Sometimes, it is like the characters in my day dreams become real.
They emerge out of a cold grey dreariness and bring the promise if I just open that door, the world on the otherside will be in Technicolor. I am each time asking me if this is real, as I see them come toward me, up until the moment I touch them, wrap my arms around them and lift them off the ground, yes this is real.
And the things I learn just by being aware there are other eyes seeing my world, things I pass every day and don;t give it a thought. I was there at the Greensboro airport thinking Chuck and Paul would be coming from Newark and Logan and this place would seem so small. Then what I became aware of was my area's need to portray chocolate candy as animal excrement. Potty humor, packaged and hanging in a concourse gift shop to be purchased by some traveller at a tremendous mark up for the novelty of dying regionalism.
I thought I saw Chuck several times before I did see him, second time in my life. Looking like he could have just got off a subway, rattled with an exhaustion that comes from anticipating a trip. Here was my sage little brother with not one thing in his hand, never carries anything on the plane. We went downstairs and got his pet bag and he pulled the leash out of his jacket pocket and it followed him obediently. How did he do that? All those 4 wheeled bags I have seen totter over and cause their owners to look back upon them in disdain.
When we reached our destination, and the introductions had been made, he produced from the bag a square wrapped in paper. Held together with rubber bands, in separate jewel cases with printed labels, 10 cds, containing the accumulated history of dance music since 1977. A treasure, a gift of music and memories and voices.
Where is Anita Ward now? I can remember, sitting in Distributive Ed. class and Karen Spencer telling someone about the song she had heard on the radio that was so pretty, "Ring My Bell" and we boys laughing because everthing was dirty in our minds (and maybe they still are) May, 1979, and that song played all summer, every half hour on all pop stations, until the corporate murder of Disco the second week of August that year, the instrument they used was a New Jersey group called the Knack who sang a stoopid garage band song about a girl named Sharona, who went on to become a real estate agent.
Go to sleep little brother, in the morning there will be pancakes. And in the morning we rose and went to the ancestral home and called the cat, who was having none of it. Terrified, she probably only tolerates me, the idea of another person in her territory as unacceptable as that cat who appears in the long frame behind the door when she thinks to check. The laptop humming, a search of the cabinets produced a bottle of syrup but alas no pancake mix. We'll have to go out.
I took him on the 2 minute tour of Fieldale. That is my cousins house, that is my Aent and Uncles house, that is the house I spent the first two years in, this is Harlowe's curve, this is Granny Merrimans curve and when you send me a card in the mail, this is where I get it. And look, here is the Fieldale Cafe.
Our waitress, a sallow woman who may have been pregnant or may just be a little fat prodded us with coffee. No, no coffee for La Shawn, thank no one in particular. You have hot chocolate? No, we have chocolate milk. It is a strange place, always has been, where the musak is the hum of the florescent lights and the occasional banter of the kitchen and waitstaff. Added this day was the voice of a Yankee Italian moderator of a fansite for the 1980s musical genera known as Freestyle, and his host who felt more at home with him across the table than he did with the patrons he sees in there each time. The one quarter of Garden state in each and every one of my cells satiating themselves.
There was the flatfoot instructor, who with clogged sinuses could not hear her name being called. I waved and got her attention as she waited for her call in order. I wanted them too meet. She could get rid of this cold if she knew the right person to ask for the right medicine. But alas, all the ones she had known had died off. I did not offer to her I carried medicine in the trunk of my car. She had to go to work any way, this medicine is best taken when you can enjoy it, or go to bed.
Word had come from Jack that it looked like the boss man was not going to let him have the time off. I felt guilty, I could have warned him earlier, but what could I do now? I called Wulf to wake him and ask him would he be on his way. He would he said, in a groggy voice that told me I had awakened him. Word came from Logan airport, foul weather, lightning, delays. O-well, we were set as we could be, lets us ride the silver bullet brother, back to the airport, back to the poop dispensary. Fetch our Huckleberry Friend.
There was no flight from Boston on the arrival board. We asked the lady at the information desk. She called some one who gave her a time that she wrote down in the top margin of her morning newspaper and then read to us. We would have another hour. No problem. There was a game room, deserted, like most of the facility. Chuck is a pinball wizard, earning points that defied explanation, his sharp eye driving Ms. Pacman around a maze at lightning speed, calculating the risk and necessity of gobbling up the ghosts at an hallucinating speed. I was never good at them, but I liked playing them with him, because he was there. Same reason I was never any good at pinball, never had one one to play against.
I like that this place has rocking chairs. Sitting still is not normal in most situations. Normal like on time arrivals. The lady at the information desk had been replaced by a man who told us we would have to ask at the Delta counter about the flight that appeared on no arrival board. He had several people ask about it but was not about to call anyone. Delta said it would be another hour. So, lets ride these rocking chairs. Eat these chocolate gravel pieces and discuss the merits of the physical attributes of the passers by. Lets us be two gay men in public waiting for a third, and not hide it.
And those chairs rock back and forth and their arms get closer and closer to one another until with out thinking a didget can be put in harms way simple dangling off the arm rest, coming together with its mate like scissors, DAMN! I felt it before he hollered, felt the vibration of his knuckle being rubbed with my entire body and could not recognize the sensation until his voice defined it for me. Bless his heart, I hate when that happens.
A third delay. O-well, we are ofter all only cattle when we travel, when the gate opens we will pass thru. We are still rocking when I see down the concourse , the no ones land controlled by the TSA, the smiling face of Paul and I tell my little brother "here he comes" like it is Santa at the end of an Xmess parade. We rise, and go as far as we can to meet him, the animation of another life known to mine growing closer, until embraces, a la "son of a bitch". My Huckleberry Friend, grinning like a man let out of prison, rattled, still vibrating from the effects of steel cutting thru contrary air. Did you check any bags? No just the one slung over his shoulder, no he never checks anything if he can help it.
Topic: Shakesthegrounds Rumblings (Read 2598396 times)