Red and the Pinhead

We'll just start off with a little fun.  That's what I had making up various "cards" for Red's birthday.  It was fun, but also cause for reflection.  Being an old pinhead living with and caring for his mother twenty hours a day, year after year, I don't have a lot of interaction with other people.  The gym and the sometimes cafe are just about it.  There was a time when I needed to get away from people.  I grew up an only child and imaginative, creative time had become part of my DNA.  And before I was a pinhead, girls liked me.  I've thought about writing those tales down, but it would sound like "Tales of Swordsman in the Valley" sort of shit, so I don't.  Not that I was a swordsman.  Ever.  I was always sweet and shy and never, ever asked a girl out on a first date.  For all my vanity, and there was a fair bit--at the time, I never passed a reflective surface without looking, unlike now when I instinctively turn my head away--I never had confidence.  I was always the boy at parties who went to the room lacking people, standing alone, looking out over the scene as in a dream.  I've been thinking about all of this over the past few days as Red and I have been in textual conversation, something I once had in abundance. 

I don't wish to belabor the point.  I won't go back to my college days, nor my twenties and thirties, and barely my forties.  Not yet at least.  But after my divorce and into decade five, my dance card was filled with "attractions."  It was in many ways one of, if not the, most interesting time of my life.  It was the turn of the century and things were humming.  Monica was dating her father's friend, her old dentist, on "Friends."  Monica Geller and Tom Selleck.  

Just sayin'.  

At night, I'd write emails.  And I would get them right back.  There were notes.  There were letters.  

But pinheads living with mothers are not on people's minds.  Nobody writes emails any longer, but even the thirteen word text messages have dried up.  So I realized this week writing with Red.  And I have had to wonder--where did they all go?  Don't they ever think of me as I so often do of them? 

Making up the birthday treats, I had to go back in time.  March, 2012.  She was a kid.  I don't throw anything away.  There were the emails, the very first.  I copied and sent them to her.  She had recently graduated with a degree in art.  We spoke of working on encaustic images together.  Creative shit.  Fun stuff.  I was a year from decade number six.  Not even.  She never knew that old me.  So I put us together, she early twenties, me late thirties, early forties--I can't remember.  Just younger.  Just to flatter myself. 

Wait a minute--who was I doing this for, her or me?  

Obvious. 

It's all a little bullshitty, though.  We were always pals, never lovers.  Oh, there is love, but the kind that accepts the other person at face value without criticism or judgement, without needing to try to correct the other's obviously flawed life.  I mean, lifes are flawed, and we often do the wrong thing, enter into flawed relationships, and there are plenty of people who will tell you so, who want to give you advice, who will criticize even the people that you love, and those are not people to suffer.  So. . . the circus theme quite suits Red and my relationship.  Life is a cabaret and we are Old Chums.  

O.K.  I just spent too long putting this video together, and I have pinhead duties to see to, so. . l I'll just leave you with this, a little tribute to a longtime friend,  

Selah.