The Portable Mercury Retrograde
Bubba came by the store for a spell, slow afternoon, and I wasn’t sure what the deal was. He was around, just wanted to catch up. He’d just been at the Chronicle office, just down the street, and the ad rep asked where he was going next, “To see Kramer, and if that global warming thing ever occurs, like, the seas rise up, and we’re renting coastal fishing gear in Wimberly? He’s the guy to see.”
Apparently, I look like a post-apocalyptic fishing guide with coastal marine experience in the fabled Hill Country. That was his choice of words, not mine, but I’ll take it.
There was Lockhart news, gossip, a friend was getting married next summer, and that was a sideways trip down memory lane. Looked more like a ragged bounce down a dirt track with unsprung suspension, or a dirt track racer, careening at the very limits of control, then tipping over, and rolling into guard tires. There’s not really a guard rail there.
With my buddy, all tatted up, and his new septum piercing, he looks tough. Entered talking, and I was just entertained. Learn to listen as well as speak, but listen. Besides, it was fishing, fast cars, BBQ, with that sidelong trip down that memory road, just as reminder about life and lifestyle choices.
The Portable Mercury Retrograde
We have a couple of dozen years of shared, inside jokes. There’s no toxic masculinity, as we’ve done all the comparisons, and we’re different, but the same. He’s tapped for my eulogy, one day, if he survives. There’s the question of which one goes first, and neither one of us is ahead by much.
“Choices, we always got choices.”
“Shut up old man.”
The Portable Mercury Retrograde
Males: we don’t always learn quickly.
Or at all.
