Haifloof #45
For Her
The house was always silent except for his quiet and her cats. He was aware of how much he sighed, and the cats…the cats were always darting underfoot, jumping up onto the furniture, counters, and tables, and peering around corners.
Flowers and plants were everywhere. He’d told everyone to send money to her causes in lieu of flowers and that shit, but…well, here they were. Here he was.
She was always trying to get him to eat healthy. The ‘frig was lousy with salmon and salad ingredients. Sighing (but what else?), he prepared the salmon per the instructions, sharing some with the cats, who were enthusiastic in their enjoyment, and made a salmon Caesar salad and poured a glass of wine for himself. Eating, he told himself, for her, chewing and swallowing the despised flavors, washing it down with wine.
For her.
Monday’s Theme Music
Looking for some keys this morning, I started mumbling, “They’re never there where they’re supposed to be.”
Naturally, Cake answered the call with “Never There” (1998).
I enjoy the lyrics’ playful rhyming.
Roberferghen
He came into the kitchen and watched her as she flitted from counter to counter, cupboard to pantry, collecting ingredients and utensils. The oven was on. He wondered what she was baking. “What’d you say about Roberferghen?”
She flashed him a quizzical look. “Who? What?”
“Just now. I was in the other room and you said something about Roberferghen several times.”
“What’s Roberferghen?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I came in to find out.”
Picking up a measuring cup, she sifted flour into it and shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What were you just saying?”
“When?”
“Just now, before I came in here?”
Shaking her head, she poured the flour into a bowl. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
Her tone made it clear that the topic was closed. Turning, he sighed and left.
Now he’d never know what Roberferghen is.
Crash
Travelin’ and unravelin’
leaving miles of web behind
tangled up with sticky notes
caught flat on my tongue
I see you in my mind’s mirrors
through a complex lens
hearing you
with jaundiced eyes
missing you
until I overflow
and crash
Friday’s Theme Music
How ’bout an Elton John favorite today. Let’s consider two. “Funeral for A Friend” and “Love Lies Bleeding” are often played together. They nicely complement one another. The first is an instrumental that starts with blowing winds. I can see the funereal procession of somber faces, and then the aftermath, thinking about what’s brought you to this moment. The music picks up as you think about what you’ll do next. It’s a bit chaotic, but then starts clarifying and rising, lifting your energy as you march forward, your decisions made.
“Love Lies Bleeding” begins like brisk fresh start. “Okay, this happened, but life goes on, and I’m going on.” But the words tell an unfolding story of betrayal, reflection, and exasperation.
Together, you end up thinking, “Yep, that’s life.”
Of course, the two songs came off of the fascinating 1973, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, an album about growth, change, and rock and roll’s influence on a young person’s life. Yeah, we played it a few times.
Telling
Beers glasses were raised and clinked together. Tastings followed. The trio got down to business.
“How’d it go with the date?” Ron asked Pat.
“Good, real good.” Pat smiled. “Third one, so you know what that means.”
Bryan laughed. “Is that what that still means?”
“Yes.” Pat nodded. “Indeed, it does.”
Ron raised his glass. “To your new girlfriend? Or is it too early?”
Pat grimaced. “It might be too early. She’s a swell person, wonderfully intelligent and accomplished, sexy, of course — ”
“Of course,” Ron said as Bryan said, “That’s a sexist attitude.”
“It is, but she is a knockout.” After glancing over his shoulders, Pat leaned in over the table. The other two leaned in as well. “The only thing is, she farts a lot,” Pat said in a low voice. “They don’t make any noise, so it’s not that, but they smell terrible.”
“She farts?” Bryan said.
Pat nodded. “And it’s not a little poot now and then. When she farts, I want to flee like the villagers running from Godzilla. And it’s not her fault. We’ve talked about it. She’d apologized after I complained about the rank smell invading my car. She told me it was a side effect of a medicine she’s been on a long time. She’s tried changing her diet and she’s looked into other meds, but nothing will work for her. And anxiety, like from dating, apparently makes it worse.”
“Wow.” Looking at Bryan, Ron sat back. “That’s a shame. A smelly farter. Damn”
Pat sighed. “Yeah, I’d hate for it to end for that, because she’s otherwise so wonderful, and I feel lucky to know her and be dating her.”
Bryan nodded. “Have you told her about your troubles in peckerville?”
Sitting back, Pat sipped his beer a moment and then smiled. “No. The way I see it, there’s no sense in telling her about that until I know if I can live with the farting.”
Breaking it Down
While working on the yard and house today, songs run through my head. I don’t mind it if they’re barefoot, but some of them wear heavy combat boots. That leaves a mark.
One song was the Rupert Holmes song, “Escape”. Most know it as “The Piña Coladas Song”. It’s all about how badly Rupert and his lovely lady were doing. He sees an ad in the newspaper’s personal columns and reads, “If you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. If you’re not into yoga, if you have half a brain. If you like making love at midnight in the dunes of the cape. Then I’m the love that you’ve looked for, write to me and escape.”
So he writes to the paper, answering the ad. They meet, and guess what? It’s his own lovely lady that he’s meeting. She’s the one that put the ad in the paper! So, Rupert continues, then we laughed for a moment and I said, “I never knew
That you like piña coladas and gettin’ caught in the rain. And the feel of the ocean and the taste of champagne.”
Mind you, she’s advertised for a lover; he answered that ad. They were both looking for someone else.
At this point, in real life, if he said, “I never knew that you like piña coladas, she’d reply, “That’s because you never listen to me.” Then it’d probably be on. He’s already confessed that he was tired of her. She’s clearly tired of him, too.
Yeah, I don’t see a happy ending here. I don’t think that either one is the lover that the other one was trying to find.
Of course, my mind also suggested, “Well, maybe it’s a small town. What are the odds of her putting the ad in and him answering? Those odds improve if it’s a small town.”
Then my mind went all Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on me. I imagined the bar patrons familiar with the situation saying, “Oh, no, here we go again.”
I concluded from this that my romantic band of my spectrum of being must be tiny.
Michael Seidel, writer 