This is what I need to do--stay home and read a book. I didn't last night. I won't be able to tonight. Sitting at home reading too much, you begin to think, "I'm missing things." Then you go out and remember what you are missing. You don't remember it until morning, maybe, but you do. I went to dinner last night. This morning I feel like poop. I have another round of it tonight, only this one may be later and worse. I could have a weekend filled with regrets. Oy. I don't think I look so good this morning.
The best part of last night was dinner. We went to my favorite little Italian place. I knew there was a seafood thing I wanted, but I couldn't find it on the menu. So I said to the bartender. When I asked her about the seafood and pasta thing, she pointed to one with mussels and shrimp. I said I remembered one with much more than that.
"There's one that isn't on the menu with mussels, crab, shrimp, clams, scallops. . . "
"That's the one."
She said I could order it, that they could make it. When it came out, it was big as a flying saucer. Unbelievably good.
That was at five-thirty. At eleven-thirty, I was learning Muay-Thai fighting in a parking lot. Far too much went down in between.
I'm pretty certain that what goes on tonight is to be never told. I'm already frightened. I'm fairly certain I should feign illness and stay home.
Red texted me yesterday morning asking me again when I was coming to L.A. It occurred to me that it was 4 am where she was.
"I"m guessing you are not up and getting ready for work."
Travis tells me to go. "Don't be a sissy," he says. Not a quote really, but that is the gist of it.
A woman writes to tell me she wants me to be a larger part of her novel. What?!? It is weird to think of someone writing about you. I mean, sure, I can do it, but. . . .
It's just that I have never believed anyone thinks about me unless I am standing in front of them, and, as my dead ex-friend Brando would tell me, "You're lucky if she's thinking about you even then."
I have always believed that to be true. When I'm not in eyesight, I just disappear. I think, however, I'm very visible. That get's proven to me over and over. I just don't know if it is for good or bad reasons.
"Why are you so binary?"
The bartender last night was the good looking psychopath who is friendly with others but who always looks like she wants to kill me. It is not always a good thing to be remembered. Sometimes invisibility is a very good thing.
"If you could have one superpower, what would it be?"
Most people say the ability to fly. The unknowing might desire the ability to read minds. Uh-uh. Nope. Not me. Can you imagine that? Torture.
I'd choose the ability to be invisible. Oh. . . yes! I have that limited power now, I think, but only when I don't want to be.
"See me. . . see me now."
I need to drink lots of water today. And to take a nap. I should only drink light beer tonight, but that will be fairly impossible. I think I might end up in the Devil's Den at midnight. It's the sort of thing I once desired, but I should know better by now. I do, but the allure of some things is greater than fear. By God, Hawthorne knew that oh-so well. How he was friends with Melville is a mystery to me. They were of two types. Read them both, of course.
Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once the listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of towns-people of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met at the communion table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine at Salem village, but never until now from a cloud of night There was one voice of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward ("Young Goodman Brown).
Yes! And crowd chants, "Do it! Do it!"
There are times when one just should not cross the threshold. That was the reason, I'm assuming, the groom carried the bride over one into the home. Lock the doors, pop the corn, and turn on Netflix. There is nothing but danger out there.
But that's why we go. Travel and the opportunity for romance. It is the thing James Salter could write about so well.
Yes, I should stay home and read a book tonight. But I won't. There will be no pictures I can post nor stories I can put into print if all goes as I suspect.
"The names have been changed to protect the innocent, but the incidents reported here are accurately portrayed in spirit and fact."
That's what every liar with a pen or keyboard says, anyway.
"You mean a lot to me. I want you to be a bigger part of my novel."
"Should I be flattered?"
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