How’s everybody’s pandemic going? In my house today it was Unscrew the Drain Cover and Fish Out Two Long, Wet Clumps of Hair So That the Tub Will Drain Properly and Everyone Can Shower Without Gray Water Rising to Their Ankles Day. A quarterly event, it’s a mild but emotional celebration, capped off with a ritual cleansing.
All tagged Marriage is not for the faint of heart
Jack was up at his friend Jim’s house when he died. They had a regular guys’ weekend twice a year where these four men would eat and drink and play music and laugh and talk for three days and then go home, wait six months, and then do it all again. It was good for him. He loved his friends.
The day before the last day I ever saw Jack, we went to Paseo Nuevo to see Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood. When we came out of it and walked back up State Street to his truck, I felt like I was in a trance, the pace and the length of the movie had overwhelmed my sense of time. I wasn’t sure if I even liked the movie, I had to read some reviews to help me figure out my ambivalence, but Jack had no qualms, he loved it. Looking back now, I understand why.
I was walking to work one fresh morning between rains a week or so ago, enjoying my big warm coat and keeping the mist off my head with my fine fuchsia-colored umbrella, when I approached a man who was pushing a shopping cart full of some thoroughly damp belongings. And because I often deal with homeless folks at work I slowed down as I came up to him and I said, “Hey,” and he looked me in the eye to acknowledge my greeting, and the look in his eye told me he was fucking done with this rain shit.
