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DAVID LESTER ART

Normal History Vol. 29: The Art Of David Lester

LeasterHistoryVol-29Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

David’s painting The Colour Scheme Ruins It For Both Of Us makes me happy. I like to have a visual reference to the thought that neither part is easy in the awkward dance between men and women.

I found four VHS movies in a box in an alley. They had already been rained on. I guess they are chick flicks. In Mansfield Park, Fanny Price said this amazing thing. “He’s not without charm, but I do not trust him. I do not trust his nature. Like many charming people, he conceals an almost absolute dependence on the appreciation of others. His sole interest is being loved, not in loving.” Exactly. I don’t mean the guy on Sunday, but others who use manipulation and deception. Do you know what happened when Fanny Price told the guy she didn’t trust him? He got mad, blew up, stomped off. Of course.

The guy on Sunday, with whom there is a definite spark—we keep bumping into each other. I gave him my number last winter—he asked—back when I worked at The Store. We were going to go for coffee later that day—or soon. He didn’t call, and I had already reassessed things. I didn’t take it personally that he didn’t call. Next time I saw him, he apologized and clarified—and I was right; it wasn’t a good situation.

Since then, I’ve bumped into him more than anyone else. On the street, at the gym and on Sunday, outside a café, he asked if I’d join him for coffee. Beautiful sunny day, no seats outside, we decided to wander down to a small park. Talking, laughing, goofing around—soon he was touching my arm, rubbing my back. We were kissing and hugging in the sun. Hugging and kissing. Kissing and hugging. It was very, very nice. This went on for a very, very long time.

He’s a Leo, too. He said, “We need two spotlights.” And I made a gesture to block out his spotlight, saying, “No, we just need the one—on me.” He said I turn him on like two space shuttle engines, and I said, “Doesn’t the space shuttle lumber into the sky and drop its dead engines into the sea?” I told him he was maybe more like a Jekyll than a lion; I corrected myself, saying, “I mean a jackal.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” he said. “I’m a scavenger eating dead things?”

I told him my cheeks ached from laughing and that I wanted to laugh more. To keep laughing. He kissed my cheeks and I felt like a teenager. The sun was going down.

I started thinking. He was still avoiding thinking. I know this because I told him I was thinking and I asked him if he’d started thinking yet. He said, “No.” I was thinking about what words to use to sum things up. How to leave things. I was thinking about how to not say things that neither of us meant.

He asked, “Do you want to see me again?”

I said, “Yes.” I mean, I was sitting in his lap, kissing him. Am I going to say no? Or  I don’t know? Or maybe? In the moment—yes. I gave him my number—again—and he asked, “Do you want my number?”

“OK,” I said. I meant I don’t know. Maybe. I said, “Maybe we both just needed a hug today.” But he didn’t want to leave it like that—oh no, he told me all these things, things that felt very nice to hear, but really, not to be taken to have any action associated with them. Because he’s attracted to me, because he likes me and has been thinking about me—none of it needs to be acted on and that’s the trick.

We walked back to The Drive. He was going to catch a bus, and I was going grocery shopping. My mind was all screwy. I was very floaty. It was nice. The bus was coming along behind us as we reached the bus stop, and I said, “There’s a bus.” In a way, I thought he’d say, “Oh there will be another bus along momentarily. We need to say a proper farewell.” But he didn’t say that. He got on the bus. I looked at the bus at as it passed, thinking I might see him, thinking that I’d wave. I didn’t see him.

I felt good. It was a beautiful day. I floated up to the Super Value and got beef tenderloin and apples and walked home feeling good. This was carefully not attached to anything. I didn’t expect him to call, and I’m not calling him. That was Sunday, now it’s Thursday. Deep breath. Relief that he hasn’t called, because I don’t need to see him again and that day cannot really be repeated. Formulaically impossible. These things, attractions to people I know I shouldn’t be involved with, are tricky.

I am not in some weird state of having been rejected. It is easiest that he didn’t call. I’m not sure what we say though, when next we see each other. He will apologize. I will say it’s fine, I understand. I mean, I have his number too. Maybe he thinks I’ll call him. I could, but usually it’s better to not be moving forward with whatever has just happened. Really, it’s just that trick of enjoying the physical with a touch of the emotional, careful not to get caught up, swept into the machinery of language and pain, but I’m no expert. At all. He’s a handsome guy, mid-40s. I don’t think he knows how old I am. Maybe he does. Maybe this. Maybe that. I am very happy to have had that day and happy, too, that nothing else came from it.

It’s strange though, that the onus not to disappoint falls more on the man. The man doesn’t want the woman to be disappointed because he doesn’t want to feel like he’s disappointed a woman. The man makes references to things he thinks the woman wants: to see him again, to secure male validation, to be respected.

“I’ll call you,” he says, in part, because what the hell else is he going to say? For myself, I tend to go after what I want and usually once is enough with most of the fellows I’ve been with, but they tend to be back somewhere else, with the same end result, but yet they’re making excuses—wriggling—where there is no hook, no line, no sinker.

They say, “I’ll call you.”

And I say, “Good-bye.”

But I don’t think they notice that it is good-bye, because they have all these assumptions about my expectations.

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