Martini

Some days are just like that, right?  I'd had unresolved anxiety all the live-long day, the source of which I never discovered.  I had suspicions, though.  But maybe it was the moon.  Whatever it was hit me hard.  So I did a bad thing.  I called my mother and said I wouldn't make it over for a visit.  I just wanted "to chill."  I was drinking a Campari on the deck at the time.  The late afternoon was pleasant.  I simply stared into the distance.  Then I had a bright idea.  

I'd just made the drink above and had taken a few sips (and there really aren't many, are there, in a perfect Martini) when a car pulled into the driveway.  It was two fellows from the factory, a pair of straw bosses/floor managers.  Supervisors, if you will.  

"We're coming back from a golf tournament," one said, "and I wanted to show Rodney where you lived."

I like Rodney, but he's a bit on the scale.  Not much, but he's like a dog with a bone when he gets his teeth into a thing.  He was always good in meetings, though, for I could count on him to back me up when I was being "controversial."  I hadn't seen him since I'd left.  

So we chatted about this and that for a good ten minutes before they left.  It was funny, I thought, that it felt almost as if I were still back there, and yet, at the same moment, maybe for the first time, I felt the relief of not being there.  I mean, I felt a bit heroic sitting on my deck drinking a martini on a Thursday afternoon.  

It was Thursday, right?

My goodness, it felt so good that I thought to make another.  

I sent pictures to my pals, of course.  

"One is not enough, but two. . . ."

They just don't last long.  Two martini's in, and it wasn't even time for dinner.  Plus the Campari.  It was then that I realized I was out of scotch.  A quick trip to the liquor store, and then I would fix dinner.  I didn't want to cook much, so it would be a frozen Margarita pizza topped with fried eggs.  And some asparagus that needed to be cooked.  Paired nicely with a New Zealand blanc.  

That's the kind of night it would be.  

I turned the t.v. to Max.  I had started watching "Tokyo Vice" by recommendation.  If you are anything like me and have decided Japan is a safe place full of polite and respectable people, this show will bring you back to ground.  It is full of criminal thugs who seem to support the old post WWII stereotypes.  But. . . I have run out of shows.  

I didn't sleep well.  Maybe it was the show.  I shouldn't watch things like that before bed.  They color my dreams.  And I was having them last night, those anxiety dreams, waking in the dark with heart pounding, neck and arms sweating.  Of course, the liquor played its part.  Lying in bed, unable to sleep, I told myself I would take some days off again and just drink coconut water and tea.  I've been doing a good job of that lately.  Yesterday, though. . . something had me by the throat.  

Maybe it was just the moon.  A Full Flower Moon and I had nothing in the ground.  Maybe I was being punished for my infertility.  

I gave up at five and pushed myself from bed in the darkness.  It didn't matter, I told myself.  I could do what I wanted.  I could take a nap in the afternoon, or I could go back to bed at sunrise.  It didn't matter.  I wasn't like those factory workers anymore.  

When I read the morning news, I came across this.  

Oh. . . I remembered. . . I had smoked some pot before bed, too.  I think there had been beer with lunch.  

Things are coming back to me.  I called about the old studio yesterday.  The woman on the phone said she'd have to get the property manager to call me back.  No one called me back.  I think that whole thing might have set me off, made me anxious, perhaps.  That could be one thing.  

I came across this in the Times today, too.  

Oh, boy.  I need to get on that.  I used to kid Ili that she had a "brown thumb."  Eventually, the plants would die.  But it made her happy.  She loved potting plants and digging in the dirt.  And we always used the herbs for cooking and making cocktails.  The girl could make a good cocktail.  

Maybe I don't want the studio.  I'd have to be productive.  It might cause me stress.  I mean, what if I was able to make nothing?  What if?  

I'm equally stressed that I make nothing now, though.  It seems shameful.  

Well. . . I did make martinis.  What was I saying?  One is too many, but two is never enough?

I don't know what a Pink Martini is, but I used to have a bunch of their CDs.  I haven't heard them since the advent of streaming music.  I don't even have a CD player anymore.  I like this song, but I wasn't sure that Pink Martini was ever a group.  I'd never seen them.  And maybe now, I wish I hadn't.  This woman will be dancing toward me in that hideously strange manner in my liquor dreams for sure.  They shouldn't be doing this in the daylight.  

Still. . . here it is.