Shelter and Captivity

Remember being young and single?  Some of us remember the transition into not-so young and still single, but that’s a different blog.  This is the twenty-something hangin’ out with friends drinking screwdrivers, and looking as cool as possible blog.  This is about the image we cast when searching for perspective mates—or at least for a paragraph or so.

 

For me the sitting single was more about hanging out, than sniffing out.  I know my friends were after something else, but I just liked bullshitting about something I’d just read and singing with the music.

 

“…but if you only knew how easy it would be to show me how you feel…”

 

“Dude!  Don’t look at me when you sing that!” That’s my good friend Dave.  We haven’t spoken since his wife had their baby.  I think he thought I was a bad influence.

 

But that’s how it was, just a booth of us wasting time and chomping nachos.  By the end of the night the booth usually separated out to the single and the coupled.  You could here the singles whining, while the couples would offer helpful advice like, “That’s ok.  You’ll find love someday.”

 

Yeah, That’s usually where the party broke down.

 

Now, Friday nights are my escape nights.  They’re my chance to break out of the house.  Working at home blows.  I have one friend who says I use it as a crutch.  That’s why I hit her with the crutch.  Now that’s one less person who comes by during visitation hours.

 

Work at home has taught me sympathy for stay at home moms.  Still, I’d take the kids to talk to if I could.  Sure I can’t discuss the moral conflicts presented in “Hills Like White Elephants,” but I can bad mouth Mary for being a little slut and having a little lamb out of wooly-wedlock.

 

Instead, I depend on the kindness of emailing strangers:

 

“Dear Sir, I am a rich foreign diplomat in need of laundering my ill-gotten booty…”

 

That’s my Saturday through Thursday.  Come Friday, the vertical blinds look like prison bars and I feel a bit caged.  Hell, by Thursday, I’m willing to invite Jehovah’s witnesses in to see something new.

 

“Really, you have pamphlets?  Come on in!  Tell me everything!  You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

 

Fifteen minutes later they’re running for the door.  I think they’ve spread the word of Rob too, now, because nobody knocks anymore.  Even the girl scouts keep clear their cookies.

 

That’s why Friday nights I go out.  No more “liquor and whores” out, just “latte n’ me” out.  It’s Rob, sitting in a shop full of other aloof artist-types. It’s home.  We don’t talk like we did in our twenties; we just pretend to be better than everybody else while rubbing our chins. We also rub against the proles.

 

That’s the modus operandi of the coffee house writer; we’re the Ozymandius  of the literary world. Nobody recognizes us, but in our minds we look important.  And in thousands of years our blog-fill fodder will clutter landfills: a testament to our legacy. Our lone and level reams stretch far away…

 

The good thing about our anti-social social club is I don’t have to talk about relationships.  It’s not like the old days, listening to my coupled friends. Yeah, that bitter just doesn’t go the same with coffee.

 

On bad Fridays, the coffee shop is full.  That means I have to share a table with the rubbing rabble.  You can learn something from rubbing people, but usually you risk infection--besides, I’m not there to learn; I’m there to look important.

 

Last Friday was bad; if I wanted to sit, I needed to break scones with an elderly couple. 

 

“Can I sit here?” I point to a space at the table behind a lit-pile where Descartes contemplates the existence of the drop ceiling over his book-cover head. Next to him lies an open Betty Freidan complaining that the drop ceiling was glass, which Woody Allen sees as half empty but fully falling. Jong’s spine stretches over the ménage a trois opining that it should be mirrored; If Jung was in the stack , I was personally unconscious of the fact.

 

Yeah, that’s why I usually sit alone.

“I don’t know,” smiles the lady looking to her husband, “can you?”

Great, I’m sitting with humorists. What’s worse, the gleam in their eye scares me; they’re foreigners.  I drop into the chair.

 

As soon as my butt touches wood, wrist clamps spring from the chair, locking me in place.

 

“Hey!” I yell,  “What’s going on? Are you trying to kill me?” I’m staring at the laser pointer attached to the man’s keys.

 

“We don’t want you to die, Mr. Boyd,” he says, waving the pointer over my head, “we want you to talk.”

 

Frau Blucher begins the questioning, “So, what do you do?  Are you married, What’s your take on the disappearing honey bees?”

 

“uhm, blue?”  I wasn’t ready for this.  And sure, maybe I’m exaggerating when I say that they clamped me to the chair, but they did ask me lots of questions.  And the guy did have a laser pointer!  He could have put my eye out. 

 

See here’s the thing. I love talking, but on the spot with foreign intellectuals!  I’m just pseudo-smart.  I don’t really know anything! Socrates would have loved me! I’m a self-proclaimed fool.

 

This couple seems to love me too. They’ve changed my night out to an evening of captivity. I know if I want to see freedom, I’ll need to answer their questions. And where did the lady’s rubber gloves come from?

 

I answer everything to the best of my ability.  Its obvious they’re fishing. Before I can pull out my map of North American tide charts, the woman stops me.

 

“Married? Really?  How long were you married?”

I answer; the woman takes notes.  Now I’m being interrogated on everything from fidelity to cohabitation.  She’s fascinated that although I don’t believe in living together, MyEx and I did just that.

 

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“We have ways of making you talk...” She snaps her glove, and her husband fondles his pointer.

I close my eyes and pretend I didn’t see that. “I moved here for her.  We didn’t have a choice.”

“Ahhh….did it affect your marriage?  Answer truthfully…”

 

I tell her I don’t know.  I don’t.  It’s not like I can compare what would have happened if we didn’t live together.  For the record, I don’t think it did.  I think we’d have made the same mistakes even if we hadn’t.  Our flaws may have come from living in the same house, but they came long after we got married.

 

The couple sips their house coffee, and lets me know that they’ve been married for 28 years.  The woman admits that the man next to her is her second husband, and then they share their life stories. 

 

When I was in my twenties, I remember this process as being more fun, and, well, voluntary.  Still it is nice to talk to people outside my realm.  Maybe that’s why they want to talk to me.

 

That’s the hardest thing I’ve found about being alone.  There’s nobody there to ask questions and to share. I’m the type of person who grows by sharing.  Being alone stifles me.  Part of the joy of finding something cool is so that I can say, “hey look:  this is cool!”  and somebody can either agree or disagree.  I enjoy that.  That’s part of why I come for coffee.  I come for the off chance that somebody with try to stretch me, whether I want it or not.  This is as close as I can get to the late night friend conversations from my twenties.

 

When the conversation ends. The woman looks at me and says, “Don’t worry, you’ll find love someday.”

 

Yup, just like old times.