Draft:

I find myself in the Safeway on Wisconsin Ave. after work.

When you get older, you'll find things, come across things.  A parent is dying.  I'm too far away to get there.  I'm coming from a work meeting.  Blinded, I go to the Safeway...

Saturday, Sunday, Monday in, and each one drawing me into the night sea.  I don't know what to do but have some wine after a shower, do the dishes.   5 AM now, pushed further into the night, further into the solitary.


I might have the touch, the common touch, the goodness to great a thousand people easy, and to get to know individuals quick enough,   well, that's because I know myself, I've seen my habits, yes I have...  And it's always been, I've thought, a noble experiment in being a kind of person, a particular sort of people, who, either are from some ancient place, or maybe even from space, or hyper space, as far as I could gather...  I mean, from people who know the soul...

I mean, to know the soul, your own soul, the hyper soul, however you might put it, I mean, these days, that would be odd enough...  So distracted, we are by... by the vehicles of expression, this app, that app, the perceived need to respond to some bit of news, take up the offerings of entertainment...  I mean, just to speak basically and in full presence...

Such a conversation, even in a barroom, will fall to the thousand different priorities of professional life.


And the week continues.

Tuesday night wine tasting, one of those Air Unhealthy days in DC, and I feel it, walking down to the Korean market for a sandwich before the bus.  It's slow, it's quiet.  Two moms with kids across the street playing soccer come in for half a glass of wine, so, of course, pour them a taste.  They then order half glasses, but by the time I get over there to the table, they have to go, that's cool, no worries at all, come back some other time.   I'm walking past them as they get up from the low table, now on their mission, and two glasses roll off the table, crash, breaking.  "Oh, Jesus..." I mutter to myself softly...  No, no worries, shit happens, we'll catch you next time, one mom tries to give me a ten, no, really, take it easy...

We're tasting a Bordeaux, a Cotes de Bourg, Chateau Bujan, 2015.  I go around giving my little spiel about the wine.

And then, Khaos of the  Double Ks arrive.  I've gotten everyone else calmed down and dined and deserted, it's just not busy at all,  some wine conversations at the bar between a Jamaican woman and an older gentleman, Southern, in a linen jacket, who's written a book about Napa, he inscribes it to her...  The Khaos guys are already a little bit into it, having come from one bar eatery, and they get sentimental soon enough, but I am, I suppose, too much a gentleman to notice it, and just keeping on top of them, organized, ready with silverware when they want to eat, and then more people come, there's the panic of getting the orders in before the kitchen closes, early, the announcement coming up from downstairs via the trusty old busboy, M., 9, and then ordering blind, not for just the two Italian women who are coming, but for another, and then, yes, for the chef guy, and Khaos One tells me at 9:08 that they need a salmon tartar...  and the kitchen is not pleased when I put the order in, no, even the busboy lecturing me.  But I'm busy just trying to keep it all straight, and I wonder later, is it in their personalities to demand such attention that takes a large amount of stoic hospitality and the patience of a saint, a saint, who, naturally, likes people, and his friends from down all the years...


Later, after  it all, the troubled cleaning up, I find "rare footage" of Kerouac on YouTube, but he is drunk and sweaty and in people's faces, no hero of mine here, and I feel ashamed.  Jesus,  maybe it is all blowhard crap, even when one appears to write that well as Kerouac did.   What kind of a personality would claim such a talent, and now we would look upon such men, Ginsburg, also disheveled, Kerouac, a sweaty drunk in a striped short sleeved shirt, as bums indeed, and maybe I'm one too, for falling for it all.  Where does much of narrative fiction come from but stimulants, caffeine, the hungover lifestyle...  The work of the man child, the mama's boy, refusing to man up and act with action.


The skies open just as I get on the bus to work, roast beef sub, wrapped in paper, and lightning followed four seconds later by thunder.  Drenching, but I keep under the trees and jump over little torrents in the sidewalks and driveways and across curbs, up to work, socks damp, shirt soaked through, knapsack wet inside.

I'm wearied out from the night before, but I know that I've left the bar in good shape.  I was there until 1:30 in the morning putting it all back together, the clean up from the last round of conversations after the smoke, to do the math of the checkout report, and the chef guy forgot his wallet, yeah, so it goes.  I put the bar together again, stocked, ready to go, cold stuff cold, silverware, mineral water, cutting lime wedges, cloth napkins ready, reservation list, a general order of neatness, a clean slate bar top...

It's busy already, but one spot at the bar when Henri comes in, venerable waiter, close friend of Martin, the old maitre d' from Jockey Club, but it's a just a shade too hectic to have a sustained conversation with him, though I try, as coworker A. literally pokes me.   Pigs feet, Veal Cheeks...  I've come by to see you, but you're never here, Henri says as he gets ready to take his check.  (His fellow French waiter down the street, who also worked with us, sometimes texts me on my work Saturday nights:  "are you working tonight?"  answer:  "no."  And sometime he slips in anyway, just as I'm getting rid of the last customers and there he is at the bar smiling at me, and for him, one is never enough, and so I have a right to duck him.  I know how it's going to end, nice guy that he is.)  There's a check presenter book next to him, the couple who has a story about a major soccer trophy visiting the town, and he mentions, having opened it that I gave him the wrong check, though meanwhile his check is right in front of him, which I advance.  "I thought you looked confused," he says.  "He's a man of leisure, eh..."  ha ha.  "That's a dangerous profession, young man," he tells me.  Yes, my friend, I know.  I told him I was working now an honest man's five shifts, and don't tell him about the rest, but... I can't really argue with him.  He could manage to work catering to a law firm, breakfast and lunch, and then go do a restaurant night shift, avoiding the craziness.  And it was better money back then, anyway.

And meanwhile, even in the slow doldrums of early August with Congress out of session, the bar is full, an older couple waiting for the two who are just having drinks to move along, and all the while the gypsy swing of the trio is ticking away.

And anyway my mind is recovering from the bleakness of spirit, the dissatisfaction that fell down upon me as the last of Khaos men were hanging around...


A favor to do, when I get back to the apartment.  First, a nap, hitting the couch after taking my sneakers off.  My friend who works for the real estate company who is my landlord, has sent an email, please light the pilot lights of the gas stove in vacant 201, and it's a greasy old stove, particularly after I remove the burner grates to lift the stove top up to find the top pilot lights.  The old empty apartment, abandoned, electricity turned off, the same footprint as mine, but reversed.  I didn't know the person who lived here.  There was a Crucifix on the wall one could see through the window when the blinds were up, and now looking at them, they are old blinds.  I run a load of laundry through, to have underwear and socks.  Wide awake, I take out the recycling, go for a walk out around the block by the woods, 6:30 AM, now, people arriving off the main road at the Nature Research Center facility, beyond the reservoir banks, mist rising from the river above the trees on the far side of the Potomac.

I call mom, eat some curried chicken salad from the deli, go to bed, scratching at the mild itch on bug bitten knuckles.  The window unit AC is on low, so it comes in and out of cooling mode, and the nail gun thumps percussively somewhere outside the window nearby, and the little Bobcat, digging away, back and forth.