The Flaw

Originally Posted Saturday, March 16, 2013

Oooooooh man.  I didn't want to go out.  I never want to go out.  But last night, after grilling some salmon and Brussels sprouts, having dipped into a cheap but good white wine and put on my pajamas, after beginning another episode of "Sherlock," I got a call. . . and I succumbed.  You just can't tell your friends over and over on a Friday night, "No, I think I'm just going to stay home," and still have many left.  Sooooo. . . I cleaned up the kitchen, put on some clothes, had a quick scotch, and headed for the studio.  It is Art Festival weekend here and the weather is perfect, so we knew we wouldn't be able to park on the Boulevard.  But my studio is only a few blocks, a railroad track, and a couple crack houses away. 

I tell everyone that I have never won anything when I am angry.  Even if I do, it never feels like anything but a horrible defeat.  I also advise anyone who will listen to stay away from crowds.  Nothing good ever happens in a crowd.  Couples break up, boys get into fights. . . .  That's what happened last night, I think. 

When we got to the watering hole we like, the room was packed and we couldn't make our way easily to the bar, but we we were able to wave down a barman and shout our orders to him.  I was trying to be  amenable to everyone by letting them slip past me to order drinks, but I'd already had my blood heated when a tall blond boy, for our purposes known henceforth as "The Swede," who was sitting with a couple girls gave me what must have passed in his circles as The Stink Eye.  I'm pretty good at Stink Eye, so I played his game until he looked away. 

The barman knows us a little, and it didn't take very long for our martinis to arrive.  But when I tried to reach for them, a fellow and his girl brushed by me to take up position at the bar with The Swede and his pals, and when I tried to take the drink from the barman, the boy bumped my arm causing the expected results.  I don't know why it happens.  It is genetic, I am convinced.  I've spent a lifetime refuting it, all that instant anger and frustration, but it comes quick and hard sometimes and all my hippy-dippy lifestyle falls by the wayside and I am just that dirty hillbilly boy who grew up in a Faulknerian hamlet with dangerous cracker miscreants again.  The boy's mistake was that he didn't offer any apology when he looked at me.  "Here," I said to my friend, handing him his drink and mine, too, "hold this." 

Details of this sort of thing are boring, really.  There was the usual swearing then the "motherfucker."  Even in the midst of things when one part of my mind is screaming and racing, there is a quiet little voice that talks to me telling me that this is stupid and that nothing good will come of it and that I should quit it now and walk away.  It really is a nice voice and I would have listened to it, but the fellow's apology was insincere and came with a smarmy smile.  And this encouraged the girls to chime in, too, in that same faux-superior way. 

"Are you O.K.?" said a pretty brunette. 

What can you do?  You can't hit a girl no matter how many feminists are in the bar, so you turn to the boy and say, "If she does that again, I'm going to knock the shit out ofyou."  The Swede was looking and so I started making some monkey faces at him, too.  There I was, an old man with a bad back and a friend holding two martinis who was trying to find something else to do, mugging two very well dressed young men and their pretty, pretty girls.

But you know the scene ends.  It is the Boulevard, for Christ's sake, on Art Festival weekend, one of the loveliest nights of the year, and nobody really wants to fight.  Everybody just wants to win.  So the boy with the girl tries to find a way to get his dick back and the girl asks if she can buy me a drink, then I buy her one and the other girl asks if I want something and I buy the boy a drink and everyone is friendly.  Yay! 

Only I feel like a shit creeping hillbilly no matter how many martinis we drink, and my friend has to try to justify my behavior and says, "Well clearly he should have apologized right away," but it is a weak defense.  And then some people we know come up and my attention is turned away from the bar for awhile, and then I notice that the boy is gone and the girl is still there and The Swede has swooped in on her and is caressing her shoulder, and when I go up beside her to order once again, it is clear that something has gone terribly wrong.  Her eyes aren't clear and beautiful as they had been, she is not as friendly as before when she had asked us to come drinking at another bar with her and her fellow.  No, she is The Swede's now, and somehow it makes me terribly sad.  She was beautiful, and I think I loved her. 

I don't remember coming home, but I know I did.  I woke up at nine this morning with a screaming, screeching headache and a tremendous need for water which seemed miles and miles away. 

Yes, I showed them, Goddamnit.  Who's the man? 

Not me.  I'm an asshole.  I don't think my friend will call to ask me out for a while.  I wouldn't.  And now I have The Fear.  There will be retribution of one kind or another.  You are not allowed to get away with things like that.  There is a Karmic justice for people like me.  Yes, not for others, but for me, I'm sure.  I am paranoid, now.  I don't want to leave the house. 

Tonight, an attorney friend of mine who has one of the most beautiful art collections in town is having a party.  It is the one I went to last year with the gypsy band who play like Django Rheinhardt.  I want to sit quietly and drink a beer under the cool moon and stars.  I want to regain some composure and sophistication.  But I know it isn't that easy, isn't that simple.  Oy!  I know and fear the beating that is coming.  It won't be fun.