Morning Coffee-Why Does He Remind Me Of You?
The first time I spotted him I just looked at his face and then my eyes slowly traveled down his body, and I couldn’t find his legs. I noticed that when the wind blew, his pant legs flapped in the breeze. I quickly looked away.
For two consecutive days this man sits at a park bench opposite me. He has a thin, striking face with a reddish brown tan, jet black hair, 50 years old and is seated in a wheel chair. Today, I see pants flapping in the breeze and I see that there are two stumps. Yesterday he was in deep conversation with a pretty, white-haired woman, who I imagined to be his wife and saw that they both had silver bands on their wedding fingers. Today he was alone and I was tempted to go over to speak to him, but I didn’t. Occasionally I would watch him, and would find myself feeling repulsed. “ Suppose that happened to me? What would I do? How would I live?†I ‘m very upset when I look at him, but something is compelling me to go over to him, to find out about him, his life and not allow my revulsion to get in the way. “ He may not even want to speak to meâ€, I say to myself. “No, I won’t go over to him because he seems very angry. I can tell by his body language. It isn’t welcoming. He never smiles.†The pretty woman came to sit with him again today, and he smiles a lot when he’s with her. His body language changes when she is there. They seem to have a great connection with one another. He’s angry when he sits alone. Something changes within me when the pretty woman comes to sit by his side and he smiles. She makes everything feel soft, softer than when she’s not around.
I have someone in my life who resurfaced after a few years, and told me he had the beginnings of Parkinson’s Disease, and I felt repulsed. I felt “I don’t want to see this man†and somehow this man in the park reminds me of him. The man that resurfaced didn’t sound sincere to me on the phone. We had worked in the same office together for 5 years. We had an immediate attraction to one another, and sometimes we would go out to dinner and sleep together at my house and sometimes we would just walk to his house after work. One early summer day after work we made love at his apartment. A breeze was blowing and I can still feel the breeze on my skin as we were making love. He once referred to that day saying “that it was the most romantic experience he ever had with a woman, and he would drive himself crazy thinking of me.†He used to call me “dangerous†and when I hear a man say that to me I know he is scared.
I moved away from NYC for 4 years and when I returned, I bumped into him on a bus, and he didn’t look well. He said “I almost died with a virus on my brain. My family said that while I was in a coma I kept saying your name over and over again.†He called after our encounter on the bus, but I still had that feeling of “if I keep on saying something nice to her she will go to bed with me.â€
Today I imagined going over to this man and speaking to him. Now that it’s warm and sunny, the pretty woman sits beside him all the time. I love it when the pretty woman is there.
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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 30th, 2010 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
