"There are no more real businessmen," the well-dressed gentleman announced as he entered the McDonald's. "Perhaps my feet have been countermanded!" Dan and Maggie turned to me with a look on their faces that quested for answers. Not skipping a beat, I approached the gentleman and straightened out his bowtie for him which had either gone crooked or never been straight in the first place.

"Tell me, my good man," I said. "Why do you disturb the peace of Humis with your paltry offerings? The gods have no want of such triflings."

"Mayhap they do or mayhap they don't," he said. "The grass still needs mowing and your daddy can't rock and roll." He pronounced can't like cay-n't. Maggie grabbed Dan's arm in a panic, but I gave them a dirty look and that nonsense was soon over.

"You, my friend, are like a wooden bridge!" I shouted and spat at the jerk's feet. "And if ever mine eyepieces lay their scopes upon thine sorry carcass, thou shalt not live to see the light of the next moonfall!" Quickly the fiend turned tail and hot-tailed it to his gold-colored Cadillac Escalade with a 12 CD changer and those rims that spin independently from the wheel.

Maggie gave me a kiss on the cheek. "My hero," she whispered in my ear. Dan worked on his fries for a while, and we all put the incident behind us.

IT WAS UNFAIR

It was unfair of me
I'll admit it.
I cheated and didn't like what I found and was pissed off at you.
It was unfair of me to take a look into your darkest thoughts and
Get offended.
It was unfair to get indignant about something you were too sweet to tell me.
And I'm sorry.

Alright, I have to admit that I thought I had a leg up, and in retrospect that proved to not be the case. You see, I happened to check Maggie's online journal today to see if it made any mention of our little "date". It made me kind of sad to read it.

"Last night was equally lackluster. I went in to T.T.'s to meet my friend Chuck, who i am trying deparately to coax into helping me learn mandolin, since he's apparently quite skilled. He asked if i wanted to hang out and see his friends band's show. Now, Chuck has pretty decent taste in music, (hey can't go wrong when your favorite band is Ween) so I figure, sure, why not? Goddamn, did I regret that." Reading this, my heart began to hurt. I fingered the Emergency Response button on my necklace, or I would have if I wore a necklace with an Emergency Response button. Allow me to continue:

"And the band! Oh man. They were good at what there were doing, but what they were dong was not good. Some sort of poppy emo atari-esque stuff that I'm just NOT into. I felt like I was at an all ages show in high school. Thom, remember when I played in that dorm at UMass Lowell, and that goofy candypunk psudo ska band played after us, and those attention starved emomongers were dancing around like goofballs and we felt SO OLD. Wwell, that's how I felt last night, times 3. So I had a couple of Pabst in bottles, and then excused myself to Chuck, telling him I had to get home because I have to work early." My heart actually began to crumple into a small, black cinder as I read it. I thought my friends were so cool... Even typing this I can feel my back arching and my eyes welling up. Why, Maggie? Why did you forsake me? Why didn't you tell me you hated the music? I did too, Maggie.

I did too.

Maggie and I watched the concert standing about six inches apart. I still don't know, even today, whether I should have put my arm around her or what. Dan was onstage playing rhythm guitar and putting all his body into it.

I looked up at Dan and remembered all the times we'd shared. I considered him my best friend. I've always been the Ferris to his Cameron, the Roger to his Eddie, the Tango to his Cash, or at least that's how I perceived it. I had tried to be there there for Dan when he needed me, and I'd always needed him. He'd been my Lancelot.

The girl, Maggie, on the other hand, I had just met tonight. She'd bought us both a few frosty brew-has at the Mexican place, and I had worked up a nice buzz. Now, I stood next to her intimidated by her beauty and charm and ashamed of the two "underage X's" burning holes into the backs of my hands as though they'd been branded there. I had read her online journal the night before and the pieces were all starting to fall into place. It reminded me of turning to the last page of a book before I actually started reading. One is left with questions like "who's Debbie?" or "what's a yarzenwakhel?" And as one reads from the beginning the answers are slowly fed to one.

Sometimes I don't know who I care about more.

I came home to find her online. We made tenative plans to make plans to go do something again. If only I'd kissed her though.

The horoscope said "You will be faced with a decision today that may shape the rest of your life. Choose wisely." Thinking this to be good advice, I weighed the plusses and minuses of every choice that came my way for the entire day. As I sat with Jennifer in the reception area, something started to happen to me. I started noticing the littlest things and finding them beautiful. Her straight teeth (I remember when the braces came off), her widow's peak, her graceful neck all were beautiful to me in a way I'd never before allowed them to be.

"Chuck," I said to myself. "Charley-baby, what are you doing? It would never work out." I remembered very distinctly the discussion we'd had not six weeks earlier in which we had decided that there was no possibility for an "us". It would be Chuck and Jenn, partners in misery and that was that. I had walked away that night with a malaise cast about me, not knowing why.

Now, I peered around the doorjamb at her a moment more taking in one last look at that face I've known so well. "I want to be courted!" she had told me one evening so long ago. "Do you know what courting actually is?"

"Sure," I said. "Trying to gain the love or affections of someone, especially to seek to marry that person."

"Well, that's what I want! Apparently men have forgotten that. I'm sick of taking the initiative. I want to be wooed."

As all this came rushing back to me, I couldn't help but remember my own tattered attempts at courtship with ladies who just didn't want that. And so, sitting there on the loveseat in reception with my hat and gloves on, I made the decision that could change my life.

Standing on the street corner in the blistering cold wind
My hat threatens to fly off my head
And I'm afraid of them
Afraid of the hundreds of jackals prancing back and forth
Shivering in the cold wind
Laughing at the pain
There is a space I can tuck myself into
And so I do
And I watch them as I shelter myself from the wind
And eventually, I stop watching
And eventually, I stop being anything at all
And the jackals pass me by
And I am nothing

I saw the ex today. We had "dinner plans". Of course.

In the past, "plans" with the ex involved me knocking on the door and being immediately innundated with food, cigarettes, liquor and sex. This, incidentally, was not very dissimilar from what it was like while we were dating. But `twas not to be this time. We went out for fish, and the servings were too small. We each had a hardy chuckle about the other's sorry excuse for a love-life. Me with my married woman and my 34-year-old; her with the Texan. Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. Hardy-har-fucking-har.

I sat naming off the songs as they came on the radio first at the restaurant (the reggae cover of Cat Stevens' Where Do The Children Play), then in the cafe (the rock and roll cover of Dean Martin's That's Amore), and finally in the cab (James Taylor's cover of The Drifters' Up On The Roof). She explained to me the dangers of toncillectomies at our respective ages and why you have to cough when they check you for a hernia.

"It's simple, Charles," she said to me. "Coughing tenses up the abdominal muscles. If anything's been herniated, they'll feel it."

"Who came up with that?" I asked. She shrugged.

"I don't know," she said. "Perhaps it was an accident."

"Like that time when you-"

"No," she interrupted. "Not like that at all."

There's not one, but two primary types of laughter. There is the boisterous Guffaw and the nervous Titter (represented in chat rooms as HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! and heh heh heh respectively). I remember when I first met you, the Guffaw predominated. Every joke I made was funny; everything I did was charming. Then over time, our conversations became speckled with Titters. Everything was awkward. Nothing was good or right. The Titter ruled. I miss the Guffaw.

It's been a year and a half, and I still can't listen to Drops of Jupiter
You tore me in two and yadda-yadda-yadda,
Here I stand before you, a mere fraction of the man I was.
There ain't no food in the fridge,
Nothing to eat.
That makes not one, but two empty clawing sensations in my gut.
Damn, I'm hungry.