Romance

It’s 1am again, and here I am.  Too strung out to sleep and too tired to really do anything worthwhile (like homework).  It’s a struggle for me to really wind down after a long day of work and law school.  I seem to get my second wind around 11:30pm…so in turn, I’m tired every day of my little life.

I had lunch at Panera today with a couple of girls from work.  We sat down with our trays of food and began to gab about our respective love lives and someone to my left caught my eye.

There was a man sitting all by his lonesome at a table, with a single cup of coffee, staring blankly into the sea of people who occupied the very busy restaurant.  This man was all of 65 years and was the kind of handsome that makes you wonder what a lady-killer he used to be.

Something was out of place though.  His hair (dyed light brown, or so it seemed) was longish and slicked back down his neck in the kind of way that borders between sleazy and sexy.  In taking a closer look at this man, I realized that his outfit was head to toe straight out of the 1970s: big lapelled shirt, jacket, big belt buckle, flared slacks and two-toned slip on leather zoot shoes.  He reminded me of my Uncle Joe…an old Brooklyn mobster with those big rose tinted specs and all.  But more than his outfit, something else struck me.

He looked lost.

He looked like he had been there for quite some time.  He looked as if he was waiting for someone who never showed up–who he knew would never show up.  He looked lonely and sad.  He looked depressed…like he got all dressed up in his Sunday best and was stood up.

I made up a story for him.  I imagine that maybe one day in the 1970s he met an amazing woman at that location…that he loved her immediately…but somehow let her get away from him.  I imagine that he goes to this place once a year–once a month–maybe every single day–hoping to get a glimpse of the beauty he let slip through his fingers on that fateful day…or maybe to hold on to the little bit of beauty that is left for him these days in that serendipitous spot.

romance.