I Want to Be Loved

News flash--my father had sex with my mother when she was seventeen years old!  It's a fact.  I find the whole sex thing with Gaetz a real distraction.  He has committed real crimes but people, the ones who are excited by someone else's sexual adventures, would rather rubber neck the titillating content than go for the really bad stuff.  Now Gaetz is out.  He no longer has a job.  He will be back to cheating retirees and stealing money from the widows and orphans funds in my own home state.  And the victory?  Pam Bondi.  You who don't live in the Sunshine State may not know what a Wicked Witch of the East she is.  Bad news all around.  Gaetz was a joke.  This woman is the real deal.  

My Woke text group is still fantasizing about leaving the country.  Maybe some of them will.  That's the way to fight the thing you fear--run away!  

Whatever.  Whatever.  As I've said, I'm going all Roma and Learning to Love the Bomb.  

Roma Strangelove.  Only the cockroaches will survive.  So they say.  

In spite of all that--no, despite all that--I had a wonderful day.  I decided I would skip the gym and take a long camera walk somewhere.  The day was crisp and lovely, the light sparkling, the shadows deep and well defined.  But I lingered.  I stalled. I don't know why.  I kept thinking I needed to go, but instead, I answered texts.  I called the State Attorney's Office as my summons commanded.  I took out the garbage and folded the towels and wash cloths that were lying in the dryer.  Then I went to the garage to do a deep dive.  And. . . ay caramba! . . . I found the old tile I needed in a half-full box.  4.5" x 4.5" tile that we used in the kitchen in 1996!  

I was ready to pick six numbers.  

It was a little after noon.  I put on shoes and grabbed a sweater, a camera, and headed out the door.  

I went to Gotham.  I parked.  I walked the area around the park that surrounds the "famous" shooting water lake fountain.  Gotham was dead.  The only people around were poor souls standing in public prayer groups.  They eyed me with deep suspicion.  I took a few pictures here and there.  Nothing of note.  I went to what used to be a very good photo gallery.  It was full of schlock collages and acrylic paintings.  One small room had six photographs that were mediocre to be generous.  

Back to the car.  I drove to a new spot, took a couple photos that were, again, nothing, but I was happy to be out, to look, to see things.  No worries.  

It was three.  I headed to the coffee shop, to the Cafe Strange.  When I walked in, the pretty, tall, troubled girl was working.  It was apparent she was in "a mood."  She didn't glance up to say "hi" or "I'll be right with you."  Rather, she made a show of making a coffee like she was a neurosurgeon repairing the ganglia of a damaged brain.  O.K.  Sure.  What did I care?  

When she finished her liquid surgery, she struggled over in my direction and looked at me.  

"Do you think you can make a cafe con leche?"

"No.  We've had this discussion before.  You don't know what a cafe con leche is."

"Sure I do.  It is half espresso and half steamed milk."

"No it's not.  I don't want to have this discussion," she spat.  

"Fine.  I'll just have a latte."  

She didn't budge.  She was leaning on the counter with an obvious psychological weariness.  She began to tell me more.  

"I don't want to talk about it.  I'll just have a latte."

She started talking again.  

"I thought you didn't want to talk about it?"

"I changed my mind," she said with a semi-wry grin.  

"O.K.," I said picking up my phone.  I held it to my face, but it didn't recognize me.  I started typing in my pass code, but I used the wrong one.  I was getting a bit flustered.  

"My phone doesn't recognize me.  What did you do?  You must be a witch."

"I am."

"Oh. . . I know plenty of witches."

"Really?"

"Yea.  They don't necessarily call themselves 'witches,' but I do.  They read auras and repair chakras and make me potions.  Wickens and herbalists, they say."  

"What kind of potions do they make you?"  Now she was interested.

"Stuff to keep me calm and make me sleep, poppy seed extracts and the like."

I had finally gotten into my phone and started typing "cafe con leche recipes" but I was having trouble seeing the screen.  I looked incompetent, but finally. . . 

