The Bavarian Felinifest

Do I attract weirdness or am I simply attracted to it?  Not mutually exclusive, I know.  Trying to write about last night is like dancing about sex.  I was up at 5:30 and gave up at 7:00.  I went back to bed thinking that would help.  Now, at 8:22, I am thinking no more clearly about it.  What I am thinking clearly about is how I need to change my life.  I've lost all discipline, I think.  I blame Covid.  It is one of the long Covid symptoms, I believe.  But while we ate and drank, World War III had begun.  It started in Crimea years ago, but what is happening in Israel right now is going to bring the apocalypse.  TikTok will not save you.  Buy gold.  Burry your coins.  Stock up on canned foods.  You won't have a car.  You won't be able to get medicine.  I don't think we have enough calvary to save us this time. 

But that's down the road.  What I WANT to tell is about last night.  I just can't seem to.  It was a Fellini film set to oompah music and shot with a fisheye lens in close-ups, faces strangely distorted, extended noses, giant eyes, set in a combination Hall of Mirrors and that spinning Barrel of Fun thing at the fair.  

All I wanted to do was drink some beer and do The Chicken Dance.  But things, as they will sometimes, just got out of hand.  I've tried to write it again, but there is no way of doing it.  I just spent another thirty minutes writing for the garbage can.  Let's just say "Cultures Collide."  I was nervous all night and had to save a fellow I know from the factory some psychological damage at the least.  I am pretty sure I saved a drunken Russian from Siberia a whole lot of trouble, too.  The Russian was deserving.  He could have benefitted, maybe.  

"Hey, T. . . uh-uh.  Just laugh.  Walk away and laugh."

The fellow from the factory was as drunk as the Russian, but I knew him and so. . . . When I sat down, after exchanging the usual hellos, he leaned across the table and asked me, "Do you still think I'm gay?"  It was a strange and aggressive question, and I wondered where it was coming from.  I shook my head and said, "Well, I'm a pretty fact based guy.  I've never seen you perform the act, so I couldn't say.  But, you know the old bromide. . .  it's just sex."  

But he didn't want to let it go.  He started into a narrative about how he used to try to goad me at the factory, and then I knew what perfidy was behind this.  It made me sad.  And that was lucky for him, for he was poking enough at a tender spot to make me otherwise.  He was drunk, so I don't think he had a good read of the room.  He launched into some weird ferris wheel of life philosophy about how he believed we were on orbits that were going to bring us together.  The girl he was with was trying to stop him, telling him to drink his beer, attempting to distract him, but he was wild-eyed and obviously caught in some mental gyre of his own creation.  

"Are you getting mystical on me?"

"I, uh, I don't think it is necessarily mystical. . . ."

The boys had started listening in, and I could tell they were ready for some rough fun.  It was going to get ugly, I feared, and I had to bail to save the boy some trouble.  I have a big heart even when somebody's trying to bruise it.  I kept telling myself. . "Just laugh.  Just laugh."  

"I'm done here.  They are having Oktoberfest at the Pig," I said.  

"Are you leaving."

"Yea, I'm out."

Fortunately they were ready to go.

"We'll see you there." 

But I was done, drained as a South Florida swamp.  When they called and said, "Are you here?" I said that I was home.  

"We're coming over."

"The fuck you are.  I'll call the cops.  Stay out of my yard."

"You're missing it here, dude.  You should see the girls."

Yea, yea. . . I should see the girls.  Tits and ass.  Tits and ass.  It is Lonesomeville personified--lust and loneliness.  The world is too devoid of love.

The air outside this morning is cooler than the air inside, and it will stay that way all day.  I leave the kitchen door open after feeding the feral cat, and she comes across the threshold for the first time.  I have to gently shoo her away.  "No. . . no. . . you can't come in here, baby."  She seems to understand.  She's too wild now.  There is no hope of real domestication.  

I scanned old photos yesterday.  I do not resent the past.  I focus on the things that were good.  It takes some time, but I am able to let go of the bad.  Old wounds heal even as life is killing us with ten thousand paper cuts.  

I've got to quit helping it along.