Some towns don't allow any place for you to sit down. The respectable citizens don't want poor people hanging around, so they remove the benches, even at bus stops. It's a shame. I picture old Walt Whitman walking around town, bullshitting with people, flirting with men and women alike, teasing out the juice of life, getting weary on his feet, plopping down on a nice wooden bench with wrought-iron arms. Sitting is a way of life, walking and sitting.
I picture Old Walt sitting there, a hoary genius blended into the blur of the town, watching a skirt blow up here, a mother bending over her baby carriage over there, a bulge as a young man carries lumber for a carpenter. It's a good thing, sitting, wasting time as we call it now. It's good to watch the world and to think about it, and let it see you and wonder about you.
This is one of my favorite things to do, loafing on a nice bench, and I'm glad our town still has them. Some homeless families live at the edge of town, they have an encampment under the Interstate bridge, and the townspeople mostly are unaware of them. I'd be one of them except I was lucky enough to have inherited some stocks that I am not allowed to sell but they send me dividend checks every quarter and it's enough to rent half a duplex on a quiet street, enough to pay my bills and groceries and breakfast at Dan's every morning. And if I'm in the mood, a couple of beers at Tony's downtown in the evening. I am not the working type, if you know what I mean. I'm just not very good at doing what some asshole tells me to do. I am, as the song said, "a bit too leisurely" for all that.
"My" bench is on the sunny side of Easley Park, which is a grassy, wooded park just like you'd picture. It's got some trees, a playground, baseball diamonds. The young adults jog around the perimeter and do their yoga in the grassy meadow. Parents take their children there to play. Teenagers sneak into the park to get high and to make out in the hedges or on the playground equipment. There are dog-walkers, people cutting through in a hurry to get somewhere on the other side, we get the occasional no-gooder, and the random do-nothing, like me.
People sometimes sit and chat with me, and I am always delighted by these opportunities. I can usually get somebody's story out of them, and it often ends with both of us having a good laugh. Lately I have been joined a couple times a week by a young couple with a four-year-old. The man is some kind of administrator of something or other who works from the computer at home most days, the wife is a sparkling beauty, and the kid is a brat. Sorry, you gotta call 'em like you see 'em. Mikey's an undisciplined, tantrum-throwing brat. '
I see where he gets it. The mom does what she can, but the kid's father is sullen, moody, humorless. If you're a kid and that's your dad and you want his attention you have to take extreme measures, that's all I'm saying. I'm actually kind of surprised that this guy even agrees to go on walks with the family. He doesn't seem to enjoy it at all. He stares into the distance and checks the time on his cellphone every few minutes while the kid grumbles and eats dirt.
The mom is a different story. Her name is Cynthia, or Cynth, and she is cheerful and friendly in a way that sometimes seems a little effortful for her, like she would rather be home with a book. She is smart and funny but sometimes you see the corners of her eyes tighten up for an instant, or she'll look at the ground, thinking, and you know there is more to her than meets the eye.
And let me say that what does meet the eye is fine indeed. She wears what we used to call "housedresses," which are plain, unglamorous dresses, not intended to, you know, go clubbing. It used to be something that a housewife wore, when women called themselves housewives, she could do her chores and still look presentable if someone came to the door. Oh yeah, back then you could knock on somebody's door without getting shot. You see those dresses in old movies and I don't think they were meant to be, back in the day, but today they are definitely a sexy look for a woman. It projects the feeling that she is confident in her appearance, that she is respectable and happily married and all that good shit, and also there is an implication that she would tear your fucking head off in bed. Which I mean in a good way.
I'm beginning to turn a little gray around the corners of my beard and my sideburns; I don't think this is even called "middle age," I am just a grown-up man, no longer young. I have my morning routine of shaving, showering, putting on clean clothes, combing my hair neatly, and heading over to Dan's for some eggs and coffee. I shine my shoes, I iron my clothes, I keep my apartment tidy. There are enough hours in the day for all that and some serious loafing, too.
Cynth must be in her middle or late twenties. Her hips and breasts fill out her housedresses in a most appealing way, and I love to see that family coming or going, just for the visual effect of watching her walk in her dress. She and I have had some good talks about the news of the day, the weather, small-talk, with her sourpuss husband sitting there. It is always generic, socially acceptable stuff, which I am usually not interested in but, you know, a pretty girl can make a boring topic interesting.
It was a Tuesday, about ten in the morning, and I had stretched my legs with a walk around downtown before I settled on my bench. It was springtime, sunny, just what you're looking for in life, and I look up the block and my eyes alight on a delightful figure striding down the sidewalk. I watched her bounce as she walked, and after she'd covered half the block I realized I had been watching my young friend Cynth.
I had never seen her by herself before, and my first thought was to worry that something was wrong. In fact my first thought was that her asshole husband had done something abusive, had yelled at her or even hit her. But as she approached me she smiled, and she looked well put together -- very well put together, if I may opine.
"Hey, Theo," she called as she came closer. "What ya doing?"
"Nothing," I said, "Same as always. And what about you? Where's the rest of the crew?"
"I told Donald I needed to take a walk," she said, sitting down on the bench beside me.
"Well it's a beautiful day for it," I said, sticking with the formula.
"Yep."
We sat for a couple of minutes. I felt like she wanted to say something but I did not have the inclination to hurry her. We watched some kids playing, well I mostly watched the mothers but that was our scenery.
Finally she spoke. "Theo, you always seem so peaceful and so relaxed. How do you do it?"
"Well I don't have a job to fluster me," I said. "For one thing."
"I suppose that helps," she said.
"Things getting a little tense at your house?" I asked her, knowing the answer -- who wouldn't be tense living with that surly husband of hers?
She didn't answer at first. I could feel her looking at the side of my face. "Yeah, I guess so," she finally said. "No different than usual, but sometimes it gets to me a little bit."
She shifted and said, "Theo, I'm supposed to be taking a walk, you want to walk with me a little bit?"
"Sure," I said. "That's what I live for. Walking. And sitting."
We got up and she took off like a bat out of hell. "Whoa," I hollered after her. "What's the hurry?"
"Oh, sorry," she said. "Just trying to get some exercise."
"Slow walking is exercise, too," I laughed.
"I should learn to slow down," she said. Seems like people are always on a self-improvement kick. As if things could be better than this, right here.
