Hi back, I say as he explains that he is here accompanying his buddy to see Tony Robbins. I'm not really a big fan. My buddy is. He had an extra ticket, so.
Do you box? he asks, pointing to my shirt. I explain that I'm finally back at it after a year of frozen shoulder misery. Do I train? Yes, I train. Does he train? Yes, he trains.
Our entire biographies roll off our tongues in the next five minutes as the long line inches us to the best coffee counter in Santa Ana. Me from Seoul to Bakersfield to late husband to latest breakup to grown kids to art teacher. Him from Michigan to National Guard to Honolulu to the year he taught English for a year in Seoul. Have I been to Honolulu? Not yet.
I tell him that I recently read a passage in the book titled All Fours by Miranda July, where a character wants to move there because she wants to feel like she's on vacation every day. She also wants to marry a guy she is in lust with so she can feel that thrill all the time. But then she realizes that those feelings won't sustain when it's every day and all the time. It's the wanting that's better than the having. He smiles and nods, then says he actually loves living in Honolulu. And plane tickets are cheap these days, he adds.
What are you doing the rest of the day, he asks. Oh, after this I'm taking an online writing class for two hours and then spending the rest of the day planning for my students. I like coffee here on the weekends cause it forces me to engage with the world a little instead of just me alone in my house.
I'm Jenny by the way. I'm Tony.
And that's when I get to touch him.
He and his buddy take a seat at one lower corner of the large square bar seating. I take my seat way over yonder, upper caddy corner to them. Thirty minutes in and I can't decipher a single word from my big ass Steven King book cause I've fallen in love. Fifty five minutes and he taps me on my arm to say it was really nice talking to you, Jenny. Me too! I enjoyed talking to you, Tony, and I hope you have fun at the seminar. OK. OK. Bye. Bye.
And poof, he's gone. Without an invitation to dinner. Without my ability to become collected enough to invite him. It has something to do with archaic ideas of gender roles—so antiquated that they have become modern again. And the fear of rejection. After all, he looked all of thirty-somethingish. Maybe thirty eight. Or thirty nine. Forty, tops.
I allow myself to bask for a while in the delicious wanting—in the adorably oversized plans I've constructed while in my state of fluster. Dinner and more deep listening and a perfect make out session. Then my non-teaching weeks in Honolulu. Then his non-working weeks in Santa Ana.
Crispy good morning texts; syrupy good night nexts.
