All Write, Already!

I knew there would be people I didn't know. Shop owners speaking in Arabic, friends who were also artists, and the scene of the smoking of rare Egyptian herbs ( or not so rare) at this shop in the recently un-smoked town I'm from. I went after work, all lathered up with early to leave haste from work and then perfected with a grounding of the tang of home and dog. I wandered until I found it, with some help, this hookah shop. Cell phone messages were exchanged.

I drank Turkish coffee. I listened as the interested parties exchanged public pleasantries and opinions about their livelihoods and avocations. About gastric bypass, too, and new toys. The surprise was the girlfriend of my new friend, who I'd known only as a bun and her art. She was not only more flirtatious -- this married gal with at least one possibly two children -- but also had more of what I dig, more moxy, more let-go, more let-your-hair-down-and-live-a-little. I could also tell that she was digging for info and that was OK. We connected. I could see in her eyes we did.

Sat there, not smoking, in the hookah shop. Listened as the Arabic expressions were said. Said "In English!" a dozen times while our mutual friend was in the bathroom. Kept our distance, despite obvious chemistry. I could see her attributes showing behind the false denim jacket, and her eyes just bugged out at me with exactly what I like. And she tossed her hair around like she didn't care. This only increased with time.

The martini bar. Globes and rare drinks. I didn't offer the girl my cherries. I felt she had enough, and she was married. My mistake. Even when you know she's leaving with her friends and nothing could possibly happen with the six-foot-five underage dude your friend's friend invited, who somehow wound up with his arms around her when these should've been yours, when someone else has his arms around both available and unavailable women in your party, and you're leaving by yourself to go home and write this entry, it's still a shock. How did you play the butter shots wrong? How did you miss the transition between someone you had sympatico with, 80's music with, flirtation with, robot dancing and proximity with? And the answer's of course that nothing was going to happen, and you were always going home alone. And the answer is this is the way you will always go home, that you fundamentally miss your opportunities with the wrong women as much as the right ones, and that there's no way you're going home with anyone who you'd want to go home with, that you've rejected people in those clubs just as now you're being rejected by their complements, and that one way or another, someone's morals are always superior to wishes and attractions and inappropriate slaps on the ass given by the underaged and accepted graciously by the Saturn return women with kids and a husband waiting contentedly, bemusedly at home.

Yes, you're going home but not to that one. You're going home to the dog, the early rising for photoshoots, the stopping for coffee and dissassembling and reassembling of equipment for unthought-out weekends full of not what you just thought you could have touched. That touching, that surprise, was never yours and you should just put it out of your starving mind.