I woke up so late yesterday that I should have been rested, but I didn't seem to ever get my strength. Some days are just like that, though, and you wonder if you are ill or if you facing your last days. I felt myself floating, really, and after sitting through the morning, I decided to abandon all thoughts of exertion or exercise. I would merely linger through the afternoon and into the night. I had made arrangements to return to the studio that day, to meet a model, and perhaps that had something to do with my lassitude. It has been a long while since I've practiced that art, and in truth, I hate doing it. You might not realize this, but it is very, very hard. There are a billion fears to face, not the least of which is a lack of true talent. And then there is the other person's psyche to deal with, you never knowing what that will be like until the moment arrives. Every time, I just want to cancel, and never more than I did yesterday. Why wake from a long creative slumber? I felt more than ever the need to slumber.
Noonish. I showered and put on a pair of creative jeans and an artist's t-shirt, but it was chilly out, so I through on a piece of comfy fleece. I remembered that I needed to get a battery for the remote flash trigger, and I needed to get some of the big plastic sleeves so I could send a print off in the mail without its getting damaged. Why do I get nervous at the photo store? It is always true. I find it difficult to talk to "those people." It is weird because they are always nice and helpful. Well, not always. Maybe it is because when they aren't I'm a real asshole. It is a defense mechanism like sea cucumbers puking up their internal organs when attacked but probably more like a jellyfish releasing its barbed spicules. Perhaps just like both of those things. But I got the battery replaced then went to the art supply store where the story is much the same. I often want to ask them there what supplies I need to buy if I want to be an artist just to watch their faces contort, though I have a feeling they would help me fill up a grocery cart full of things.
And so after buying things to make me more of the artist I wish to be, I realized I hadn't eaten a thing after drinking the big pot of strong coffee. I was near a barbecue place my buddy had told me was the best he'd ever been to. I've not been eating like that but rather my healthy, high fiber "beans and greens" diet; however, the sky was pale and far away like it used to be in those long ago creative days, the air cool, the afternoon seemingly reaching out like a beautiful hand to eternity. My town is changing quickly in a direction I wish it had gone many, many years ago when I was younger and quite the figure, but it is changing now and there are many places full of hipsters and their progeny, places that remind me of why I liked the outskirts of Berkeley where the warehouses have become art studios and other creative spaces, where there are restaurants and cafes full of people one might want to be, at least for the duration of a lunch, the air around me feeling like the air of Berkeley on one of those cool and mythical summer days. So I stopped. The place was full of those cool people and the little girl in front of me wanted to apply for a job that I hoped she would get for she was little, maybe five one, and looked like she would be wonderful there. I wanted her to get the job so that I could see her again. I took my sandwich outside onto the patio where I could hear the music that was playing and found a cafe seat at a table with some sun, sol y sombra. My friend was right about the place. The sandwich had big chunks of tender pork with a cabbage and citrus topping, a sort of Korean thing but not really. As I ate, I listened to the conversations at the tables around me, happy people with their friends. The owner of the restaurant was interviewing the girl who wanted the job across the courtyard. I could hear her answer him, her chin raised, her hands in her lap--"and after I got out of high school, I just came here. . . ." She had never been a waitress before, but what does it take for a smart girl to learn how to be a good waitress? I wanted to answer the questions for her--"because I will be a good waitress and customers will like to come here and be waited on by me because I am a good fit for a place like this and I want to work here and I will make you lots and lots of money."
I regretted taking the last bite of the sandwich for it was too good and should have gone on forever like the afternoon, bracketed forever as it was about to be in memory. Walking to the car, I noticed the sign on the warehouse across the little back street that said "Something Something Winery." Really? I wondered, then I saw tables set upon what had been a loading dock and people sitting about drinking glasses of wine. I would come back for this, I thought, another of those beautiful things happening here now in my own hometown. I took a picture with my camera phone and sent it to people I knew, wondering.
But the afternoon was moving along in spite of my best efforts to make it stand still, and I needed to get ready for my shoot. My hands were already shaking and I was still all soft and emo and wondering why. I stopped at the grocery store and bought some things I needed. There was a text. The model was on her way.
She was young, a beautiful Puerto Rican girl, skinny and dark and formal and quick. She made me nervous and threw me off my game, whatever game I have. I asked her if she would like something to drink, some wine or something else, and she said she wouldn't but I needed something and poured some whiskey to cut through the pork and cabbage and to cut through my nerves.
