Men

December 23, 2008

(Bus: 49 Mission/Van Ness)

A young man romanced his lady over the phone.

“You’ve got me like a dolphin here, baby. You’re so fucking sexy. I love you so fucking much. If I had, like, four or five hearts, it wouldn’t be enough to love you… You’re not, like, one in ten or one in a hundred – you’re like one in a million… I think these are my favorite pictures that you sent me… No. No… If you think you’re ugly, keep being ugly, baby, because I love that shit. That one, “A Kiss for You,” damn, baby… and I’m not drunk, either… I need to, like, pray to God a hundred times for sending me an angel like you.”

I had spent the five minutes prior to this conversation silently cursing him for allowing his gangsta rap ring tone to play repeatedly. Eavesdropping on his protestations of love (arousal) however, my heart was softened toward him. There was none of the unctuousness or complacency with which I am used to hear young Lotharios speak to their conquests on the bus. This guy was vulgar but earnest. He was without guile or pride. He was clumsy, a romantic.

I rather liked his metaphor, too, about the four or five hearts. I empathized with the feeling that this one heart, only the size of a fist, could not hold as much love as its cherished object deserved.



January 30, 2009

(19th Avenue)

Every time I drive to work, I pass through the General Douglas McArthur tunnel. I think that, though I would very much like to be famous, I would not like to be famous in a way that gets a tunnel named after me.



February 2, 2009

(Coin Wash&Dry)

The corner with the Laundromat is overrun with gallants. Young drug dealers ask a girl if she needs help carrying her laundry. Men smoking on their stoops bellow compliments as she passes them on her morning jog. When she sits reading in her car, waiting for the dryer to finish, an old man with an eye patch knocks on the window to ask her sign, offer to buy her a soda, and tell her that, in his sixty years on this earth, she’s the only woman he’s ever been weak for.

She would like to know how it feels to be a man. How do men look at other men? What do they say to each other when they’re alone? She would like to be tall and very strong, to be hard. She would like to be grabbed firmly by the hand and clapped on the back.

She thinks of jogging this morning by the lake. The haze was in the air, making the middle distance appear impersonal, historic. Cypress trees stood like pillars on the golf lawn, dividing and framing the scene. How monumental they looked. How unlike the feeling of seeing such things is from the feeling of sitting in a hot car while men look in at you, drawing conclusions, such as that in all their years they’ve never been weak for anyone else. She would like to be like a man. Or like a cypress tree. She would like men to be like cypress trees: towering, stark, and blind, casting not their gaze but only shadow upon the ground.