The Storm

Originally Posted Monday, July 29, 2013

I should be working on "art," but I am transfixed.  It has been a painfully hot day, and I have been full of lassitude.  My back will not quit plaguing me, and now it is making me more than lazy.  I have taken Advil today, something I never do, butI had to have some relief.  I was going to work on art today.  I was.  But as I say, there was the oppressive heat, and then I was hungry and went to brunch.  I ordered only a small mimosa with my eggs benedict, but then, after the barman had made it, I changed my mind.  "Give me a large one," I said, and then I watched him simply pour the little one into a big wind glass and top it off with the cheap champagne they use on Sundays.  I wasn't sure if he thought he was doing me a favor or was pissed, but the big glass of cheap champagne was not welcomed on my end. 

I saw a friend across the bar, and when I had finished eating, I went over to sit with him.  He is not a friend in the strict sense of the word.  We do not visit one another's houses.  It is an odd relationship, really, but he has always been a cool kid (though he is in his forties now).  I once dated the most beautiful woman in town.  Yea, I know, but it is true.  You can ask anybody.  It is not the treat you might think it to be, and as a matter of fact, it is just next to a curse in the encyclopedia.  But I was younger and she was a child and so we made our mistakes like we were the first who had ever made them.  After she and I were through many years later, he was just coming of age, and she bedded him.  He told me so today.  I, in turn, began going out with his girlfriend, though this was some time later.  When we got divorced a decade hence, she began to date his uncle.  Oh. . . it is a wicked little town of inbred socialites. 

But he and I have never had a problem and have truly enjoyed one another's company on many, many occasions.  He is the n'er do well son of a wealthy family, and is not an outcast barely invited to Christmas dinners.  For most of his life, he lived on a trust fund, but now the money has dried up.  It is a long way to go, a hard place to land, but he has done it with good humor and grace while maintaining the tastes and manners of the upper class. 

After drinking with him, I went to the grocers to buy the things I must prepare tonight for my mother who is coming to our traditional Sunday dinner.  When I got home and had put all the groceries away, I sat on the couch and read through a book about the processes I had planned to experiment with today.  But the heat and the cheap champagne had gotten me, and I closed my eyes and fell asleep.  When I woke, the sky was about to break.  And break it has, as now I am watching what amounts to a tropical storm outside my big, three-sided dining room window.  It is something out of a movie.  The lightening is so frequent and intense that the cat is plastered to my leg.  I have unplugged my laptop from the wall in order to keep from being electrocuted if the house or power wires are struck.  It is rain and wind without end.  There will be no artwork today. 

And so I pour a scotch.  It is medicinal, really, as my stomach has been upset today.  I ate dinner at a fish shack that used to be wonderful but which has changed owners about four times and was last night not even average.  I woke this morning bloated and irritable.  Maybe it wasn't the fish, but I figure whatever it is, the scotch will see it through. 

I am not longer sure why I sat to write this now, but I think it was just an impulse to tell a thing while having a drink.  Alone.  The storm will pass in another fifteen minutes or so, and then I can think about making dinner.  My mother will come, we will chat, and perhaps I'll buy some pay-per-view movie for us to watch.  There is work tomorrow and the whole week long and the prospect has already begun to depress me.  This rain, though is spectacular.  It is lovely.  It is the sort of monsoon you get here this time of year in the sub-tropics.  It is India.  It is Vietnam.