Table
Monday, July 6th, 2009

Backed into a table, we sat by the French doors eating Spanish food. The cafe had gradually filled with lovely office workers from the low-rise buildings on the mid-town street. The area had been made over recently, but the sidewalks were still cracked and the fire-plugs covered in layer after painted layer – alternating in yellow and red paint bubbles from where it dried in the sun some other summer afternoon. The sun helped itself to the ice water on the table shinning through the limbs from the trees rooted in the bare spots along the cement. The whole cafe felt like stepping into a mirror: while people side-stepped between the rounded tables more bodies passed by the glass, some on bicycles, others with mouths loosening from cigarettes to breathe a few cloudy words that would look profane to an amateur lip reader. In this see-through spot, it felt like the whole city was staring in to see if its hair was straight, which made it hard for me to surrender anything – to make any ground with her.

She came in late after sending a polite message to my handheld device that I’ve taken to carrying with me after pledging not to. The light fell slanted on her the whole time. Off-balanced, she shifted in the light, kept up the conversation and kept interested. But still, I couldn’t give anything of me away. We talked about the light-hearted topics that you talk about on a first meeting after some time has passed. Then, once you’ve asked about the last few years, their career, their family – once the first few drinks are down and the table has been cleared, the meaningful material comes out, or it doesn’t.

The truth was this: She was beautiful, intelligent, well dressed, polite, seemed to be listening, she cared for the moment. We were both there because we were supposed to be. But my mind analyzes in a different way than hers. Or maybe it’s the same. I can’t decide. This was tremendous effort … just to be there. To be dressed, finished driving on the highway, seated and eating, listening and paying the bill. This is how it would be with anyone, not just her. I am swimming out here in all this freedom, meeting new people.

So it begins now, this magnificent life I have chosen as a writer. The drink, the damaged relationships, the liasons, the promiscuity with bodies and ideas. This life some have told me I was born to live and that others tried to stiffle with red pens dragged through sentences and disparaging remarks in columns … is here. Here is the interesting life I always wanted, the city streets and the beautiful people in cafes mixed in with the art crowd, only a few talented and the others looking for style and identity, drugs and free sex with the hippie chicks in low cut jeans.

I write this and feel a mixture: depression and something like a smile. I have always wanted it, but I’d exchange all the words in a heartbeat for a real soul. The unrequited love is the real gift, the fire, what makes us good lovers, that makes us sense a woman’s neck and skin.

At the table, nothing like this occurs to me, but it occurs to me that it will amount to something later – the regulars, the poor service, beer-ringed tabletop, naked bodies painted in blue on the walls contorted and reaching for each other and finding only drywall. This one next to me … on this particular day … I wish only that she take me home and that I expend as little effort talking as possible. We both would be happier, I know, and I’d have the rest of my day free to write about what she’s keeping secret under the table lip.