I am half-awake and in need of resurrection. Head crushing, by no means crucified, from scant sleep, I head to one of my Sunday breakfast haunts, seeing flocks of families acknowledging an altogether different notion of rebirth. Mine is more prosaic and can be executed the other 364 days of the year. One of the problems with being without religion is that there are no cues. There is no atheist church, but one finds community in other ways.
There are many nonoverlapping sights that catch my attention: The new waitress who presumably fits the bill of “two years’ experience” that was registered on the help wanted sign, now gone. I don’t know if she fudged her years, but I suspect she has. She is pleasant enough, but she is inexpert at replenishing coffee. I still tip her well. Her jeans slip down her waist, forming a sharp hyperbolic ellipse that reveals the beginnings of a paunch and the top portion of an oval tattoo close to vulva. Hyperbolic curve revealing hidden hyperbolic curve clipped by the denim demarcating line. With its wholesome-debauched dichotomy, it reminds me of the Beriln Wall. But this exhibitionism is commonplace in my neighborhood and it doesn’t faze me.
I can certainly empathize with the confused and bushy-haired young man who is being vetted by his girlfriend’s parents. He didn’t get the memo that it was Easter either. His blue bandanna holds back unruly shocks of brown hair which disappear behind his blue sweatshirt. The other three people at his table are dressed like the families, which is to say suited, and they have signaled this disparity by shifting their posteriors to the left of the booth, all bunched in solidarity against this man’s sartorial indiscretion. Shirtsleeves or dressing down simply aren’t options here and I wonder if someone is going to arrest me for wearing yesterday’s denim shirt or failing to shave or not remembering the miracle of the nailed man on the cross. I’m certainly not cross towards any of these believers.
The table that draws my attention, and I am curious and observant because I failed to bring a book, is a father with two children. The father is moribund, suffusing strawberry jam in a sad and solitary way. His son and daughter are happy, frequently leaving the table to run circles around an aquarium just across the tiles. Papa does not share their zeal, but he has spiffed up his son, who is also besuited and well-groomed. Papa is dressed in a crisp blue blazer and a burgundy shirt and a smart tie blending in like Cézanne. He is in his mid-forties, the remains of his hair closely cropped. The balding is now at an end for him. I wonder if I will look like him in a decade or so when my hair eventually goes. I am wondering if he has the kids because his ex-wife forgot to pick them up. I am wondering if he was burned by someone or whether he is just hungry or disguising his sadness by appearing here with his brood. Perhaps the diner permits him to escape or saves him the labor of cooking eggs, potatos and bacon in that proud male manner that I have employed for women who wake up with me on a Sunday morning. Perhaps he needs a woman to swing his skillet. His children do not notice his loneliness. The waitress may not have two years’ experience, but she is expert enough to pick up on social cues and leaves the man to find a quiet paternal bonding with his children.
The divorce can’t be recent. (Or is he a widower?) The children are too happy. And I really hope this man will display some kind of joy. Maybe he might smile, as I did, over the waitress’s oval tattoo. Or perhaps he considers himself too old for this puerile preening or he doesn’t want anyone to see his giddy dregs.
But it turns out that I am very wrong. For as the man walks in the distance to settle up, I see the slight upward curve of a smile. And I see him engage in minor flirtation with the waitress, channeling some young part that I had thought dead. I wonder if he has read my mind. As the pleasant din of early Marley delights the diners, the man begins dancing a twinkly two-step, one that he hasn’t employed since his days in the dance clubs. And I see now why the kids love him.
Twenty minutes after this man has disappeared, I pay my check. I be-bop as well, with decidedly more swings of the arms, in deference to this man’s giddy human spirit, wondering if anyone is watching me and hoping that my clumsy but pleasantly executed moves will inspire them to dance a demented jig for a day that is, as far as I’m concerned, too restrictive of the beatific human spirit.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
It’s easy for parents to look like shit when their kids have had a bit of chocolate.
I went to an Easter concert in the afternoon – High Anglican church, still smelt of incense from the morning, beautifully restored and lovely stained glass (including a memorial to an ex-chorister from the church who died on Easter Sunday in 1916). The student choristers sang the most exquisite piece of Schubert, from the Deutschmesse (which I am completely unfamiliar with) – now there’s someone who was crucified all right. I hope he got to dance some of the time.
Oh, I meant to say – nice piece, thank you.
This was pretty great.