Notes From a Love Child

Some months ago my mother was dropping me off at the airport when she confirmed a suspicion of mine. I am a love child. This memory snuck its way to my mind, when I sat at a cafe for about three hours. A man approached the bar my back faced. He ordered a coffee asking the man who was making it, 

“Is it made with love?”

The man behind the machine answered, 

“That’s all I have left.”

I suppose when it comes to anything that I have had or lost or will acquire it is shrouded in a rosey tone that is spelled l-o-v-e. It is not romantic necessarily, except for when I find myself sitting at Café Trieste in the afternoon overhearing a friend tell another friend, 

“Don’t tell him I am going to pray for him, I know he would hate that, but do tell him I asked about him.”

There is romance in devotion and more than that I think the ultimate romance is understanding. Seeing someone in totality, understanding what provokes certain gestures.

I love the word sensitivity. The vowels are protected by consonants only to mean something is vulnerable. The word reminds me of my dear friend Carly and Paris in autumn. When we were eighteen years old and living in France, Carly had to get some forms signed for one reason or another. The woman who helped her with the paper work wrote her an email. I do not remember exactly what it said other than the fact that the woman told Carly how beautiful and rare it is to be a sensitive person; The kind of person who gets moved by the sight of leaves on trees and novelty postcards. 

I have only known what it means to wear a heart on my sleeve. It often clashes with those who are tragically hip and stuck in pretension. They are great at playing with their cards too close to their chests. They excel at using theoretical terms in casual conversation. They are experts at posturing oneself taller than other partygoers. I have an apprehension toward pretension, yet find myself attracted to the false sense of exclusivity altogether. Maybe for one reason or another, I flirt around the implied impressiveness. And sometimes that flirting is because the pretension is packaged in an attractive male frame. I smile and nod and bat my eyes. However, I cannot help but blush easily and trip over the correct pronunciation of words. I wonder if this is why I never got into the Beats? (And how did Neil Diamond premeditate my own personal nature?) 

This past weekend was one that lacked any and all pretension. A perfect Saturday day began with bumping into friends and stating the obvious in front of a deli. The day then bled into an evening of innocent debauchery. The kind of good trouble that landed myself and some friends at Vesuvio. The bar where I cannot ever remember my first time, but I can always remember my last time spent under the Tiffany Lamp warm hue. I negotiated hours of sleep for conversation that more closely resembled laughter. 

*

The air has become sharp with a bitter kind of cold. In the midst of trading one season for another, I think of clocks and their hands. I have been wondering maybe life is not short, it is rather as wide as it is tall and getting older is a lot more fun when you live it with minimal at best seriousness. As Doris Day sang once, que sera sera.