We played our game, she moving too quickly, too often, me trying to slow her down wondering if I could do her justice, a strap falling here, a portion of slender back, no tats, smoothly strong, the softness of youthful dusky skin like vanilla over chocolate, the long black hair, her white hands covering, slowly sliding now, then still. The hours dropped away. She said she was hungry, and by now we were friends. "Let's walk up and get something to eat," I said.
We sat at the bar of the restaurant that would soon be the graveyard of dying elephants, the band already set up. "Oh, I hope we can get through our meal before they play," I said, telling her of the arthritic dancing that would take place in a while, making little arthritic moves with my head and hands in a ridiculous pantomime. The man sitting next to me looked me directly in the eyes like he knew me and said, "Oh, man, you cut your hair! Why'd you cut your hair!" My brain was racing trying to make a connection, but none was in the offing. He held out his hand and introduced himself. I didn't know him but I guess I am highly visible in my little town what with my artist's pants and t-shirts and all, but his eye kept drifting to the Puerto Rican who was sitting on my other side. Yes, of course. . . . I like taking models out to eat after we shoot, like the way people look at me and wonder, like to lean close and whisper things that make the girls laugh, they usually never going to place like this that cost too much but are fun for them. I asked my friend if she was ready for that glass of wine now and she hesitated then said, "Sure," but she didn't really know how to order wine and so I asked the bartender to bring her a Riesling. "It is sweet and fruity," I said knowing she would need sweet and fruity. She tasted it and held up her thumb. We had just gotten our food when the band began to play, and I made a face and hunched my shoulders. The band was older even than I, older than anything, but the music came out young and soulful and wonderful and the girl leaned in and said, "Why don't you like them. . . they are really good," and she was right, they were better than good so that when we were finished, I didn't really want to leave, but I we walked back to her car and hugged and made plans to shoot together again very soon.
I had a text. C.C. was at a bar listening to jazz with his wife and a friend. I was wired now where I had been so sleepy, and I was not ready to sit in the house. It was nine. I'd be there in a minute, I texted back.
It was a small place on the white edge of a black community. It was full of the Negro Wine crowd. Forgive me, but I love to say such things. Onstage was a funk band led by a white guitar player in a backwards beret wearing a t-shirt and a '60s vest. A black woman with triple x arms and breast in a muumuu was singing. The band was black and very funkadelic, the bass player a large man with dreads, the keyboardist straight out of KC and the Sunshine band, the drummer with huge round coke bottle glasses. My friends were sitting stateside, so conversation was not possible. I looked about the room cataloguing the hair, the large hoop earrings, and the fact that women outnumbered men about four to one. I was mentally running through my old sociology texts, oh yes, oh yes. . . . The band took a break and I chatted with my friends who are my age about life and death and the meaning of things, the men not believing in any afterlife, the women practicing whatever voodoo they subscribed to--"Really, you believe in that?" Of course, I was a little drunk.
When the band returned to the stage, I excused myself confessing I had a big glass of scotch in the car waiting to be drunk, they laughing and I assuming not believing me, and on the way home I had a desire to go to a hipster craft beer hall and have one of the strong, twelve percent brews. It was only eleven and strangely I was more awake than I had been all day, and I guess I was feeling the need of visual stimulation. The place was full and the bartender an asshole so I tipped him very, very poorly. Obviously he didn't need the money. I was sitting at the big bar alone on one corner so I could take in the room. Every fellow there had short hair and a beard. No, wait, there was another fellow who was shaven, I thought, but it turned out to be a girl with the same haircut as all the boys. A couple came up next to me, probably middle-eastern or Northern African, and I could feel the woman looking at me. I turned and looked up to where she was standing. "What are you drinking?" she asked. "Something fairly smooth and sweet with a 13% alcohol content. You might want to try it first," I said. "I'll have one of those," she said to the asshole barman. Was that heat coming off her? I could swear it was heat. She looked at me with her big brown eyes and smiled. . . just before they paid and went to a table. I looked around again as I was finishing my beer. Fun day, I thought. Fun night.
I woke up tired today, but there was a reason. I made coffee and went through the usually ritual. And I came upon this. Yes, I thought, that is what I do. Isn't that what everyone does? I am very good at it, very, very good I've been told. Love. Whatever that is. Intimacy, that's the thing. I will do that more. As I told the table at the Negro Wine Bar, eating, drinking, fucking. . . that is everything, right? Oh, and dancing. But, I confessed, I am not good at that.
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