"Really,
Kevin? Are you sure you didn't volunteer to do this for some reason
that made sense at the time but now it doesn't and you can't remember
why so you just want out?" Anita tilted her head to the side to wait for
Kevin's response.
"Anita, it is really annoying when you act like you know what I'm thinking."
"But I do know what you're thinking.You're incredibly predictable, but you knew that"
Both of them turned to Emily, who was sitting with her back to them, pretending to watch TV.
"Emily? Oh God, Emily. You're just watching that to look at Donal Logue. Chubby chaser.."
Kevin tapped on the back of the chair and flicked a lock of her hair with two fingertips.
"The
only reason I'm letting this go is it's distracting you two from that
insane thing you're suggesting and no, no, no, no. The answer is still
no. I do not want to go watch The Cowboy sing sensitive acoustic jangly
songs about Jesus. I mean...It's not me he wants there anyway. Right?"
Anita
blew a raspberry and jiggled the ice in her glass. "The Cowboy wants
Kevin for a rainbow. By the way, does he have a name or does he just go
as 'The Cowboy'?"
Kevin sighed and threw up his hands. "Okay,
here's the thing. I didn't volunteer so much as I agreed to do this
because The Cowboy's agent called my editor and specifically asked for
me to come review his set. Boss wants to keep the agent happy. What else
was I going to say?"
"Would it ease the sting of rejection if I told all two of my listeners to read your interview?" Anita asked.
"Anita, you have to come with."
"Come with you?"
"Yes. And Emily, you too. Maybe it will keep him off my ass."
Emily
rubbed her temples and sighed. "Kevin, do you think he's going to see
the two of us with you and suddenly hopped the fence and started dating
women?"
"I don't know," said Anita, You did boff The Cowboy for...How many months was it?"
"Not
helping," Emily sighed and rolled her eyes at Anita, who gave them a
fairly pointless thumbs up and went into the kitchen. "You and I know
this is a romantic gesture. Even if he's not consciously aiming for
that, there is some part of him that thinks you will make eye contact
from across the room and magic will happen."
"I don't quite follow you, sweetie."
"Sometimes
the truth can be hard to take, in the abstract sense. If he sees you
and it is obvious there's no chemistry, he'll get it and move on."
Kevin took a deep breath. "You think it's that simple?"
"I
don't know, My experience with romance is pretty limited. I let someone
know I'm here, I'm available, and I like them. If there's no interest, I
forget about it. End of story."
"And you've never harbored some
hope..Wished on a star, lit a candle, thrown cards over and over, hoping
it would work out? You don't even get your feelings hurt?"
"Of
course I do. But you know? It's, hmm, looking for the right word
here...It's disrespectful to just expect someone to return your interest
just because you want them to. What about their feelings?"
"You have this down to a social formula."
"It's
simple good manners or decency. Maybe. If I am interested in someone,
it's because I really like the whole person. It means respecting the
fully vested human being who won't like me back instead of objectifying a
romanticized fetish object."
"And you think The Cowboy is going to think that way?"
Emily shrugged.. "I don't know."
"Come with me," Kevin pleaded, "I really, really don't want to go to this alone."
"Can't I just leave a comment on the website?"
"Emileeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..."
"I'll use some of Dave's sock puppet accounts and leave you a bunch of likes."
copyright 2015 Jas Faulkner/Zen Dixie
"There
are a few places where the view of the city is great. Most of the best
of them are hard to get to. They're most often discovered by accident in
the course of a work day. There's the bend in I-65 where the skyline
comes into view. Follow the interstate around to the Wedgewood split and
it's easy to feel like George Jetson, zipping around the city in an
airborne car of the future (circa 1962). Look at the skyline from the
second story east-facing window at Oasis Center or the backside of the
BMI administration building and the Nashville you'd see would be a
version of the city as dreamed up by Philip K. Dick if one of his
characters was feeling nostalgic for the old days,
"The finest
view, the most magical vantage point,required movement. It was a movie
unto itself with you as the star driving down Shelby Avenue at night
after a hard rain. The hills and shadows of trees roll by as you pass
house after house after house with the occasional church or corner store
breaking the yellow home glow of porch lights with the righteousness of
neon crosses or the raunch a quick fix of empty calories available for
purchase inside or less acceptable responses to emptiness in the parking
lot. All of those lights pour onto the street As you go by, the
reflections from every light from the safety, the sin, the salvation,
it all appears as jagged, shattered bits of light spilled into the rain
to turn the dull, worn road into something brilliant.
