:: Ambrosia ::

There is something very clean-cut, very je ne sais quoi about E―perhaps not quite the man you'd want to bring home to mom, but at the least the boy you and your sister can have a giggle with.

Having dinner with him brought back memories of a simpler time―a time before infidelity is the poison du jour and romance is served with love, rather than a side of perennial fuck-ups. The cocktail that we drink from is a lot more dangerous now―we throw in generous shots of self-gratification, and we garnish our perfidious concoctions with pallid excuses and whiny pretexts.

But it suits the raison d'etre of our time. Our ambrosia is our need to suck up the essence of the intangibles―love and connection and need and soul-food and romantic entrants and other blah-blah buzzwords we let slip like wayward spells―and inhale the idle smoke of madness and Marlboro.

Yes, E is earnest and sweet―he's always been. His bright eyes were keen with regard as we bantered about the inconsequential things that make casual conversations an intellectual let-down, but a social respite. It was fun. We didn't debate or debunk, we didn't argue or expostulate―we merely talked.

He reminds me that I'm still only 23―a whiplash realisation sometimes―and that it's all perfectly natural (to borrow a Hemingway) to hum along to Latino-pop and giggle like affable idiots at the couples drunk on red wine, and of course, the self-taught cocktail creations of love and the like.

***

Today I read Oscar Wilde
'Of Burmese Days' in dusty verse,
I think of you and your mother,
And how we are all novice of this earth.
Until the Great Hour comes along,
And drags our sullen hair
Into sleep.