Bent Words

Bent Words

May 09, 2005

It always surprises me, how life can throw you for a loop. How the people in your every day world can creep into your personal surroundings and somehow affect everything you thought you knew. It doesn't always take very much - just a simple action, a phrase, a glance or a single evening and suddenly everything seems different. Just when you thought you had a firm grasp on reality, just when you thought it was going to be another bowl of Cheerios, life suddenly takes hold and steers you down a completely unfamiliar path, within the blink of an eye.

It rather reminds me of the line in Pretty Women where Julia Roberts and Richard Gere are in his hotel bathroom, as she prepares to capriciously floss her teeth, and he, seeing her timid ways, suspects her of demurely downing drugs. Once Richard Gere realizes that she is not, in fact, indulging in such horrors and really just flossing the strawberry seeds out of her gums, he apologizes by proclaiming,

"I'm sorry - it's just that very few people surprise me."

"Well," she replies, "you're lucky. Most of them shock the hell outta me."

Most people shock the hell outta me, too.

I wasn't expecting to wake up Sunday morning (er, afternoon, rather) to the face of a stranger in my disheveled apartment. But there he was, that stranger blinking back at me, as though he too were lost for reasoning.

It only seemed mildly awkward at first, until the spirits from the night before began to slowly wear off and two sobering minds found themselves in unknown territory. And then, although I must admit that I cannot claim to know the workings of his own cognitive senses, we both just sort of looked at each other sideways.

Vertical body positioning was absolutely out of the question. Thus we the lazed around for the entirety of the day. Scarfing zah, watching the races and dozing in and out of consciousness. He was on the love seat while I remained stretched out below him on the floor, my back against the couch, a sea of blankets covering my body and my head tilted to one side in careless repose.

Somewhere, amongst the dwindling slices of stuffed crust pizza and the tall glasses of clear liquid hydration, in-between the whir of two wheeled riders racing around tracks in California and Spain and perhaps just after the change of channels which occupied a spot of Celebrity Poker, he slowly reached his hand out toward my face and gently brushed away a lock of loose hair from my cheek.

Those rough hands; wrenching hard or forcing the front end of a moto bike, picking parts or changing tires, setting suspension or fingering jets, were suddenly as soft and as compassionate as a pair of hands that have never seen a single callous from a set of cycle grips.

And it was just then that the world seemed so small, so close and so singular. The six billion other occupants of this vast and sweeping domain simply melted away under that one, tender touch. All at once I was lost in awe, within purest pin prick of time, which completely took me by surprise.

I never used to like surprises...

Written at 10:19 p.m.