"You crest
what has to be the last hill before the river, only it really isn't,
and that's when you get your first glimpse of downtown. It starts with
the top of the Batman Building and quickly opens into a panorama that
includes what is considered the backside of downtown. Nonsense. It's
just as pretty as the postcard images. Prettier, really."
Anita
sighed and let the candle she was holding drip onto the charcoal and
incense. It flared and then sizzled out. She considered going back to
the Anglican weeks she'd been reciting before she wandered off into a
conversation with James.
Why James? She hadn't thought about him
in a while, probably before she veered off into the ill-fitting
progression of career choices that somehow led her right back to where
she started sometime ago. Years. That meant she hadn't thought about or
really talked to James in years. He had missed so much. Some of it she
was glad he wasn't around for: 9-11, the Murrah bombing, the weird
cultural lurch that made everyone seem to fear and loathe everyone else.
There were the things he would have loved if he'd been around to see
them: Lady Gaga, the wins for marriage equality, Angels in America, so
much, so very much had changed.
James closed his eyes on a world
where fun had a body count and the president refused to say the name of
the plague or the people carried away by it. The quilt panels they'd
worked on were now an historic talking point in college classrooms.
"I'm
getting old, James. If I'm wandering around in the past and talking to
dead friends, there's no way around it. I am getting old."
What
brought this on was what she recognized as an "art moment". She was
driving home, driving down Shelby and wondering if the street reminded
her more of Leroy Neiman or David Hockney. Then it hit her that it
really didn't remind her of either one. It was just an art moment unto
itself. Then she remembered another art moment on a road in 1987 in
Memphis. Nostalgia? Really? She thought she wasn't prone to that sort of
thing. But that time came back...
It was fall and she was in the
car with James. Was it really almost three in the morning? Nobody she
knew slept back then. She wondered how they did it without chemical
assistance. Youth, maybe.
"You have to see this." she managed to get James to ride with her from campus to Poplar Avenue."
As
she made the turn from Madison to Poplar, James rolled his eyes. "I
think Keifer was kidding when he suggested TP-ing the rich kids at
Southwestern."
Anita did a quick survey to see if there was
anyone else on the road. Not a soul. She put the car in park in the
turning lane and turned to James.
"Look," she said, "This is
something really great that I noticed last night when I was driving
home. Here's what you have to do. Roll down your windows and, I know
it's going to be a challenge, but you need to be quiet and just listen.
Okay?"
James nodded his head, "You are my Sherpa. My Memphis
Sherpa. Now let's adventure on." He rolled down his window and wriggled
against the seat to settle in, then he turned to Anita. "Okay, Sherpa.
Lead on."
She put the car into gear and they turned on to Poplar.
Just past the corner of Overton Park, Anita saw what she hoped was
still as it was. The street was covered in a carpet of yellow leaves.
The streetlights, teardrop-shaped mock Victorian lamps, bathed
everything in a glow that was halfway between honey and amber.
James
started to say something and she shushed him. It started to rain. As
she drove slowly down the deserted street, they could hear the sound of
the big drops and soft whisper of the tires rolling through the leaves.
Anita heard James breathe in as he saw the play of light and sound, but
she didn't look at James until they pulled into the parking lot of
Squash Blossom. When she did, he was beaming.
"Call it!" he said.
It came to her immediately.
"Winsor McCay's galloping beds wandering into a Maxfield Parrish painting."
"Yes!" he cheered. "Let's do it again!"
In
the present, which was also rainy and pretty, but without James, Anita
relit her candle and shifted her beads. She made a silent promise to
focus and finish her decades. Before she did, she said goodnight to
James.
