Just Words

I never forgot the day good old Uncle Cueball told Old Man Schlatter that the easiest way to talk to to someone was to pick up the phone and call them.

Of course Uncle Cueball was a bit of a selfish dunce who never wanted to admit he was wrong so it is unlikely he would ever take his own advice. Not that any of it mattered because I didn’t care if I ever spoke to him again.

As for me well sometimes I enjoyed waiting to see what would happen. I would sit back, wait and watch because I knew that the person who said I love you first and was responsible for the first kiss was stubborn and a bit of a pain-in-the-ass but she couldn’t help the natural attributes of her gender.

So I watched and waited and tried not to antagonize her by telling her she was illogical, irrational and hysterical about most things and that she should just submit because I am the boss. The funny thing about it all was that she liked it that way, would never admit it, but she liked it and we both knew it.

When Want To Do Meets Have To Do

He stood in front of the mirror, earphones blasting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and watched his form as he moved the weights from start to finish.

A thousand years before form had been important to him. It had been part of how he made sure he got the most out of his time in the gym, part of how he would focus on individual parts so that the cuts would look as he thought they should.

But that was then and this is now.

He lifted his shirt and stared at the belly that had once been flat. He flexed and smiled, the cuts were still there. In spite of the extra pounds they responded to the call to show themselves.

Back then he didn’t have to flex to make them seen. All he had to do was take off his shirt and the fruits of his labor were clear.  Back then some of it was due to vanity and some of it was due to the way women responded to those cuts. They would run their fingers across the cuts, smile and giggle.

But there was another third to the mix and that was the most important one of all, he loved the high he got from working out. It was a drug that he never tired of and he figured that any drug he could truly label “healthy” was a good thing to keep doing.

Time passed and though he was no longer a college student he was a single man who had no responsibilities outside of work to anyone but himself so he adjusted his schedule and kept lifting like a fiend.

For a long time that worked for him and he continued to follow the routine because it was what he wanted to do and what he needed to do, until it wasn’t.

That changed when his relationship status changed. Girlfriends came and as he got more serious the time that had once been allocated to the gym was adjusted. When girlfriend became wife more adjustments came and so when the day came upon which he looked at himself in the mirror it wasn’t hard to see the evolution of the reallocation of his time.

The biggest change came when he added the title “dad” to his life’s resume and though it was among his greatest joys it was also the primary thing that forced him to accept the distinction between what he had to do and what he wanted to do.

But then as the years passed and he saw what time and age did to friends and relatives he began to evaluate again what he had to do versus what he wanted to do.

It was clear that he had to find a way to create more time for exercise again and that if he didn’t carve out time to carve himself things would get ugly.

And so he stared at himself in the mirror and smiled at the thought of being given permission to reacquaint himself with things left by the wayside and pondered how he would find a way to increase the time there without it taking him back to the days of the ancient workouts he once did.

That was the hard part. He remembered the high and the joy that came with it. He remembered wanting to get it every day and how if he didn’t it would make him cranky. There should be a balance there, at least he would try to find it.

The music stopped playing and he replaced the weights and walked out the door thinking about how he would figure it out. Thinking about the difference in doing what he wanted to do and what he had to do.

Revisiting The Past While In The Present

Can’t remember if this is posted here as well as on the other blog. But it caught my eye and I thought it might be fun to look at something from last December.

Have to put in some “additional” content so that Google doesn’t slap me silly.

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I have that crazy feeling inside my head now. It is an itch I can’t scratch and an ache that won’t go away. It is you. You are to blame. You are thinking about me or thinking about us.

Don’t know exactly what you are thinking. Can’t say whether it is positive or negative. Can’t tell if you are dreaming about what could be or lamenting what was. I just know that I am on your mind just as you know that I am on yours.

Sometimes this feeling makes me want to howl with frustration. I want to go outside and run with the moon and unleash my rage against the sky. I want to run until I am exhausted and just collapse wherever I fall but I can’t and I won’t.

I can’t because I am unwilling to share that side with anyone else. I am unwilling to expose it because it won’t be understood. It will be dissected, discussed and misinterpreted and I can’t deal with that. Not because I am not capable of it but because it is just too much. It is just more than I am willing to give and that is reason enough not to do it.

So I listen to Mick singing Visions of Paradise and I think about when this was one of our songs.

“Don’t tell me when
Something is beautiful
And don’t tell me how to
Talk to my friends
Just tell me the names of
The stars in the sky
What’s your favorite song
Tell me the names of the
Lovers you had
Before I came along

Don’t put your arms around me
And don’t hold me tight
‘Cause I could get used to
Your vision of paradise

And don’t ask me where
All of the pain goes
‘Cause you make me feel
That I don’t know myself
You say that you want me forever
And I say that love is no crime
So tell me the names of the children
We’ll have at the end of the line”

I wonder sometimes if maybe I am crazy and confused. I wonder sometimes if wishes and wants have got me so damn mixed up that I can’t tell what is from what was. And then Mick sings that line using your heart and not your head and I wonder if he is talking to us.

The sensible, grounded man that lives inside me says that it is just a song that was constructed to appeal to people. It was written so that we would relate and that is what I am doing, relating to it.

But goddamn it woman, I feel it. I sense it. I know it. Just as I could tell when you were about to pick up the telephone to call me I know now what it is I sense but I don’t know what to do about it.

Don’t know whether to walk, no run the other direction as fast I can so that I can try to forget. But here is the deal, life is nothing but a series of moments in time set against the backdrop of the people who share them.

We did more than share a moment. We built an entire universe and lived a thousand lives inside our secret world. We loved and we lived. Man loves woman and girl loves boy.

I don’t have to ask your permission to love you and I don’t have to live in the past. I can pretend that once was is just a memory and I can move on past the moment. That is the beauty of choice and free will. But I can also admit, accept and acknowledge that something more is going on and I can follow the signs through the mist and blaze a trail through the fog.

I can see if that helps that which once was morph into that which is and that is what I intend to do. Life is short and our grip is tenuous. So I will do what I do best and dance in the fire and dare the flames to burn me. I will climb the hills and walk through the valleys because that was the promise I made to you and I will hold myself to it.

And I will do what is required so that I can determine whether the ghosts I see are the spirits of the future or the shades of the past. And in the midst of it all I will continue to hold out my hand so that you can take it. Because I never stopped being your hero and I never gave up.

She Swallowed It All

I ran my fingers through Ann’s hair. She rolled her eyes at me and kept eating her hot dog. She hated sports and had often told me she hadn’t any time to spend at them but I knew if it meant spending time with me she would make an exception.

Our lives were exceptionally busy and we were at a place where we weren’t ready to live together…yet. It had taken some doing to convince her to go to the ballpark with me but I know my girl and had figured out a couple of angles.

I told her I thought she looked extra sexy with that Kosher dog in her mouth and laughed as she bit down hard and made a point to chew rather aggressively.

“I am not surprised you didn’t have a boyfriend in college. With that kind of behavior it is a wonder men didn’t wear a suit of armor around you.”

She rolled her eyes at me and stuck out her tongue.

“You don’t want to know how many boyfriends I had in college.”

“I suppose I love you because you are the most humble woman I know.”

She snorted out loud, “humility is not something you know anything about.”

He laughed again and smiled at her, “when people ask me how tonight went I am going to say she swallowed it all.”