Of Things Fresh and Stale

Today was a Staff Development day at school, so Grace did not bring Mackenzie to stay with me. I tended to a contract, made and answered calls, and did work in the yard and house. Sarah got home early from Statesboro, so she went with me to a real estate office to drop off an earnest money check. While we were there, Laura called, and asked us to pick her up at the Metro Coffeehouse. Laura and Leela were reading papers and working crosswords when Boo and I got to Metro, so we had a drink and played Ms. Pacman. We each won a game, but Sarah was jumpin'-up-and-down pleased to have whipped the old man by more than 20,000 points in the second game. (After I had won the first by 10 points.) "I'll bet this machine is thirty years old, Boo-dee. When I was your age, we played Pacman - Ms. Pacman was not even available." My reflexes are shot, so even making turns in the maze is iffy.

Leela went to work at Nacho Mama's, and the girls and I walked around downtown, window shopping and talking. Woo applied for a job at Blue Sky. She had even gone to the trouble of wearing a skirt! Wow. It would please me if she could work with Barry, Matt, and Sonia. Good folks who are employers are to be valued.

When I picked up Sarah at her mother's earlier, Ike came out to tell me that his Powder Puff team had lost 21-7 to the sophomores. "They were big and fast! If they could take a hit, they could play in the NFL." I guess it was a bit of a mismatch. Ol' Pook looks so intelligent wearing his glasses.

Grace came out to deliver a manic commentary about the state of things in her mother's household. I suggested that she be as calm as possible, to listen attentively, and to make the very best of every situation that she could. Ray's parents have come from NY to visit. Janice came over to the truck to ask me a question or two, to make a remark or two, to ask a question and make a remark, or to make a remark and ask a question.

Ed Rice called around 11 this morning and invited me to have barbecue for lunch with him. We've not been making our ritualistic sojourns as frequently the past year, so we are re-dedicating ourselves. We went to Freeman's in Beech Island, which we agreed has the best meat - moist and smoky-tasting. Afterward, Ed came into the house, and we sat on the back porch sipping green tea. Fall is here. We reminisced about past times on the porch. In 21 years, there have been many. (I am thinking of one now with Helinka that . . ., oh, nevermind.) Ed has long said that the two best porches in Augusta are side-by-side on Hickman Road. Bryan's is the best open-air, with the great view over downtown. Mine has that wonderful sense of enclosure - while still being al fresco - due to the broad stucco arches, and the array of mature trees in the back yard. I resolved to get it cleaned up, repainted, and even re-screened. Having Mackenzie arriving daily seems to give me some "want-to" that I have lacked since divorce fractured our family. I told Ed on the way back from Freeman's that I am not depressed - I just don't care about anything. My energy never replenishes, as it always did in the past. "Some things get broken, and can never be repaired", Ed suggested correctly. Maybe this new generation will prove to have restorative powers for my battered spirit.

Ed and I talked of growing old, and of having reached the stage where we tend to be repeating ourselves - not stories, but in behaviors. There is little new under the sun. I mentioned to him, too, that those legendary "senior moments" are beginning to appear. "I asked Bryan if they were happening to him, and he said 'no', but the last two times we've gone somewhere, he's misplaced tickets and coupons. Shit, I can tell you the Social Security number of my best friend in third grade, but I can't remember what I had for breakfast. Bryan says our brains are so full of 'stuff', we just throw away most of it at the front end. It matters little, and it just grows and grows in frequency and volume."

I told Edward that I have decided to suspend dating for eight years. "When'd you do that?"

"The start of October. I enjoy sleeping alone. I like working alone. I like to sit and think alone. I have plenty to do, and lots of wonderful friends. Now's the time to start. I love to eat meals with a charming woman, and I'll still do that. Just no romance beyond the pleaures of a shared meal." Several years ago, I was showing the great writer Roy Blount, Jr. around the Lamar Building downtown, in reference to an article he was writing for the American Express travel magazine. I had been admiring his work since graduate school, back in the mid-70s. After he looked around the I.M. Pei-designed penthouse atop the venerable office building, we sat up there for a while and talked. I remember asking him, "How many times you been married?" He told me he was married to his third wife. I asked, "Are being a writer and being a husband incompatible?"

"Well, it seems like they think if you're around, you wanna be talked to."

I have tentatively concluded that Roy was hinting that his answer was "Duh, . . . YES?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Why eight years?" Ed wondered.

I told him that I would be sixty then, and that I hope that by then my more-youthful orientation toward dating might have gone away. "I'm attracted to women who are good-looking, bright, energetic, positive. By the time women get to be our age, they're bitter, and their currency - sexual appeal and reproductive viability - is spent. And they don't like it. They're kind and unattractive, or not-too-shot-out-lookin' but mean as a two-headed crocodile, or - the 'daily double' - mean and unattractive.

"I have about 50 percent of the sex drive I had at 40, maybe 25 percent of what I had at 30, and less than 10 of what I had at 20. But it is still a helluva lot of drive.

"And I don't want to be regarded as one of those pitiful old guys attempting to 'recapture his youth' by dating a younger woman. I prefer the viability and emotional flexibility of the younger women, but I am not prepared to slay the 'he's having a midlife crisis' accusation dragon several times every day. My midlife crisis is due to the crises that have arisen in my midlife, not to my fear of death or insecurities about my fucking virility. As my brother has always said, 'Even when I'm too old to cut the mustard, I'll still be able to lick the jar'. I'll just use the energy that might've gone toward being a loving companion and apply it in other important spheres of my life."

Ed smiled his knowing Edsmile. I told him, "Ross always gives me the devil for saying of a woman I find attractive, 'she knows where I am'. He thinks I should pursue. The way I'm looking at it now, I've become the pretty girl. I will meet them as they choose to approach, treat them with kindness, and from time-to-time ask one if she'd like to sit in the parlor with my Mum-and-me. If we like her, maybe we'll invite her to dinner. She can bring me flowers and chocolates, and write me heart-rendingly distraught poems of despair, pondering the emptiness of her life through eternity without my graceful presence in it."

"I better get back and do some more yard work at the studio." I think maybe the weirdness was upsetting Ed. Of course, he has the benefit of a stable 20+-year relationship with a sane woman, Anna, who - at 62 - has traveled past the menopausal pyrotechnics that bedevil all who encounter them. Theirs is a reasonably-tranquil relationship, and Ed has no experience with the moment-to-moment mental storm that is attempting to have pleasant "dating" interactions with a 50-ish woman in today's America.

I tried to hook up with Grace to get Mackenzie, so I could put her in the stroller for a brisk walk through Summerville, but the two of them had gone off to Kristin Pratt's. That gave me an opportunity to blog.