Getting it Right
IMPROMPTU
A poster on campus announcing the production of Antigone made me snicker. I hate to invite such sarcasm in my morning, but it was about the traffic to get here and how infernal it was, and how my mood had marched in step with this feeling, and how spraying a little Anti-Gone was trying to make it all better. This little piece of silliness gave me something to actually smile about on the last few hundred steps across the plaza before obtaining a large cup of coffee. When I bumped into the debonair gardener. I bade him a good morning, but he barely looked up. He’s been looking morose lately, and I wonder if he’s at that point in life when he’s about to give up.
I was pushing back whatever thoughts I must have been having a second before. I was stepping into the snack shop, and there was the friendly young man behind the counter. I didn’t expect this; I hadn’t seen him in a long time. I always wanted to talk to him again, such a friendly guy. But then you see the guy you wanted to talk to, and you’ve been caught because your mood is all wrong, and you don’t know what to say to him. I wanted to ask him if he still worked here, but he was behind the counter, so I asked him how he was instead. I was going to ask him if he was still listening to Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin. The good old days. But I was just smiling when I took my cup of coffee. While getting cream and sugar, I was planning to tell him to have a nice day. I was going to give it to him early and get it out of the way, but then there would be that awkward silence while I was stirring the coffee and capping the cup again. I gave him the have a nice day on my way out the door, like the way it’s supposed to be done. When I got into the lunchroom area, I took my free hand and wiped the smile from my face. I mean, I physically wiped that frozen contortion off, and I was me again.
I was thinking about the gardener and wondering if I was going to again bump into him. I didn’t really want to, not because he was uncomfortable to look at, but because I just didn’t want to go through that discomfort again of wondering if I should say hi again or not. I was looking at all the windows, but he was still on the other side where I saw him last. A frail-looking guy was walking back and forth, coming toward me and then away from me. I was trying to enjoy my cup of coffee while writing these words. He didn’t notice how close he was getting to my table — too busy pushing buttons on his phone, I guess. It was starting to dawn on me that he might have had a nervous affliction, like an obsession. His was the type of obsession that made him pace a room while holding a device no matter how close he got to another person. Mine was about getting up and moving someplace else when someone kept coming too close to me. Situated at a new table, I tried to think of something else, and I was trying that for a few minutes when Henry suddenly appeared and asked me about something, and I couldn’t understand a word.
I didn’t really know Henry. He was one of those people in the background, some friendly guy you say good morning to. I didn’t even know what he did on campus.
He introduced himself one day when I was quite fine by myself, and he kept going on and on about himself, and I never forgot his name since. The thing about Henry is he barks and has a garbled way of forming his syllables, like certain people that have survived a medical trauma. He was doing that now, and after I asked him to repeat it a couple of times, I got something about my character. I thought he was paying me a compliment, but it had something to do with the window I was sitting next to, when I was waving at the gardener just now. He said I must really love people. And was that because of the way I waved at the gardener?
He was telling me about himself about how I must be better than him, because he would never do it, and I had no idea what he was talking about. He said he used to be a bodyguard. He used to look over people to figure them out. He had to do that to see if they were in that mental zone just before giving it all up by committing some form of public atrocity. But now, it’s automatic for Henry. He said some perfect stranger after observing him asked if he were ever a bodyguard. Yes, he answered, how could you tell? It was the way he was watching people all the time.
Eventually, I was gathering that according to him, I was playing a dangerous game by turning my back to the room while looking out my window, therefore trusting everybody in the room, and that was the reason I loved people; it was because of the way I injudiciously gave them my back. There was no compliment in his assessment, and so I felt obliged to explain, and after mentioning that I was looking out the window because it served as my own personal TV, I gave up because I was sounding like somebody pretending to look out the window and then giving a good reason for it.
TAKE TWO
On my way to pick up a cup of coffee, I’m passing the debonair gardener, and he bids me a good morning with a friendly salute. He’s got that hundred-dollar smile, and I can feel the same thing creeping on my face. I can’t see myself, but thanks to the gardener, it’s obvious I have a hundred-dollar smile too. I’m stepping through the door. There’s the friendly guy again. I guess I wanted to tell him something. After asking him how he’s been, I was thinking about it, stirring my coffee. Sometimes a backlog of things you want to tell someone is so overwhelming, you let them have it all — all at once.
I’m telling him I used to listen to the type of music he was playing a couple of months ago, but I don’t do it anymore. There are reasons for this. “Maybe I got tired of it,” I tell him, “but the reason I always gave myself was that such music brought back memories, and I had no interest in these memories anymore.” I tell him the color of my day would be determined by the mood I got from a song. If it reminded me of an old girlfriend, well, that made matters worse. It seemed like I was never getting it right, but then after controlling the things that were controlling my emotions, I noticed I had a better handle on my life. When I stopped listening to my old music, I stopped having the mood swings and the flashbacks.
“It’s okay to listen to it now and again,” I continue, “and you know — I even like the music I didn’t like back then. I used to hate Michael Jackson because I was a headbanger, and on principle, you’re not supposed to like him, but now I really dig listening to his music too. The guy was amazing!” I keep telling him more things about the music they played, I played, we all played. “I still appreciate that old stuff.”
I have a feeling he is going to tell me that there’s not a lot of good new music, not like the old stuff. It’s something I’ve thought about now and then, his feelings about the newer music. And I would have to say that I do agree with him, if this is what he had to say.
So I answer this hypothetical question in an open, friendly way. “I think there is good new music, you just need to look for it. There’s so much out there now. And it’s nice to find something new and different.”
He’s nodding his head, saying that the point is to change it up, and after he said that, I have that feeling that I have always known he was going to say that.
I like that idea, and I keep it with me on my way out the door after bidding him a good day. When I enter the area with the tables and chairs, there is the guy pacing with his cell phone, following his own rhythms I guess, and I sit far enough away that he is not a nuisance but just another piece of the background harmony, and I am actually content that he is a part of it. I look up from writing this and wonder if the gardener is going to show up again and how you have to smile again and acknowledge him, and how that is always awkward. Then I notice I still have the same smile plastered on my face. From the cafeteria door, however, the friendly guy I was just talking to makes an appearance, and I promptly turn away to try to think about something else.
— Rey Armenteros