Suck My Guac

***Author’s note:  Despite the travesty of Jamie’s newly revealed medical condition, I will continue to post about unrelated topics.  This is not due to insensitivity on my part, but rather because, well, it looks like I’m going to have to be sucking guac for two from  here on out.***

The sun, as it is wont to do, shone brightly on Sunday.  And I, as I am wont to do, took advantage of this fact by spending the afternoon sprawled out on the grass reading a book in Dolores Park.  I actually brought two books with me, because I only had a few chapters left of one and suspected I would need to move on to book #2 at some point in the afternoon.  My suspicions were correct; and so, after I finished the last page of book #1 and took a few minutes to process the ending and stare into space for a bit—a sort of mental palate-cleanser between literary courses, I suppose—I put book #1 back into my bag and fished out book #2.

Now, Dolores Park abounds with interesting characters—naked people, cross-dressers, pot-peddling hippies, dry-humping bums, etc.—so I assumed that my book-switching wouldn’t really garner much attention, if any at all.  Well we all know what assuming does.

After a few pages, I became aware of a pair of eyes staring at me.  I looked up (oh the joys of reflective sunglasses) to see a pot-bellied man with a buzz cut and a sweat-stained t-shirt, slightly older than middle-aged, sitting on a bench about 100 feet away and gawking at me, mouth agape.  I ignored him, silently praying he wouldn’t come talk to me, and kept on reading.  A few pages later, a looming figure came into my peripheral vision.  Oh no.  He was coming closer.

“Excuse me, Miss.”

Oh no, now he’s talking to me.  I looked up.

“I just want to tell you what a gift it is to see you using your brain,” he said.  “And, you know, retaining stuff.  People are out there, you know, doin’ drugs, and I’ve been sober fifteen years.”

He paused.  Long pause.  It occurred to me that he wanted me to say something.

“Congratulations,” I said.  “That’s great.”

“Yup.  Fifteen years, and it’s only now that the screws are coming back together,” he pointed up at his head.  “Not that I was ever CRAZY,” he said, looking crazy.  “But the brain is a gift, and, you know, you’re doing something very rare, and it’s a gift to be sober, and I want to share that gift with you.”

I’m not sure exactly what the last sentence meant, and I’m still a  little unclear on who was giving a gift to whom.

“Um, thank you,” I said, awkwardly.

“Fifteen years.”

“Congratulations.”

“Yup.”

I stared back up at him, really unsure what I was supposed to do here.

“Just wanted to say.”

And then he walked back to his bench, where another older man sat.  And they proceeded to talk about me, at full volume, for ten to fifteen minutes.  The man who had spoken to me lamented the fact that he hadn’t brought his biology textbook with him.

Now, I realize that I sound like I’m hating right now.  But seriously, I was flattered.  And if I even still have screws to screw back together when I’m his age, I’ll count myself lucky.

-Kate