"Cafe con leche is made with strong coffee, usually espresso, and an equal amount of scalded milk," I read.  "That's the way I make it at home.  I scald the milk rather than steam it."

She looked rebuffed.  She stared at me.  

"I've drunk it in Cuba.  I've had it in Key West, Miami, Tampa. . . I know what it is.  In Cuba, they used to put salt in it.  They didn't have good refrigeration and the milk would spoil slightly, so they scalded it and put in salt to hide the taste."

She picked up her own phone and did her own search.  She squinted and scrolled.  

"You can't see either," I said making fun of her.  

She looked up.  She had transformed from imperious to impetuous.  

"It depends on where you are," she said.  

"O.K.  Where are we?"

"That's not how they make it at Foxtail." 

Foxtail is a fancy small chain coffee place where cool yuppies go with their laptops.  It's nice but not as fun as the Cafe Strange, I think. 

"Fuck Foxtail.  I hate that place."

"I used to work there," she said.  

"Which one?"

"The one downtown.  I was twenty-one."

"How old are you now?" I queried.  

She gave me a look.  She was working on my coffee, the steamer hissing.  She pointed to her ear.

"I can't. . . ."

When that was done, without looking at me, she said, "I'm twenty-eight."

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed, "your life is flying by!  Soon you will be. . . ."

"Thirty.  I can't wait."

"Oh," I said, "Trust me . I think you should wait."

She looked at me dead in the eyes.  "How old are you?"

Oh, shit.  

"I shouldn't have started this one.  Uh. . . look at me.  You know how old I am.  It's obvious."

She just stared for a moment, then poured the espresso into a cup.  I picked up my film Leica.

"Here. . . can I take a picture of you doing that?"

"No."

"Fine," I said, putting down my camera.  

"O.K.  Go ahead." 

"No, I don't want to now."  

"You can if you want."

"Nope.  Not interested anymore." 

She handed me my. . . hell, I had no idea what she had made for me.  I slid my card through the card reader.  

"Thanks," I said.  

Then in a total turn about, she smiled, paused.  

"I didn't know that about the salt," she smiled, then, "It's always nice to see you," she said without a trace of irony.  

Maybe that's just how I wanted to hear it, but I swear it is true.  

I've given up on illusions.  I don't expect people to like me anymore, not the way they used to, not the way I want them to.  I look in the mirror now with scales removed.  Fuck it.  There is a power in loss, I think, looking, remembering a passage from William Faulkner's "Barn Burning," that struck me deeply when I was still a young man in his thirties.  It was an internal monologue in the head of Sarty, the young protagonist, as he watched his father, a poor sharecrop farmer, approach the luxurious house of the landowner, 

"[A]s he looked again at the stiff black back, the stiff and implacable limp of the figure which was not dwarfed by the house, for the reason that it had never looked big anywhere and which now, against the serene columned backdrop, had more than ever that impervious quality of something cut ruthlessly from tin, depthless, as though, sidewise to the sun, it would cast no shadow."

Too small to be dwarfed, full of ravenous loss and epistemological rage.  

But last night, my old text group was active.  I had decided after dinner and an Epsom soak and a shower, tired, relaxed, but happy with the day. . . to have a drink.  Usually I am able to keep my fingers off the keyboard, but I was in a mood and didn't care.  I added to the conversation.  

What came back, both in the chat and in side texts. . . I was embarrassed and something else.  

"I love you," and "I miss you" and "I didn't really appreciate how much I learned from you. . . ."

WTF?  I mean, it wasn't the Romantic Love I so desperately miss, but it was much more than what I have been getting.  I needed to check my horoscope.  It had been a spectacular day.  The planets must have been in my favor.  

I woke to temperatures in the high forties.  Now the sun is out and shining brightly in a crystal clear sky.  I don't expect today to treat me as well as yesterday, but Tennessee is coming over to finish up the guest sink, and tonight, I think, I will go to my favorite Italian restaurant for their tremendous seafood stew.  

One really never knows, does one?  I'm like everybody else.  

"I Want to Be Loved" by Coleman Hawkins and the Red Grange Trio.