(This song is so bleak that I just have to provide a link; it’s short, don’t fret:)
Ah, Janis Ian, the singer-songwriter who writes expressly for and in fact from my soul! She can do sadness like no one else. My family doesn’t like sad love songs. Nancy reviles “At Seventeen”, which I consider the anthem of my generation. “Jesse” is another sweet song; the refrain is simply, “Jesse, I’m lonely, come home.”
Once I sang the refrain of “Four Strong Winds” by Neil Young for them (in my excellent imitation of the master’s voice) and Kate exclaimed, “But that’s so sad!” I told her, “Exactly.”
The point is not to explore my family’s dubious musical tastes (OK, mine) but to note that I have a peculiar sort of spirit accustomed to sad love songs, sad novels, and being alone. Really, really alone.
Nancy and I discussed this lately. She said that we had the best of both worlds. We got to live alone, but I go over to the house every day for a few hours, and half of the days we have dinner together. We might eat together more often, but she’s a vegetarian, and I simply can’t do that every night.
I’m not allowed to have a dog at my condo, so I can spend the time I need to in the company of Santorini, our yorkiedoodle. So Nancy and I each can enjoy the company of our best friend, and then, long before we become annoying to each other, I have given Santorini a goodbye ruffle and am out the door and on the way back to my condo.
Where I can indulge in the below activities because no one is there to stop me:
1. Listening to even more of the aforesaid sad songs, sometimes over and over until I’ve indulged every painful memory accessible to my failing mind and brought myself close to a pleasant bout of tears;
2. Without undue interruption, writing emails to my cousins Kathy and Betsy and my friends Michael, Malcolm, Jeff, on and on until my hands are screaming;
3. Drink pint on pint of whiskey so bottom-shelf that the grocery has to lug it up from the basement;
4. Before going out to the mailbox or dumpster, checking at the front door to be sure that no oldster is lurking, because, man, those folks can confront you and stare nakedly into your eyes and expect conversation but you have to carry it, and what is there to say to someone about whose life one knows nothing, and, quite frankly, wants to know less;
5. Looking for the registered sex offender in my complex. I’m torn between wanting to avoid him and asking him what the whole situation/process/experience was like, and, geez, man, how old was she, anyway?;
6. Eating badly: I don’t have many years left. After Dad had his heart attack, Mom changed his diet drastically (no sodium etc.) and then he died within a couple of years anyway. Mom said she regretted keeping him from enjoying himself in the little time left. Point taken;
7. Watching baseball, BASEball. I have a subscription to MLB.tv, which, for $120 a year, i.e., only $20 a month, like less than a buck a day, man, I can watch all the baseball I want, and I do.
MLB.tv sent me statistics at the end of last year: I watched 203 games (they only play 162), broken down by 141 of the Mets (thanks to their amazing announcers), 32 of the Reds (due entirely to their amazing kid shortstop, Elly de la Cruz), and 18 of the Braves (which is a mystery as I have vowed to have nothing to do with them since they moved out to White Flight Park), and obviously a few random others.
I watch a lot of fucking baseball, and until this moment, no one knew how much. In my defense, this is when I write this blog or work on the novel I started 20 years ago. Baseball calms me down and induces a mood exactly right for contemplating prose.
Look, I was never more my Self than when I was standing on the mound with a baseball in my hand, and I will always cherish that time and seek somehow, any way at all, to find it again. Sue me;
8. Skulking around to see if Girl or Boy is in evidence (See “Girl and Boy”, December 1, 2023). This has been a fruitful month! After Girl left as one would expect of a college kid at the end of December, Boy showed up and stayed for a while. At one point, I was down at the mailboxes, checking my mail, and he and Mommy Michelle were getting into their car, and he gave me a wave. Then suddenly a couple of days ago, Girl was walking across our adjoining lawns. I saw her car in the parking lot as well. Then tonight when I was driving in, the light was on in their bedroom, and damn if Boy wasn’t in there, seemingly changing the sheets. What the heck happened to Girl?
What are these kids doing here anyway? This is not college break time. I’m tempted to call a meeting with them and Mommy Michelle and ask what they are doing with their lives and how do they expect to make anything of themselves if they’re forever flitting in and out of their mom’s condo? Kids these days;
9. Ignoring the condo, which is thus a comfortable mess, so bad that even I feel the need to clean up. But no one ever comes here so no one sees it;
10. Being out of mind, which, when you’re out of sight, I’ve learned, is the case. I rarely receive even a personal email that isn’t a response to what I’ve sent earlier. The only phone calls that come in are from doctors’ offices reminding me of upcoming appointments: soothing reminders, in the end, that I do have a life, as minimal and limited and impersonal as it is, beyond these walls;
11. Hiding out. I just don’t like people much, as has been documented in these pages. When I first retired, I was restless and unhappy, and I kept trying to think of things to do. No one would hire me to do contract legal work. Nancy and a couple of friends volunteer for things, but all I could imagine was that I’d have to interact with people, who, in fact, were highly likely to be extroverts. Just no. But what can I do?
Then I thought, wait a minute, I don’t have to go into an office and listen to a bunch of old white guys brag how they invented the Rules of Evidence or deal with the unrealistic deadlines of unreasonable clients who haven’t paid anything in six months. What do I have to complain about?
I began to cocoon and now I wake up at about 7:30 (luxury!) and read: CNN, The Seattle Times, Deadspin.com, Jezebel.com, The New York Times, and about then material begins to come in from The Onion and The New Yorker.
Somewhere in there, I brew a cup of coffee and toast a half slice of Nancy’s excellent dark molasses bread or some banana bread; at 11:30, it is time to read Above the Law, an excellent and frequently hilarious law blog, which enjoys mocking Trump’s horrible lawyers; then with lunch around noon I scroll through what the Washington Post has sent.
After lunch, it may be time for a short nap before I turn to one of the many books that I’ve checked out of our excellent county library. At about 2:00 or 3:00, it’s time to go to the house and see Nancy and Santorini.
During Covid, I was at little risk because I seldom went anywhere except the grocery or the library on the way over to the house.
Seriously, what’s wrong with this life? I’m not really missing anyone or anything. I’m not doing anyone any harm.
I’m not consumed by television; other than baseball, college football, and women’s college basketball, I hardly watch it.
Oh, that reminds me: Nancy said that there’s a bonus edition of the podcast about the Supreme Court that we love, Strict Scrutiny, this week about Trump’s losing argument (aren’t they all?) that he’s immune from everything he’s ever done since the beginning of time.
It features three utterly brilliant female law professors. I figure that simply listening to them expound at lightning speed on these complicated legal issues is keeping me up to cognitive snuff. One of them, Leah Litman, at Michigan, probably has a crush on me as she gave me a shout out one night. But she’s going to have to fight for me with Jill Lepore, the Harvard professor who’s a buddy of our high school valedictorian Ira Chinoy, who I’m sure will be eager to put in a good word for me.
See? I also have fantasies to fill in whatever time I have left over. Excuse me now as I pour a little whiskey and get ready to hear Strict Scrutiny’s women’s’ wonderful take on why Trump’s argument was right to get “benchslapped”, as Above the Law would say, by the D.C. Circuit.
After all of the years of suffering at the hands of so many lawyers, bullies, judges, women, and random losers, this isn’t so bad. There is, at least, a peace to it.
