Doodles

It is cold and the conversation colder. I am bored and take a sip of diet coke and play with my cell phone. I tell myself that I should be more social, so I lean forward and try to listen. Try really hard. But my mind still drifts, unfocused, not able to engage. My defense mechanism. Then I am hot and I wonder if my health may be slipping away. No one else seems hot. My right arm is sore from the shoulder to the wrist and I wonder why that is. I stretch out my leg…preparing to stand… but not standing yet. The preparation is to offset the boredom. My knee has a kink and gets stuck during the extension. It hurts. I grimace. No one seems to notice. But I do, boy do I. I get up and make my way to the restroom. Looking cool I think. My second thought is no one looks cool walking to the restroom. It is like everyone can picture you standing there dick in hand waiting for the flow stop. As if people are judging if I am a tinkler or a faucet. I get back to the table and I am still hot. At least in spots. ...

The news came and his death wasn’t much of a surprise. It is easy today to worry about his family and those he left behind, because for sure their burden is great and when you right down to it only the survivors remain. Dead lasts forever. But it is the dead we write about tonight. Frankie was the black sheep of his family. Well, one of the two black sheep. The one who survived his younger brother’s submission to aids. Who survived what I surmise to be a hellish childhood. Who saw his younger sister become devout. ...

I asked her what the hardest thing she’s ever had to do. She tossed her hair back, batted an eye or two, and said “nothing that hard”. It was our second date and we were still very much in that learning phase. Probing. Telling our stories. Open to every past sin or past accomplishment. It was all ok. Set fire to a rectory when you were twelve? Sure, understandable. Nuns and 12 year old boys did form two ends of the triangle. Slept with your ex’s best friend because…well..you both just really wanted to try it? Sure, understandable. Who hasn’t been there. ...

In order to keep my sanity I must go insane from time to time. Take tonight for instance. I got back to my hotel late after a hyper organized day. I immediately started becoming complexly unorganized. Clothes on the floor. One sock thrown on the desk, the other left on a door handle. My briefcase tipped over, the contents spilled. My cell phone lying open, battery exposed. I got completely undressed and then put on my sweats, sans underwear. I put a tee shirt, some big stupid nirvana thing, that singer who needed to be sane in order to be insane until he just…wasn’t. ...

I walked through the HK airport thinking I’ve seen all of HK and I’ve seen nothing at all. As I near the gate, I see a final chance to buy a toy for the four year old who is awaiting my arrival. I walk on past, thinking I have already done enough. Thinking that the rest, as they say, is history. Thinking that I’m glad her tastes are not yet expensive. ...

“Your twitters are so dark” and “i don’t understand your status messages” are the most common response to his micro blogging. He thinks he needs to find a new micro blog neighborhood where he will not coax his messages for his audience. But, of course, – and there is always an “of course” -- his messages will be coaxed for his audience anyway. It’s a matter of whether he wants to coax it one way or the other. ...

She told me I need to be less cynical. That I needed to be more visibly passionate. I told her this was hard for me to do. That the thing I liked the best about me was my cynicism. That when it was right, it was right. To ask me to stop doing that would be the same as asking me not to be me. She said, that well, that was the only way I could achieve and grow. I thought maybe I didn’t want to grow then. That maybe I didn’t want to become her, in all her splendor. But I didn’t say this out loud. I just turned on my mental cynical filter which went something like this: ...

She didn’t see him reaching for the lifeline. It was a windy late spring afternoon when they headed off for the sail. The small boat’s captain said always keep one hand for yourself and one hand for the boat. In the first hour he did this pretty well. But then he started to get a lizzy dizzy and a little weak. He guessed that the coffee only breakfast to avoid heaving was not such a good idea. Couple that with an exhausting work schedule the past few weeks and he was running on fumes. In the morning he tried to talk with her but she was annoyed at something. She has every right to be annoyed, he thought. After all, he was the classic nice guy/asshole combination that she had repeatedly made the mistake of falling for. He was a guy who would suck her kind personality dry…use if for his own interests…while giving nothing of himself to her. They argued…in their quiet seething way…over where to go for dinner the night before, who wasn’t paying which bill, who was the real breadwinner. The only common ground they could find was silence. As the sail reached 90 minute mark, he started to feel giddy and stood and walked toward the front of the boat. He lifted his arms in the big “look at me mom” way, in a way he hadn’t done since he was eight. And for the first time since he was eight, he felt like a kid again. Free and without a care. It was just then that the captain swung the boat around, tossing the man into the cold dark water under the cold dark moonless sky. He bobbled up for air and saw their flashlights but they could not see him and his sunk away. The lifeline was never really within reach. ...

I’m playing tennis. My body is moving slowly. My arm feels heavy. My coordination is remarkable for the lack of it. I break a sweat easily enough but I am not giving a good game to my partner. 30 minutes pass and the heat and humidity is wearing me down. I look across the court next to us and behind the chain link fence is my daughter. Except she isn’t four, she’s fourteen. She is watching me. She is seeing right though me. I turn to my partner, turn back, and my daughter is gone. ...

She told me that never is a promise that I can’t afford to keep. It is 2am, I am in an expat bar in eastern Beijing. The music is loud and the 40 somethings have started to fade, giving way to the 20 somethings. Some are drunk and dancing on the bar with their Chinese girlfriends, looking like a pair of unmatched shoes; one cheap worn leather and the other a pink converse all star. I am at the bar with some friends who will eventually become acquaintances as we go on with our parallel lives. I never get to close to anyone for very long. My friends are high, but not drunk. I am stone sober, drinking diet coke and ginger ale. I am training for my next marathon, trying to get my time under 2:45. One of my friends there is an ABC, female, who I had the hots for when I first came to Beijing three years ago. But now my tastes have turned inward, more local one might say. But in any case, I have a wife back home, a good woman, looking after our kids. Every expat man I know except me, married or unmarried, has a Chinese girlfriend and seems to take it as just another benifit of living here, like having a driver or an ayi. Of course, I am being a bit cynical as some of these men truly — or at least truly think – they have found the love of their lives. I think it is ironic is that they finally found their soul mate yet they are bound to communicate at an 8th grade level due to the language barrier. ...