305.0: Out of all the girlies in the world.

September 13, 2012

Dear Linc,

This morning I wrote a lengthy never-to-be-sent that I scrapped for a number of reasons. I hated to do it, but after I proofed it and was on the verge of finalizing it, I just deleted it altogether. If I had to be very specific about the cause of its deletion, I guess the one reason that I would pick is that I went off on such a political tangent that it kind of didn’t make sense anymore and even came dangerously close to that dreaded act of modern debauchery known as trolling. You win some, you lose some.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes even a happy song can sound a little sad in recollection? Last night, I was playing a board game with Clara and her fiance. It’s a new karaoke kind of game where the object is you give a “trigger word” and in fifteen seconds all the participants have to burst into song using that word. You earn your next turn by managing to sing a line of at least five words including the trigger word. At one point, Clara’s word was “fly.” In hindsight, a good choice would have been to belt out R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly.” Anyway, we were stumped but then “Just My Imagination” came to mind and once I started my rendition, the song streamed effortlessly. Clara and her fiance confessed that they didn’t know any of the lyrics beyond “it was just my imagination running away with me,” let alone that the word “fly” was in any part of the song. As I took my next turn on the game board — I rolled six spaces! (though sadly Clara’s fiance won that round) — suddenly I was stricken by how melancholy my rendition sounded. I felt like an old lady, Linc. An old lady singing to herself over her second martini at a bar and I’m wearing a mothballed old feather boa that lost half of its feathers years ago in another lifetime.

So maybe that sounds a little melodramatic, but it is gray outside. Welcome back, San Francisco weather.

I know that if I ever meet you, you will likely be nothing like I have imagined or, worse, you will be completely ordinary. Which, I guess, is not a bad thing. We’re all human (a cliche, yet nonetheless true). It is my fault, for it is in the waiting that expectations build. It’s my fault because I shouldn’t be waiting at all. I don’t ever expect to meet you, but goddamn. It sure would be somethin’.

Joe