Saturday, Mar. 29, 2003
I was standing at the kitchen counter slopping a glob of natural peanut butter onto a piece of 89cent bread when someone drove a nail through the joint in my fourth toe on my left foot.

Holy fucking mother of god geezuz H. mutha focking christ al-goddamn-mighty! Ouch. Fucking shit on a breadstick!

I was alone, but that's exactly what it felt like. Out of nowhere. I must have little bitty chips in my toe joint. How the fuck did that happen? Oh, yeah. My mother told me there'd be days like these. Don't crack your knuckles! You'll get arthritis! I thought maybe my toes didn't count. I guess they do.

Six weeks without a release sure does make a difference. The sex I could take or leave. Honestly, with Tiffany it was only slightly more interesting than masterbating alone. What's affecting me is a lack of companionship. Uegh...maybe that's too strong a word for her role, but in general it's true. I miss having a cuddle-buddy, if only to satisfy that need to be touched. It's affecting the way I interact with people. Two people in particular.

Depriving the body, depriving the mind, the soul or the spirit makes a person act slightly delirious. I'm interpreting things not quite as they are but as I'd like them to be. Same as cutting off nurishment or oxygen or hope, I'm reacting involuntarily to this particular hole in my life. Course, there are so many holes in my life that I've gotten used to tip-toeing around and between the edges like a functional drunk.

In times like these objective female insight is good medicine. I was having lunch with JC last week when I told her about the bank teller. We'd walked across The Campus to one of the four - count 'em, four - restaurants within easy access for employess and noted guests (or anyone off the street, if they know how to handle themselves without an I.D. badge). JC and I dug into platter-sized salads and vollied guarded bits of personal information across the table. This being only the third time we'd been in the same room together there's still that "good neighbor" fence between us. I couldn't expect much, of course, while she was in the middle of a busy day at work. I thought maybe the bombing of Bagdad would be weighing on her while her husband is/was stationed in Kuwait. She recieved three phone calls that morning from concerned members of her "extended" family. It seems the callers were more upset than she.

As an engineer of some kind, JC's husband has less to worry about in ways of bombs, bullets or shrapnel than the men and women at the head of battle. "I ended up having to talk them down," she said. "They're all worried about me like he was on the front lines, or something." That's the kind of person she is. That's why I didn't mind letting go of what was on my mind.

"She called me by my first name," I said.

JC didn't even look up between bites. "She's probably just doing her job," she said.

"Yeah, I know. But I'd like to think that after a year she's finally remembered my name off the computer and has worked up the courage to let me know she's remembered it."

JC gave me a three-quarter look while chewing her salad. I plowed my fork through mine to mix the chunks of grilled chicken and mandarine oranges with that tangy asian dressing. I wondered if I'd just revealed more than I should have.

There are only five teller stalls in the little bank I use. Never are they all in use at once. So whenever I walk in I can see at an instant who I might deal with. The older, quiet woman with salt'n'pepper poofy hair or the slightly nervous woman with straight dark hair. Or the subtly dazzling - well, girl, who always seems so eager to please, confident that she's pretty damn good at her job. And she is. She has the fastest ten-key fingers I've ever seen.

I walked into the bank that morning before lunch with JC (I had no idea how much lunch at The Campus was going to cost), scribbled my name on a withdrawl slip and stepped between the ropes to face the three tellers. I stood patiently for a moment, keeping my mind's eye on the roulette wheel, quietly anticipating who was going to greet me first. A woman with sandy blond hair and graceful take-no-shit mannerisms stood behind the counter staring at her computer terminal. I caught her noticing me out of the corner of her eye before she grabbed a stack of blue-striped slips and reshuffled them. The girl and the woman with straight dark hair were talking over by the fax machine. The sandy blond shot a look. It ricocheted off the dark hair and hit the girl. Their conversation broke up and the girl turned around and grinned at me as she strode into her teller's stall.

See what I mean about delirious?

I hadn't printed any numbers on the withdrawl slip because I had no idea how much was left in my account. I felt mildly pathetic because I'd given the very same explanation last week to the woman with straight dark hair, who was now standing in the next stall. Keeping her eyes on her terminal the girl looped her pen about the top of the slip then showed me the numbers.

"Aw, geez," I blurted. I new my account was low, but not that low. "I'm starving here."

I'd need to fill the tank to get out to The Campus, and eat lunch off of whatever was left. The girl offered some empathetic cooing as I wrote $20 on the line.

As she keyed in a series of strokes on her terminal... what can I say? I stood there and watched her. I was intrigued that she seemed so focused yet that grin broke out and faded three times before she handed me two tens and a receipt.

Delusions of charm.

"Alright, then. Thanks," I said. "See you next time."

"Bye, Dan," she said.

Zoinks! I turned half way around as I kept moving toward the door. What was that...? I'd just missed the ropes as I turned away to hide that rediculous involuntary smile that broke out on my face.

She called me Dan.

That night I called Alex. "Guess what," I said. "What?" he said. "I think I really need to see Sara," I said. "Mmm. Okay," he said. "Horse Brass, then?"

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