"There's magic and art afoot. Wish you were here, love."
copyright 2015 Jas Faulkner/Zen Dixie
Emily's date did not go well. She would be the first person to say that it came as no surprise, if only she could get a word in. There were two reasons for this:
- Kevin, her Best Gay Boyfriend was in rant mode.
- She was hungry and she was now home where she could tuck into a bag of chips and her own Best Damned Salsa Anybody Ever Ate* while Kevin the BGBf was engaged in the first item on this list and his boyfriend, Dave, was in watch and eat mode.
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"Really, Emily? I mean, he shouldn't have left with that makeup girlie thing..."
"Post-mortem beauty professional." Emily offered the correction and then crammed another fully loaded tortilla chip in her mouth.
"I don't care if she was Presbyterian or Episcopalian or whatever, that was just rude."
"Kevin?"
"WHAT?"
"Stupid makes your butt look big."
"Laugh it up, Missy. You take a date to a funeral and you call it a date to the date? What... What is wrong with you?"
"It was a stupid idea. It was also an idea, uh, whose time had come." Emily nodded.
"What does that even mean?"
Emily didn't know. It just sounded good at the moment. Her former date, AKA The Cowboy, was not even a cowboy, at least in any sense of the word that Emily would use as a descriptor.
Kevin's lips were moving. She needed to pay attention before someone invoked the "Blah blah blah Ginger" Rule.
"What was wrong with him, anyway?" Kevin looked far more devastated at the loss of The Cowboy than Emily. "He was so pretty."
"Well, for starters, he was twenty-eight..."
"So?"
Emily sighed and rolled her eyes, two conversational tics she knew Kevin hated. "Dave, help me out here."
"He was about as smart, about, not quite, as smart as a head of bok choy."
"Dave you are so close, but no cookie. Stupid hurts. But this is more a case of complete generational connect. Wait. Let me correct myself here: inter-generational disconnect. You both realize that I was attempting a second failed career choice around the time The Cowboy was born."
Emily picked up the remote and started flipping through the channels on her Roku .Kevin sighed and gave Dave a look when he caught him double dipping. Emily shook her head.
"It's not like there's company. It's just us. Stick your fingers in the dip if you want."
Kevin sighed. He sighed again.
"I'll ask one question and then I promise to leave this alone."
Emily felt her gut clench. She didn't believe him. "Go ahead", she said.
"What was your last fight about?"
Emily rolled her eyes, "Hell if I know. He was so moody and emotional. I gave up trying to figure out what his daily upsets were about."
Kevin rubbed his temples. This conversation was making him want to cry. "Could you be a little more specific?"
"Okay. He walked into the bedroom wearing tight whities, cowboy boots, and his favorite hat. He looked right at me and asked me and said, 'Do I look like an idiot to you?'"
"And you said?"
"Do you want an honest answer?"
"Yes, of course I do. Emily, what did you say?"
"That's what I said."
"Okay." Kevin took a deep breath. "What were you talking about before that?"
"He had just written a song about aliens making crop circles."
Dave giggled and grabbed another hand full of tortilla chips.
"Kevin, the boy was a flake. He was pretty, but he was also a little dim and, let's face it, a bit on the high maintenance side. Am I right?
"He insists on cuddling and talking after sex. That shit gets old."
Meanwhile, somewhere just west of Antioch, The Cowboy was cooling his heels and his head. He managed to duck and weave away form the attentions of Mindy the Makeup Girl. All that was left was to sit in his living room and watch the shadows change as the sunset filtered through his living room blinds.
He felt bad about Emily. She reminded him of his favorite high school girlfriend. She was smart, funny, potty-mouthed, and didn't
give a damn about anything except what she gave a damn about. She was also a loyal friend. He liked that about her. And he liked her friends, especially Kevin.
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| Another Unrelated Photo |
"Best to get that thought out of your head," he muttered to himself. "That sort of thing doesn't fly around here, especially if you want to break into Contemporary Christian."
*Want the recipe for Emily's salsa? You can find it here:
The Best Darned Salsa You Ever Put in Your Mouth @ Vegan Nom
copyright 2015 Jas Faulkner
