Neil and I were walking down to the Pike Place Market so that I could satisfy a particularly brutal craving for a blackberry smoothie, when his eyebrows raised and he said: "did you just see that?"
Well, I hadn't seen anything so odd that it might make Neil's eyebrows raise. It takes more to surprise him -- or me, for that matter -- than for the average person.
"No, what?"
"That guy up there? In the white t'shirt? He just got down on the sidewalk right there by that building and touched his forehead to the ground like he was kowtowing."
"Which direction?"
"THAT way..." He pointed sort of southish-east.
I pointed. "Isn't Mecca more toward THAT way?"
"No, it's more THAT way."
"No, that's east, because that's the sun right there... And that's... well, yeah, I guess you're right..." My sense of direction is generally pretty fucked up, except in Seattle, where I have the enormous body of water (west), Safeco Field (south), and the Space Needle (north) to orient me.
"Right. Maybe he was praying to the internal Mecca. The Mecca Within."
.....a few hours later......
"I'll do it if you do it..."
"What?"
"If you get down on your knees right here on this sidewalk, right now, and pray to the internal Mecca, I'll do it too..."
We glanced around. There were a couple of passers-by who didn't appear to care one way or the other whether we prayed to the Mecca Within or not.
"Okay, but which direction should we do it?"
"I don't know. We should decide on one though."
"How about toward the art gallery? Art is Truth is Art."
"Okay."
So we did, and then held sidewalk-gravelly hands all the way down the street.
I don't know how in the world I manage to keep from bursting with the enormity of love I feel for this man.
"So... are you from Olympia?"
"Uh... yeah."
"What do you do?"
"Presently, I'm a bum, but up until a week or so ago, I was a college student."
"Really? Taking what?"
"English with a philosophy minor." (Evergreen doesn't have formal majors and minors; my degree is in "liberal arts." However, for simplicity's sake, I generally just say I'm an English major.)
"What are you going to do with THAT!?"
(I'm going to think deeper thoughts, of course. But that's not the answer they want. People at bus stops generally don't want to know this crap. They want to get laid. Secondarily, they want to know what it is that you do. Not what you ARE, but what you DO. It aids in classifying individuals into stereotypical groups. I despise being asked what I do, particularly by a stranger who hasn't even got the human decency to find out who I AM first. But really, it takes a lot less time to map out a brief career path than it takes to explain all of the above...)
(Quoth Tom Robbins: "They glared at her the way any intelligent persons ought to glare when what they need is a smoke, a bite, a cup of coffee, a piece of ass, or a good fast-paced story, and all they're getting is philosophy.")
I said: "Well, I guess I'll teach. Spend my life convincing college freshmen that the difference between the colon and the semi-colon is of great international and spiritual significance."
The bus-stop boy laughed. A few hours earlier, Neil had kissed me and asked what, exactly, the difference was. Spontaneously, I loved him more than I have ever loved any punctuation mark. Such is the way by which poets are made.
"How old are you?" asked the bus-stop boy.
"Twenty-four."
"So... what're you doing down here?"
"In Tacoma? I'm taking the bus."
"I mean, what brings you here?"
"I spent the day up in Seattle and I'm just going home now. I was down at the Lakewood 512, but I got tired of waiting, so I took the bus to this bus stop."
The boy looked at me like I'd just opened my mouth and snapped a fly into my mouth with a forked tongue. I smiled happily at him. He recovered.
"So... do you have a boyfriend?"
I thought for a moment. "Yes," I said. Neil had been tying his shoe, had asked me from a sort of half-kneel, "can I officially call you my girlfriend yet?" I couldn't decide whether to laugh or not. "Girlfriend" is a word for high school students and mallrats. After approximately five million cups of coffee, seven years, three thousand miles, and an unquantifiable amount of silliness and troublemaking, you'd think there would be a better word for Neil and me. But, then again... when I WAS a high school student, quietly but madly in love with Neil, I would have given anything to be called his girlfriend. And how well I remember the deliciousness of that idea... "Yes," I said.
"Oh," said the bus-stop boy, looking un-self-consciously depressed that it was going to be that much harder to land me.
Fuck, I hate small talk. I told the boy a few Greyhound stories. I told him about my book. I told him I knew the Greek alphabet. I told him about jumping off a bridge in Auburn. I told him Neil's Mexico story. I told him I liked to go to Shelton and play with a superball in the courtyard of the hospital.
He looked at me like I had flicked a forked tongue out of my mouth and eaten a small panther, right there in front of him. I love making people look incredulous. I smiled sweetly. I suspect he thought I was the biggest freak on the planet. I suspect he was pretty turned on by that.
"Can I call you?" he asked when our bus stopped.
"I don't have a phone," I said. "I'm kind of homeless at the moment."
"Well, will you call me if I give you mine?"
"If I had a phone, I might," I said. I gave him my email address instead.
"Maybe we can hang out sometime..."
"Maybe we can," I said. "It was nice talking to you."
I really think I scared the ever-loving shit out of that boy. I also think it probably took him great effort not to drool. The poor thing stumbled over his words a couple of times.
I walked back to where I'm staying. The sky was this incredible greenish, greyish blue, with little bits of orange in it. The moon hung low in the east, with a big star near the opening of the crescent. I thought: Mecca?
Supposedly, the average size of a twin mattress is 39 inches by 75 inches. I am convinced that dorm mattresses are smaller.
I have gained about five or six pounds in the past month or so -- my one and only pair of bluejeans has ceased to fit, and I've gone from a 29-inch waist to a 31 or 32. My Santa Fe clothes are starting to fit me again. I'm noticeably bigger.
You'd think it would be easier to fill up the tiny amount of space on my mattress. Between me and my growing kid, you'd think we'd manage somehow. But somehow, no matter what position I lay in, no matter how I sprawl out, the mattress is too big for just us. I've taken to sleeping with my long black coat. But there's still this extra space. Last night I slept with two stuffed animals, the coat, an extra blanket somebody loaned me, and two books, to no avail. I got out of bed and retrieved my journal -- the blue one, the one that's still not full after six and a half years of writing in it. I slept with that, too. But there was still this blank space that just wouldn't fill up. I counted semi-colons until I fell asleep.
It has recently come to my attention that there is a plot to kidnap my child once he or she has acquired the age of having hair, and to dye that hair some freaky color.
As long as there's no ammonia in the hair dye, that wouldn't really bother me too much, but I emailed the alleged mastermind of the plot and made a stink anyway. But I really think pink, orange, or purple hair will go well with baby Chuck Taylors. I giggled the whole time I was writing the email. I think this baby is going to have more love in his little world -- albeit rather untraditional love -- than anybody else could ever hope for.
My sandals smell like a fountain. The point of taking them off was so that they wouldn't smell like a fountain. Of course, when I was wandering through the water, I didn't think to wait until my feet were dry before stepping back into the sandals. That's fine. It's better that they smell like a fountain than that they smell like feet. Anyway, I sort of enjoy it.
I'm going to go locate some food now...
~Helena*