=Story of the Week=

Gibbous Moon

It was another in a series of bad dates. No big deal. I was used to them by now. They’d even gotten to be a kind of running joke with my friends; I was already organizing my material, thinking of how I would present this latest disaster in the coming days to its full comic potential. 

As for my date, well, he didn’t seem to be particularly engaged in the business at hand either. In fact, he seemed intent on avoiding looking at me altogether. Maybe he was also gathering material to tell his guy friends? Do guys even do that? I don’t know, probably they do, but in some unrecognizable form, unrecognizable to me, anyway, like the way they say “I love you” by checking your tire pressure.

Anyway, he was holding a steak knife in his right fist beside his plate. He’d been holding it now for several minutes, as if he’d forgotten he’d taken the knife up in the first place, as if he’d forgotten his hand altogether. Lord knows why he was holding a knife at all. He’d ordered the mushroom-spinach ravioli, not a dish you needed a knife to cut. I was picking my way through the sodden mound of what the menu had encouragingly described as the steamed vegetarian platter.

“So you’re one of those leaves and stalks types,” he said, as if it were a comment on our ultimate incompatibility, at best some obstacle we’d have to eventually confront if we intended to have a long-term relationship.

I didn’t bother to point out that he was making an enormous assumption based on what amounted to very little evidence. It was only one meal, after all. Besides, he wasn’t eating meat either. Did that necessarily mean either one of us was a vegetarian? But this date wasn’t going anywhere: no need to start an argument over nothing for nothing; that's the way I figured it.

The meal ground on to its conclusion as these things inevitably do; but it was exhausting, uphill work.

The waiter came at last to deliver the bill. He was a tall, slender, dark-haired guy with some kind of accent. His outfit of black pants, a loose-fitting white shirt, and blood-red sash was well-suited to him. He looked romantic and dangerous, like a bull-fighter. Funny, I don’t remember what my date that night looked like with anything near the same specificity. Something fuzzy and blonde is the best I can do in calling him to mind, something indeterminate, like an electron cloud, wearing a light mustache, a Bryan or a Ryan, some diffuse name like that.

“Argentine,” my date said, referring to the waiter.

I asked him how he knew. I mean, Argentine, of all things. Bryan or Ryan just shrugged, signing the Amex slip. The tortured candle was twisting and spitting in its cup and I watched it like I always do while someone pays for my meal, slightly embarrassed.

The drive home was uneventful; I won’t waste your time or mine describing it except to mention that we had a slight difference of opinion on exactly what the phrase “a gibbous moon” meant. He thought it had something to do with a monkey, which I would have thought perfectly ridiculous if there weren’t a time, and not that long ago either, that I thought the same thing. I’d looked it up once and knew for about five minutes what gibbous really meant but I’ve long since forgotten. So I knew that he was wrong and that I was once wrong, too; now I knew better, but only half-better, since I'd forgotten the real meaning, and that was the only real difference between us. 

There’s a lesson in that somewhere, but what it is—well, the sentence that would explain it is all tangled up in my brain and I just don’t have the patience or the mental dexterity to untangle it. Sometimes it’s more expedient to leave the laces in a knot and slip the sneaker onto your foot. More to the point of things, too. When you have somewhere you're going, that is.

It made me think, though, that at one time we might have been a better match for each other, but, alas, we’d missed that chance and that’s just how it is with people.

He walked me to my front door and we kissed good night but there was nothing in it for either of us; it was just one of those things you do to spare each other any awkwardness. I’ve had sex with guys for the same reason, I’m not proud to say. Still, I think it can be taken as evidence of the basic decency of human beings. At least I hope it can.

The old guy next door was out on his porch with his dogs, pretty much as usual. He was pretending not to be watching. Afghans, I think they are, big leggy dogs with long noses and ropy hair-dos that always reminded me of Barbra Streisand at a certain point in her career. 

He takes a fair amount of interest in my comings and goings, I’ve noticed. I suppose I provide him with a kind of entertainment. Like one of those reality shows whose characters interest you precisely because you don't have a lot invested in what happens to them. If anything ever happens to me, if I disappear after a date, for instance, and go missing for  days, he’ll probably be one of the first they come to question. He won't have much to tell them, though. I don’t think we’ve said more than a dozen words to each other since I moved in here. The way he sees it, I’m just a renter, after all. To tell the truth, I see it that way, too.