Shakespeare in Good Company

I had no idea where the heck I was, which is a good indicator of a great motorcycle ride. This is how I social distance on my afternoon off.

I’d stopped to rehydrate and popped open the trunk that pitched-in as a backrest. Festooned snugly in the corner of the box, was my water bottle. Next to it was the notes for the second edition of my book, crammed unceremoniously into a well-loved copy of the book. Under that was a 150-year-old leather-bound volume of the complete works of William Shakespeare. If my ride ended with me finding out absolutely if there is an afterlife, I could imagine the cops trying to make sense out of the contents of my trunk. There'd be a grizzled detective under a fedora, sporting a trench coat where he packs his camels, next to his cigarettes. He'd poke at the ephemera of my trunk with a ballpoint pen. Spotting the Shakespeare, he'd heft the weighty tome from the rubble. The book would open, and he would read the first stanza at the top of the page: "When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."

I was returning from a nice lunch on Buddy's deck. We were supposed to ride, but his sidecar ate its fender long before we ate our tuna sandwiches and pickles. So, he was grounded, but we beat the hell outta my novel, shaking it down for the next rewrite. Buddy and his lovely wife, Sylvia are in their 80s. He was a shrink, so medical stuff is his thing and still is, judging by the stack of medical journals in his bathroom. (For reading.) Thus, I trust his protocols to make sure the pesky pandemic doesn't land on them. With no shared condiment bottles and putting me six feet downwind (Always advisable in any situation when I've been on the motorcycle.), I got two and a half hours on the deck in the best weather an Oregon spring has to offer with good friends. I trust his decades of wandering around in other people's heads give him the superpower to know when it's worth risking coming out of the bunker for some conversation. When I left, it struck me he didn't do this for himself.

I make fun of damn near everything. But, when it comes to the health and welfare of those two octogenarians, I can get pretty un-humorous. Days before, I was in the paint department of a big box store, deemed an essential business, looking for a specific kind of paint. A stylish young person of the hair-bunned variety, dressed more for painting the town than a mid-century modern ranch house he most certainly was renting, started getting a little close. I turned and gave him my best 'get off my lawn' look. He smiled at me.

"Perhaps you are unaware of how close you are," I suggested. He smiled again.

"Okay, let's try it this way: Have you heard of social distancing?"

"Sorry, I didn't get the memo," he said flatly.

Here it is, folks. Anti-intellectualism in a gingham shirt buttoned to the top. Sweet. I cleared my throat and continued. "The memo pointed out when someone is glaring at you for being too close; you are supposed to move six feet or more away."

"Cool."

Oh, this guy's good. "Cool? All ya got is 'cool'?"

"What? I'm supposed to be scared of you?" he asked, snidely.

"That was roughly my point."

"Wow," he said like he just watched me hit on a nun, or a tall penguin.

Feeling the need to drive the point home, I offered, "The old people in my life mean more to me than your feelings, sport. Step back."

"You're kind of a dick," he said, with the same lilt of a teenaged girl being told that she can't have the pink, jeweled case for her iPhone 16.

At least I was keeping my ad hominem in my head, unlike this asshole. (See what I did there?) I said, "You're making me uncomfortable. That's not something you get to do."

He was winding up a pitch, so I jumped in. "Just don't, okay?"

That seemed to do the trick. He shook his head in disgust, which made his man-bun swing like the scrotum of an elderly goat on a hot day, and he stepped back. I resisted the urge to honk his hairball like a horn. Instead, I feigned maturity and thanked him when I walked away with my can of utility porch and floor paint. Light grey, in case you were wondering.

There seem to be extremes of thought and thoughtlessness when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic. The alt-right folks think it's a con-job to line the democrats' pockets. The other end thinks it's nothing an essential oil enema and free love can't fix. Both sides seem convinced there is something about a barricade of toilet paper that will protect us from evil. The science around this virus is solidifying, which gives us some pesky facts. Wash your damn hands. I mean, washing your hands is the easiest and least political thing you can do. Not doing that is like hating Girl Scout Cookies. Shelter in place blows. You have a whole planet who feels your pain. (Did I mention Buddy had polio as a kid and spent a huge chunk of his childhood in a hospital bed before the internet and cable TV? He would love to hear how bored you are now. He's awaiting your cards and letters.)

Admittedly, I do chortle at the internet videos of what the locked-down are driven to do to suss out distraction. This one guy flips a slice of cheese over his shoulder, landing it on his complicit wife's forehead, IN EVERY ROOM OF THE HOUSE. It is yet another video blasted into space that will keep the aliens away. Conversely, using SIP to create art makes me smile. So I upvote or like, or whatever the new "good job" thing is the kids with man-buns use today.

There's a lot of things in our lives that we miss from the pre-pandemic days. Personally, there are things I don't miss at all. Like the smog. You can actually see New Zealand from New York right now. Seriously. And giraffes have returned to downtown Corvallis. It's amazing, in a Chernobyl-y kind of way. I do miss my skin. I'm old, so I didn't have a soft epidermis before the virus. A picture of my hand now could be used as a Tinder profile for bearded dragon dating. Sanitizer gel with multiple hand washings has turned my skin reptile sexy.

The Shakespeare volume was something Buddy tucked into my trunk along with his usual care packages of magazines, curated articles of the NYT, motorcycle parts, and, on a really good day, Sylvia's lemon cookies. He thinks I'm a writer. The Book of Bill provided me the quote for the cop at the opening of this mess. The story in the paint department is a compilation of several stories, all seasoned with a bit of horseshit and goat balls. The colour was true, though. It was a light grey. Also true is you really can now see New Zealand from New York. Seriously!

"If I do lie and do

No harm by it, though the gods hear, I hope

They’ll pardon it."

Comments

[Anita]

Love this!