So I’m sitting here listening to Otis Redding. Except it’s summertime, and I’m sitting at my typewriter topless except for a silk scarf. And maybe even that isn’t authentic. Maybe it’s polyester or a nylon-blend. Just over 7,000 kilometers away, I have a sweet, funny and wildly intelligent boyfriend. So I’m alone, listening to Otis Redding.
For dinner I managed to sauté some green asparagus (white is more popular in Germany) and white mushrooms (I typically avoid the green ones, as do the Germans) in lemon juice and sea salt. I think I did a pretty damn good job of it, too. I even took the time to trim off the mushy ends and scrape off the fuzzy growth that accumulated after a week of sharing the fridge with a bowl of green seeded grapes. Using the small, dull knife from the right drawer in my rented kitchen, I removed the unwanted bits, dropping them into the trash. I’m still wealthy enough to afford having undesirables. And there’s always my health.
So I’m sitting alone, except for my health, with a plate of soggy vegetables and a glass of Chilean wine, listening to Otis Redding sing about some baby or other.
I have a little theory, many of them, actually, but this one is that my ability to successfully open a bottle of wine, Chilean or not, is directly proportional to the intensity of my desire to get drunk off the wine. That said, I have more failed attempts and broken corks under my belt than any self-respecting adult would be ashamed to admit.
In front of me lay a few pens, of various color, a seascape from a family cruise (not my own), a roll of 35mm film waiting to be taken in to be developed, and a I (HEART) NY mug. I’ve never been to New York, city or state, but my lover has. It’s the only sliver of my country he’s ever seen, and already he can proclaim his love for it. That’s commitment. I can’t even commit to a color of nail polish, let alone a fixture in my domestic life, or a man, if there’s any difference.
So I’m sitting alone and nearly naked, drinking red wine from a ceramic coffee mug, listening to Otis wail about needing someone who doesn’t seem to need him back. My German Shepherd lies beside me, panting like a large, sweaty dog does on humid summer evenings in the central European valley. I walk to the kitchen to get him a bowl of cool water (and another mug of wine, for yours truly) when I realize I have been misapprehending dear Otis for the past two minutes and forty seconds. His valley has very, very little to do with central Europe, or melancholy, low self-esteem, or even runaway loves. How is one supposed to differentiate the sad Fa’s from the happy Fa’s. Where I come from, which sure as hell isn’t the South of the 1960s, a Fa is a Fa.
So here I am, alone, tipsy and sobbing softly half into a white ceramic mug whose message would assert me a hypocrite and half into a slobbery dog’s water dish, when I remember that Otis died young. A few years younger than I am now, maybe 26 or 27. In Madison, Wisconsin, no less. I start to wonder if he would like Madison when I realize he would never have the chance to find out. It’s New York he loves, not America, and especially not the Midwest.
I don’t feel quite up to listening to Otis’s happy song, so I stop the music and turn off the lamp while I’m up. The lights of the train station are enough for me to make out my keyboard, and the dog’s soft moans, caused no doubt by some regular, reoccurring summer dog dream, are quieted by the roar of the elevated nighttime commuter train.
