We saw a guy standing out on his front lawn with his robe open over his stretched-out underpants. It seemed we passed him in slow motion, wheels slow-rolling, heads slow-turning. It was a beautiful morning. Sun shining. Grass greening. Belly bellying.
“Oh God,” Dar said, “He hates himself,” her eyes shifting back to the mirror while she applied mascara.
Robe-guy gave the old balls a quick scratch, then put his hands in his terry cloth pockets and bent his head back in a loud, sleepy yawn.
“He does not give a crap!” Harry noted, slightly impressed.
The little dog that the man was waiting for did the back-kick shuffle, and then trotted up the walk. Robe-guy turned and followed with his head down. In my imagination he turned and we made eye contact: I gave him the thumbs up, he nodded, gave me a salute-de-doo.
Maybe it was a hates himself/doesn’t give a crap combo I thought. Or maybe he was just the king of his castle, out surveying the land. Or maybe he thought, for some sad reason he kept to himself, that no one would notice.
2.
Dear boy driving his battery operated car in front of my bench at the park,
Thank you for the sweet noise your car made as you accelerated over the bumpy sidewalk, and the high pitch squeal when you went in reverse. Thank you for talking to yourself and narrating the whole experience while you were doing it. It reminded me that sometimes it can be fun doing the same thing over and over and over, each time getting just a little bit better. It reminded me of Mo and her big wheel and the sound it used to make going straight down our vertical driveway, the sound of hard plastic wheels rumbling on concrete. It reminded me of what hot summer nights are like when you don’t care that heat is uncomfortable or worry about what happened yesterday or what tomorrow will be like. I hope I see you again sometime.
Love,
your bench-seated admirer.
3.
My sister and I had to sleep in the same bed recently. What is it about lying next to someone in the dark? Someone you don’t usually lie next to? Your voices are different somehow, the pauses are strange, and feelings expand. You are aware of yourself in a new way, an amalgam of child/adult/stranger. In a different setting, being this close, we might have had a serious conversation, something important or revealing, but then her big toe touched mine, and I screamed because I thought it was an animal, and we laughed so hard the bed shook, which made us laugh even more. And I thought, this is the way you should always fall asleep: breathless and smiling, unburdened and safe.
4.
When he was little, Harry used to pick out his clothes the night before and lay them on a chair. I wanted to study this like a scientist. How did this happen? Where did this come from? I never taught him such a thing though I wished I had. I wondered if he got it genetically somehow from my grandfather who kept his suits hanging in a room upstairs still covered in the dry-cleaner plastic, arranged from light summer colors to black, all of his hats in a row on a shelf above. He liked things organized, neat and tidy. I can remember the way he’d bend down, hitching one pant leg up at a time, just to pick a thread up off the floor. But that wasn’t it. Harry wasn’t neat and tidy. He used to leave his shoes in the bathroom, towels on the floor and 8 empty bowls of cereal in his room. His backpack was filled with crinkled papers and old food. But every night, no matter where he was, he’d find the one clear spot, lay out his clothes, and provide a little order to the chaos.
5.
My great grandfather lived until he was 104 mainly because he was a positive person. What else could it have been? He smoked and drank and worked in a stressful environment (finance) so his days should have been numbered; but at home he played the harmonica, collected strange mechanical toys and did “the old soft shoe”. He kept three beautiful rose plants in front of his house that he took care of like they were his daughters, and he’d stop and look if he ever passed a section of clover in the grass. I remember him staring at the ground with his hands behind his back sometimes for 20 minutes. He believed in luck and chance and being in the right place at the right time. And he always found a four-leaf clover. In the morning when he’d enter the kitchen, he’d say to everyone and no one: Cheer Em Up!
6.
Last night I took a walk up the hill to see the full moon at around 10 pm and I heard, through an open window, two people having sex, and in that moment I felt so many emotions: curiosity, embarrassment, longing, shame, uncertainty, fear, depression and glee. I almost got down on all fours and started howling right then and there. I wonder if that’s what it’s like for a wolf, or what it means to be called lone.
7.
Sometimes in New Orleans you wake up on a Sunday morning and you go to church, or you just walk down the block under the Spanish moss and past the magnolia trees along the river to listen to the sounds, trying to feel something inspirational and sweet to get you going . And sometimes you just turn down a street and get hit with all of it at once. (see below)
1 - Me. Do not give a crap. 2 - Aww. Also: 4-yr old me once mistook the big wheel of a Big Wheel for Santa's butt in the pre-dawn dark of Xmas day. 3 - 🤣 What animal exactly? 4 - Nerd. 5 - 🌹🌹🌹 6 - That's always weird. I once came upon someones going at it in a car parked right on the street. 7 - We need more of this, everywhere, all the time.
The video of humanness 🥹🫂 sometimes I really love us.