that's all there is to it

I woke up alone, this morning, for the first time in three and a half weeks. I can't say that I mind. In fact, to be honest, I'd begun to miss the old Bachelor Morning Adventure. I don't so much get out of bed as flail myself to my feet. Were there no bed, my method would look like one of those flying-spinning wushu moves where the artist is parallel to the floor but several feet above it. One moment I'm dozing away in bed and in the next I'm on my feet several meters from the edge of the bed. It is awesome to behold, I've no doubt. Then, of course, it's off to the john for the morning contribution to the local waste reprocessing effort, and eventually, breakfast and the other two S-es. Nothing special there, of course, but what I'd been missing, what I'd forgotten that I'd been missing (apart from the sunrise pleasure of tossing my arms about the bed like an epileptic) was the simple sensation of being awakened by the warmth of sunlight on my eyelids. Sure, I know, it's possible to awake that way even when I'm not sleeping alone, but for reasons unknown (all right, not really unknown: it's because my strange bedfellow snores me awake in the morning before the sun can do the job) it never seems to happen. There's nothing like a sunlight alarm clock to put my mood straight in the morning. What a wonderful feeling.

I'll be going to the cabin this weekend, also by myself. Doug's cabin. He and his dad were going up there for the weekend, but this morning I had an email from Doug offering to let me have it instead. His mother's in Delaware and she had a heart attack last night around 3AM and he's catching the fisrt plane out. So I get the cabin for the weekend.

I couldn't rustle up any company for myself on short notice, and truly, I don't mind. Maybe I'll just have a solitary weekend for a change. Like the good old days. Victor was nowhere to be found, which isn't very unusual, and Elton already had plans. His bowling league has a tourney in Toluca Lake. They roll at 7am for some godawful reason, on Sunday, no less, so the team rented a dozen rooms at some ratty Econolodge and they're driving out Saturday and staying the night. I guess it pays to be well rested before entering a bowling tournament. I wouldn't know. I tried bowling when I was in college. That was a hoot. Can you believe I actually got credits for that? I did, sure enough, couldn't have graduated without them. Well, I could have, but I would have had to fill that requirement with something equally challenging, like badminton or checkers. It wasn't exactly a "teaching" class, or a "learning" class for that matter, and the records show that my skills actually un-improved over the course of the quarter. I think I went in bowling a 180 and left bowling a 120. Or maybe not. Who the hell can remember how to score bowling? Not me, that's who.

I couldn't locate Victor but I'll bet I know what he's up to. We were at Chomsky's last night, for a poetry reading, and when it was (thankfully) over, or more precisely, before it even started, Victor decided to pick up the poet. Victor isn't interested in staying single for very long. She was cute, I suppose, in a nerdy librarian kind of way. You know, the big glasses, long dress, mousey hair kind of look. The sort of girl you'd see in the beginning of a Def Leppard or ZZ Top video, who'd be swinging around a stripper pole in a bikini by the end of the video. No matter how cute she was, though, I wouldn't have bothered with her. I'm not into English major types, and I can't stand poetry. But Victor's less discriminating than me. I don't think he's looking for anything long term at this point. In fact I'd say he was looking for something rather short term. Very short.

After the reading Victor approached the poet. Bethany was her name, if I recall correctly, which I do, since I have the program right here in front of me, and programs never lie. I stayed within earshot. I wanted no part of Victor's romancings, but he was my ride for the evening, so I wasn't going anywhere without him. Victor layed on the moves.

"I really enjoyed your poem," said Victor.

"Yeah?" said Bethany, "which part?"

"Well, the sweep of the poem evoked a sharp image of the decay of modern society. It's difficult for me to pick out a favorite part because the whole thing was brilliant." Bethany began to blush. So did I. Jesus Christ. Victor continued. "If I had to pick, I'd say the part where you compared the environmental policies of the Bush administration to the formation of the Luftwaffe in '36."

"You didn't find that to be too much of a stretch?" asked Bethany.

"Oh, no. No, not at all. In fact, I was thinking about just such a thing earlier this week. I can't understand why more people haven't picked up on it. We're heading down familiar territory now, aren't we? Dark territory." Victor laid it on. False earnestness beamed from his face. He sure looked as though he believed what he was saying. Bethany bought it, of course. Victor has some kind of strange magic.

Victor spends at least a quarter of all his spare time reading up on WWII. If I was ever hit by a bus and subjected to the sort of brain-scrambling that would induce me to care what the Luftwaffe was up to in 1936, Victor is the first person I'd consult. If, that is, my brain was still intact enough to recognize and recall Victor's expertise, which, presumably it would not be, were it scrambled enough for me to have such an interest in 1936 Nazi aviation.

But I digress.

Victor and Bethany considered the finer points of modern Christiandom's effects on secular society and how these effects echoed those of the Druidic expansions of the early 1200s (huh?), and how if only more people would care about each other we'd all live in a happier place, and how a little bit of education goes a long way, and the effects of the fast-food economy on third world nations. In the span of just ten minutes they'd solved all of society's problems, or at least the pressing societal problem of whom they'd each be sleeping with that night, and all the while Victor kept a perfectly straight face, which is what one must do if one is to solve the problem that he was aiming to solve.

Bethany, of course, lovely, self-consistent girl, had no car. She supports public transit. So she rode with us to my apartment, where Victor dropped me off to a solitary night and a sunrise sunkiss. I wished them both a good evening, curled up in bed with a massive tome of Nazi history that I happened upon on my way from my study to my bedroom, and read myself to sleep.