.  And really, you should see him."

"Worse than me, huh?

"He's not like us."

His wife was looking at me with concern.

Their daughter, bored with it all, was calling for attention.  "Why does he need a girlfriend?"

"I don't," I told her.  "It's all silliness," I said as I watched another woman walk by.

In a bit, I took my leave.  It was time for dinner with my mother.

Later, driving home, as I passed Country Club College, a big crowd was walking away from the chapel.

"Shit," I cursed.  "Vespers."

I used to go to Vespers every year.  The college chapel feels like something from the middle ages.  I always loved to sit in the hard pew in the semi-dark and listen to the songs, transported into some timeless place of tranquility.  I would have been clergy, I think, in the Dark Ages.  What else would there have been?

But I had missed it now and there would be no tranquility this year.  My timing is off, I thought.  I am terribly out of synch with things.

Today, I begin a new week of work, a week away from the holiday throng.  There are only a few weekends like this left before the year is finished.  What am I doing?  What have I done?