Dear Jim,
It´s a beautiful Friday morning in Sacto. The killer heat is over, but it is still warm and the breeze is nice.
I´m outside at a table at my favorite coffee shop. At the other end is a minister who almost looks like a priest. His collar is different than a priest´s collar. He is talking with a guy he seems to have just met. Whether the meeting was arranged or not, I do not know.
I wish I had men to talk with. Last night I went to dinner with my neighbor, my friend.
He introduced himself to me when he moved in three years ago. He´s from Vietnam. We go to dinner once a week.
Last night he wanted me to watch a movie with him that he had already seen. So I did. He could not figure it out.
He brought his laptop over to watch it. He sat on the floor against the bed. I sat two feet from him in my beach chair as we looked at the laptop sitting on my folding chair.
It felt natural. I could have sat with him all night. I wish I felt a male camaraderie with other men like I do with him.
At work men never talk with me first. It pisses me off and breaks my heart.
It´s women who talk to me first. I appreciate the outgoingness of one woman. Other women talk with me because they know how to build relationships. They know I do not fit in. I appreciate their maturity, their adultness, to reach out to me.
The guys at work talk to each other, but they don´t talk to me unless I talk to them first. Even though they enjoy each other, I don´t think of their relationships as having male energy. I think of them as having gay energy or women energy.
The movie we watched was about a woman who cheated on her husband, got dumped by him, was not forgiven when she asked to be, then got dumped by the new guy. When she was asking for forgiveness and explaining herself, he husband said, ¨I would have listened to you then, but I do not want to hear it now. You lost your gamble.¨
I saw so much of myself in her. Her indecision. Her inability to find or make her place in the world. Her painful longing.
The expressions on her face were incredible. I don´t like movies, but I could have watched her forever.
I felt her pain, the pain of her husband too. I don´t think she had the confidence to get her life together after the divorce.
She was distraught throughout the movie. It sounded like me. Her lover said, ¨You´re in a permanent state of restlessness.¨ Just like me. Remember the letter you wrote about telling your colleague about my wanderings? You referred to me as a restless American, but in a good way.
She was telling her lover that she always has a dream of being in an airport and not being able to get out. Her lover says, ¨You mean you missed your flight?¨ She says, ¨No. I just can´t get out.¨
I´m reading Don Quixote. He is a fool just like the woman in the movie. She wanted romance. Don Quixote had a romantic image of himself – saving the world, being a hero. He saw things that were not there.
I see myself in everything that I have been reading and watching. Like you used to say, ¨Direct address. Direct address.¨
Love,
Dave
Copyright © 2021 by David Vaszko
The Writings of David Vaszko 