But Then I Am Weird

The Rockrose Moon (A Serial Fiction) Part 34

Depending on how I am feeling about myself I think of myself as either a red rose or a white rockrose with a red center so this over abundance of roses seems a bit excessive to me. Like I would be after I got older and went to seed.

I am a singular Rose in a city full of roses, a city of roses. It is the season and it is high season for every mid life guy with a little paunch and a lot of vanity to be having a mid life crisis. I still work at the Gelato store of course but mostly I spend my nights with some guy or other who thinks he is the only one seeking his lost youth somewhere in the neighborhood of my navel.

The part I hate is when they want to get all domestic and feed me breakfast.

Lately I have been carrying a pair of lightweight sandals in my bag so I can sneak out and walk home. It is the best part of the day with the night blooming jasmine just fading and the foxglove bright in the early dawn.

I hate to break it to you mister but the leather seats in your silver Jag are not impressing me. A lyrical and meaningful Sestina maybe…but your sun river tan and your daughter at the French school, I think not.

When I get home I oil up with Sesame and take a long shower and wash off the smell of the night and use my neti pot, brush my teeth and do my yoga practice. And then I curl up with a big cup of coffee and a cigarette and a pile of books until I fall asleep.

Last night I dreamed about getting my nose pierced. I’d never do it, in spite of all the stuff most guys think of as kinky, but in my dream I was at the place and the woman like she was from some circus of piercing or something kept chatting away while I anticipated the pain. I was happy to wake up.

Folks tell me all the time that I should teach yoga. I saw an older woman in her forties, still quite lovely in Whole Foods today greeting old students. Yuck! I don’t like other people enough to want to get to know them that well. But still the sutras have an appeal because they feel all difficult and obscure. This morning I couldn’t sleep so I stretched out on the floor of the ballroom and listened to the melancholy Brahm’s 4th symphony .

Like the jasmine the scent of it made me feel happy and at ease for a time.

But then I am weird.