We’ve started going on dates. A movie, and out to eat. Garangelo’s is the favorite spot, homemade pasta and meatballs and red wine sold by the glass poured out of gallon jugs. Today it was Indiana Jones. Truth be told, Iron Man was a way better flick, but Indiana Jones is Indiana Jones. I had lots of crushes on girly looking "rock stars", but Harrison Ford was my first man-crush. The nicks in his face made me crazy. I could smell the leather of that whip and the sweat in his hat, I swear to God. The plot is absurd and often pointless in this new one, but who cares?! He is Fuckable Royalty. I say this, in not so many words, as we’re walking into the theater. TJ’s eyes go wide, “You had a crush on Indiana Jones?! He’s OLD.” Not that old, I say. Not TOO old, correcting myself. Not at all.
Unexpectedly, these dates make me weepy for my grandpa for the first time since he died. Our Saturday dates, when I was a little girl, to get a toy and then an ICEE at K-mart. He seemed so indestructible, loud hard jovial rock. Right up to the end, he was careful of his person, i.e. vain – he shaved every day, combed his still-thick hair back, put on a nice shirt. He always was like that (and a flirt), but as he aged he was religious about it - it was what he did in the face of mortality, he never let anything make him look shitty. So there.Now that I’m repeating the kid-date tradition, giving myself a special-treat status for the boys once a week or so, I get dolled up a little, like if FPH was coming, and I get out a hundred dollar bill just to break it on them, impressive like. Then I nibble olives and drink a glass of wine, while they cover their entire heads with meat sauce seems like, and interrupt each other tumbling all their thoughts out at me, um um um. I wonder if then, like I do now, my grandfather felt waves of sadness in my happiness for how fleeting everything is. Sometimes it is as if he’s right there sitting next to me invisible saying “Aren’t they somethin!” the same way he always said it. Loud and laughing. “Aren’t you somethin!”, he’d say.
Aren’t I somethin?
playlist:
Harlan Bobo – I’m Your Man [repost]
stars of the lid - a meaningful moment through a meaning(less) process [from my tantric sex collection]
The Raider's March - John Williams and the Boston Pops [new addition to my tantric sex collection, though it might make me giggle. Because then again giggling might be good if you could sure use a giggle, ya know?]
