300 days

300 days until the third year

Ford and I were sitting in the Majestic on Ponce de Leon. The Majestic is southern and greasy and serves breakfast all day long. You can feed two people stuffed-full for less than $15, and there is a cigarette vending machine in the back, great neon signs out front, and small standing pools of water under the ice machine.

And Ford says to me:

Look, the thing that [name deleted] is most afraid of is just that people will find out what a liar he is. I have lived with this for years. The thing [name deleted] is most afraid of is that people will know me and know that I’m a good person, that I live a good life. The best thing you can do is just be yourself – just do what you would normally do, act how you normally act. Live your life.

I’m miserable over how the summer has gone. How not much has happened the way I would have liked it too. When I started planning back in March, things should have happened – well, family things, romantic things, financial things, creative endeavor things. And it all happened, all right, but the payoff – well, 50% of expectations met is not satisfactory. I don’t say this to Ford. I eat a bowl of bacon and black pepper grits.

So he’s afraid of me?

Deathly afraid. [This person] slandered me to my aunt, and it was funny because of course he had slandered her and her kids years back. So when [this person] tried to tell my aunt these type of things…well…I don’t know what exactly she said, but I’m pretty sure she told him exactly where he could stick it, and how far up.

Ford chuckles into her decaf coffee. I can’t believe we’ve known each other for seven years now. There have been times when we’ve been deeply annoyed with one another, for sure, but beyond all that, we’re pretty good influences on one another.

Christy Ford came to visit this weekend, and it was the first proper visit we’d had in two and a half years. The last time we’d visited properly – and when I say a proper visit, I mean a visit where just you and a guest have enough time to sit, talk one an one and get the flow of ideas and concepts going again – the last time we’d had a proper visit was March of 2001, when she drove all of my stuff from Murfreesboro to Boston by herself in a U-Haul trailer I paid for.

I mean, it had really been just that long. We’ve seen each other at parties, and had some meals together since then, but this time she came down and we had almost two whole days to just sit and talk and eat. It was nice. I watched her suck in all the city she could in 24 hours, all the urban textures and sights and smells she hadn’t been around since Boston. We talked a lot about art, and the strange paths our lives have taken in the past two years. I tried to fill her up with good food for the mind and the body. I hope she visits often; I think she will.