Don't Even Know what to Say Right Now

Got bored and pulled a flask of J&B Scotch from an inside jacket pocket and took a large pull from it…I quietly guffawed to myself…isn’t this what the world expects of me? I thought…the woman in the front row was as placid as a glazed donut…she couldn’t stop her heart palpitations…I went to my yoga class…the instructor confessed to me that she really didn’t know how to talk to guys, she was a little shy, always got a headache…”Just be yourself,” I said…which was the wrong thing to say because those veins in her neck and temple suddenly looked like dancing worms under her skin…I excused myself, complaining of an upset stomach…” You’re honest,” she said. “But you got to watch you a little…When I pointed out that she stole that line from the Marx Brahs “A Day at the Races,” she became defensive and began to cry…What could I do but leave?...I hailed a taxi (good thing I wasn’t black)…the cabbie and I got into an interesting conversation about high blood pressure…”I’m taking a water pill and an ACE inhibitor,” he said…I nodded… allegedly he expected some sort of a response from me…(but all I could muster was a nod)…(What, a nod is not a response?)…He looked at me through the rear-view mirror…his eyes were so bloodshot…he was attempting to size me up, but I could tell he wasn’t very good at it…” So, what’s your life strategy?” he said, raising his left eyebrow…I shrugged…That also was the wrong response…I decided to stop looking at him through the rear-view mirror while the cabbie made such aggressive eye contact, so I looked out my window and waited for him to arrive at my destination… He thought, What the hell kinda question is that? It sounds like something an HR professional would ask during a job interview…Why am I so disturbed by it…Do I fear it? Do I resent it? What actually is my strategy? I’d never had a strategy in my life. I’d been raised to improvise like I was blowing sax down at some dingy little bar in the village of New York. I was more Charlie Parker than General Norman Schwarzkopf…I was playing it as it goes, throwing caution to the wind…I was never taught how to strategize, organize, or present long-term plans with a specific goal to any committee for approval…I know this for a fact because I drove both my parents mad with my insouciance…they could never understand my lackadaisical, horizontal approach to the world…which is why they booted me out of their home as soon as I graduated high school…Oh, well, that was all in the rear-view mirror now, so to speak…the cabbie stopped at my street, I handed him a twenty and told him to keep the change…