Waddling My Way Through the Void

This will have to be brief.  I have a breakfast date soon.  I got up late and now have little time to read and write.  I came home from a night out and fell asleep on the couch watching tv.  Woke up at one, took an Advil PM for some idiotic reason, and went to bed.  I was kind of wiped as I had not eaten a thing all day before I met Sky at the Factory Bar.  We just thought it would be fun to "get out of town."  It was about quarter 'til four when we got to the bar.  Three drinks later, we had crossed the street to a Greek restaurant.  I ordered lamb.  I must have been drunk.  The lamb was unappealing and I ate little.  When we sauntered back across the street, we heard a shouting from the bar.  It was some factory kids.  We walked over and I introduced Sky, then left her with them while I went to the restroom.  As we had more drinks with dinner, I didn't want another, so we chatted a bit.  

"Sorry, kids, but I gotta go.  I have a train to catch."

And it was true.  It was the last train of the evening.  Sky walked me back and we said goodnight.  A bit sadly.  She is leaving today.  

It has been a fun reunion, but we are both physically tired.  I should simply speak for myself.  I am physically tired, and now emotionally, too.  First one, then the other.  

We will breakfast this morning and say "until we meet again."  She'll go back to work and real life, and I'll go back to. . . ?  Coffee in the morning, Club Y, lunch and a nap, a visit to my mother, a cocktail on the deck, dinner before the television?  

Sky says I need a girl.  "Sure," I say, "I'll just cast the old line out into the water and pull one in."  What I need to do is take a long drive through Nebraska.  Someplace.  But she's right.  I need an assistant.  

I saw the ortho yesterday.  He says my knee is too arthritic to simply "clean it up."  Pisses me off to no end.  I will be getting another injection.  

"I think I'm beginning to waddle," I said to Sky. 

"Yes, you are waddling."

"What?!?!?"  

The ortho showed me the future.  He stood up with both knees bent, body leaning forward.  He shuffled.

"This is the way old men walk because of their knees," he said.  Jesus Christ.  I am beginning to look like that.  I have begun to waddle.  

The ortho has scheduled me for PT, for some "gait training."  I shit you not.  They will attempt to teach me how not to waddle, I assume.  

When Sky leaves, I am going to radicalize my routine.  I am going to get my face fixed, my belly. . . . I will find doctors who will shoot me up with peptides and testosterone and I will grow young. . . or die.  But I will not continue to waddle.  

"All I want to do is run," I told the ortho.

"Oh, no. . . that isn't going to happen."

I am hideous, but Sky seems to put up with it.  That's the thing, isn't it, about people we love.  We always see them as they were when we met. 

Beauty and the Beast!

O.K.  I have to prepare for my tearful "until then."  After that. . . the void we all must fill.