The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

Stepping on Toes - 9/2/04

Thursday, September 2, 2004

I don't want to give a bad impression of Lucy, as I may have towards the end of my first, super-uplifting entry. Some background info, then. 

The short, unhappy marriage that made Lucy Pfeiger into Lucy Pfeiger-Zalt has lasted only three months and shows little hope of reaching number four. Her husband, Anton (because I think that name should be used more often), an ambitious gentleman of forty-nine, decided not long after the wedding that, well, maybe he wasn't ready for this whole connubial thing after all. He turned cold. He withdrew. He started wondering aloud whether sexual desire wasn’t just a distraction from more important pursuits.

And his twenty-five-year-old bride was left with little to do but wonder what the hell happened. Had they rushed into things? Had she been too cloying? Not cloying enough? Maybe she had stepped on his toes a few times without realizing it. Though not very tall, Lucy does have oddly large feet.

I was adrift at the time too. I'd only been at the Divide for a couple of months, after my last job, an assistant editorship at a mag for an association (read: lobby), didn't work out (read: was a complete disaster). I was wondering whether I'd followed the right path or whether I was headed straight for mid-twenties-nobody purgatory. And then fate tosses me this witty, blonde-bobbed, unhappy cyclone of a girl who I connect with and after that first drunken night I think, Well, I can live with a little damnation... it has to be better than purgatory. Better to feel those flames than to feel nothing at all.

Or…? I feel like you’re judging me as you’re reading this, John Q. Anonymous. What would you have done?

Okay. I've promised myself to stop obsessing over this, to just let it rest. If not for my mental well-being, then at least to keep from being so tiresome, which is the usual outcome of stubborn emotional wallowing. And doesn’t the world have too many tiresome people already? Lucy would probably be bored by all this. 

There is more to the world of Mark, anyhow. September is showing signs of fall already—I noticed less irritating heat today than usual. I'll be glad for the remains of summer to be banished altogether, here in the capital swampland... any day now. Today was a start.

Oh! And you should find this entertaining, if only to see Lord Tiresome get knocked down a peg. Or rather, knocked down, period.

I was out for a walk this afternoon around Embassy Row when I should have been working, musing to myself about how odd it was that, in the capital city of the most powerful nation in the world, another country’s official presence could be limited to just a house (though some of those houses are pretty handsome… I’m looking at you, Cyprus). So I wasn’t paying attention when a guy just rammed into me.

Next thing I knew, I was on my back, my glasses flung to parts unknown, and this dude was picking himself up off me while mumbling apologies that I could tell he didn’t mean. And I’ve got this overwhelming smell in my nose—of chlorine, as if he just came from a dip in some embassy pool. 

“Listen, I wasn’t paying attention either,” I said as I picked myself up, “but can you help me find my glasses?”

Mr. Pool Party sez sure and bent down and handed them to me—but gingerly, as if he doesn’t want to touch me by accident while doing so. Which is funny, since he’s already violated my space in just about the most aggressive way possible.

I popped my glasses (unbroken, thankfully, though a bit bent) on my face and then I saw why the chlorine smell didn’t make sense. For one, the guy was perfectly dry. For another, he was dressed in a nice gray business suit, like many of the other people out and about this neighborhood.

Before I could think to ask him about the killer new trend of chlorine perfume, however, the guy was already bounding away and getting back up to his previous acceleration, heading off on whatever Important Errand occupied the time of suits like him.

And I was back on my feet, thinking how much more I enjoyed the scenery from right-side up.

In spite of that incident, I’m going to count today as a good day. Because I heard from my friend 'Rence Robichaux (not his real name, but close enough) from back home in New England. We went to junior high and high school together, but we haven't kept in consistent touch since then. Right now Rence is working for an insurance company as an underwriter in Natick, Mass., and hating every minute of it. I told him it never seemed like his style in the first place— he's too much of a free spirit to be chained under fluorescents for very long. I, on the other hand, can apparently tolerate long hours in the realm of the mundane. The trick is to turn off your mind, of course.

I only alluded to the Lucy saga, not wanting to get into it, but that was fine, because Rence did most of the talking anyway. Just like the old days. And I let him go ahead and entertain me, also just like the old days, particularly when he went into his Man of a Thousand Voices routine (today’s roles: John Kerry; George Dubya; Rence’s boss; and, for some reason, Janet Reno). 

Rence, being in the mood for escape, brought up a few ideas for weekend adventures, places we could meet up: Chicago, New York, Atlantic City. But I had to decline for budgetary reasons. 

Well, time to tuck in for the night. My right eye's started bothering me tonight... not hurting, exactly, but it seems like there's a small blurry spot on that side when I look through my glasses. Maybe just tiredness. 

Promise less complaints and more fiber tomorrow. 

posted by Mark Huntley @ 11:45 PM

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