11:30pm. We were sitting in the corner window booth of that little cafe and the Men are talking over the table at each other about world pop and the Women are on the rays from the corners ninety degree angle with bare shoulders tilted toward each other, as if about to kiss.
I tell her that I'm tired and thinking of going home. She leans in so that our cheekbones rest together and speaks in my ear. 'Walk with you? You Sure? Could sleep in belltown.... Certain? Careful.' (I like it when people lean close and talk, because it soothes the panic of not being able to hear. The part of my brain that is always scrambling and re-scrambling sounds to make words gets to take a few seconds off.). I stand and congratulate the musician, for whom we have been drinking, kiss cheeks, and blow out the door.
I'm experimenting with those extremely tall shoes with the terrycloth apples embroidered on them, and have donned a pink gingham apron for the dual purpose of making the shoes go with my otherwise all powder blue attire, and keeping my newly de-and-re-constructed skirt up around my navel instead of down around my hips. With the shoes, I'm six feet fucking tall. With the short pigtails that became necessary in the heat, I'm six one. I'm an Amazon. I'm an Amazon in an Apron.
Being so far away from the ground makes it seem like I'm walking on the ocean. The cuts of sidewalk that have been uprooted by trees and then smoothed by blacktop are the soft swishing motion of the water. I could part the red sea. I could part the red sea and bake you a pie in the same afternoon. But not now. It's too hot.
On the corner of Pike and 2nd, I turn my eyes away as business is being conducted as usual. I'm not a threat, so they are casual in their secrets, but I always turn my eyes so I can honestly say I didn't see anything. I wait for the light and a Metro Training Coach goes by. I wish the new driver well in my head the same way I cross my fingers for ambulances and firetrucks. Habit.
He sidles up to me so quickly I barely have time to register what kind of situation I'm dealing with. He comes up on the sidewalk from my right, behind my body and stands RIGHT next to me on the left.
"Looking for some company?"
I don't have time to keep the words I'm thinking from coming out of my mouth. They're sharp and awkward, like being hit with rocks.
"You're standing too close to me!" and I nealy jump away.
I compose myself as quickly as possible and adjust my response.
ahem. "No, thank you. I do not care for company. Please go, and have a nice night."
He smiles and shrugs and crosses the street.
I have cigarettes but no match. The boy sitting at the base of the post is pierced, tatted, smoking, and reading a hefty book. I apologize for interrupting and ask for a light. He lightly touches his pocket, shakes his head and holds his cigarette to the end of mine. I pull, cough, laugh. He smiles. I imagine him rolling up his shirt sleeves to wash dishes and it makes me blush.
I'm a block from home and I feel somebody walking aware of me. I slow to let him pass and
"Oh it's you! You're not scary at all! How've you been?"
He's a little out of breath and focused on meeting others, but it's always nice to see this one with whom I share a last name but no blood. We chatty chat casual and summer and I think about stopping by his studio some time to ask him the old joke, (Hey Bob? Are you gay? In the old sense of the word, I am gay.) Mutual friends talk and parting. He to the club, I up the hill to the LaRoy. Fear, Attraction, and Friendship in a fifteen minute walk from Belltown to First Hill. I'm an Amazon. I'm an Amazon in an Apron.
I find it funny that raisins get their own name. I don't see why... they require no extraordinary preparation or process to make the switch. Simple drying, on or off the vine. Nothing a date dosen't endure to be bagged and dispensed to the nations elderly. Prunes, apricots, bananas.. etc. all deserve the doppelganger name. They, at least undergo an additional pitting and/or slicing process.. something more than simple rest and dehydration. Maybe it's the grape's age old association with the spirits... not good enough for me. I love wine.. I also love banana splits.. doesn't add up.
Posted by: sammus at July 11, 2003 11:25 AMIt's kind of like beef and cow. Or pork and pig. Or... well. It's different from fish and fish.
The reason that happens with beef and cow and pork and pig is actually kind of interesting: when the Normans invaded England, they took over the country and ruled everything. They ate all the good food, and the English lived in the fields and raised the food for the Normans to eat. And Normans, as I didn't learn until college, were actually French. So this interesting thing happened. English people raised the cow, so they called the live animal by their old Saxon-Germanic word: cow. But Normans ate the cow. So the word for cow meat, the thing you eat, is the Norman-Latinate word: beef.
Maybe that's what happened with rasins too.
ps- good post, sonya.
Posted by: Joshua at July 11, 2003 01:39 PM"why don't you call it 'dead pig'?"
Aaaaaa!
None of you were at that movie, and it's a secret. But it was bad, very, very bad.
But I love the fact that I know why now. Stupid, pendantic environmentalists.
Posted by: John Galt at July 11, 2003 02:28 PMSammus,
Slight correction. Prunes are dried plums, so in that sense they're in the same category as the raisins.
And the way the heat was yesterday sjet, you could have probably just set the apples & some flour, milk & butter in a tin pan out in the sun and it would have baked itself...
"Amazon In An Apron", Starring Lucy Lawless and Christine Baranski, coming this Fall from UPN!
Posted by: THE COMTE at July 11, 2003 04:41 PMyour writing is delicious, I don't know how many times one is entitled to compliment an author though so I will shrug like a sullen teen and mutter, "s'alright".
if good writing is correct in its structure and accurate with the old punctuation and grammar, then that's all well and dandy. but when one awaits the next update, with an agitated impatience for hoovering up the new text with hungry eyes and mind, then I think that becomes great writing.
just my ha'penny worth.
Posted by: fire3500 at July 13, 2003 01:41 PM