One of my fav bands. Super nostalgic.

Always new, always beginning

Unfailingly, regardless of where I am, what I’m doing, or who I’m with, the Cure’s “Lovesong” reminds me a half-lit apartment on the Northwest side, beleagured light sneaking in through miserly blinds; the tollway late at night, jaundiced lights diffused in the haze; driving down West Gray, the clean black and white trim, the tasteful neon, the displaced palm trees trying to hitch rides with passersby; dark, grubby hardwoods and yellowed walls; an empty studio in the heights, self-doubt echoing off the concrete floors beneath the tracklighting.

When I was young I thought “Lovesong” was a song about love, about all the ways you can feel about someone, all the ways love transcends everything else about the world.

Now I know it’s a song about breaking up, about all the ways love never changes even though it has.

It’s still one of my favorite songs. I rarely hear it, though.

“Would you like your coffee warmed up, sweetie?” That earned her tip more than anything else. The sweetie was endearing and didn’t feel like a charity fuck. It felt country, and sitting in a Denny’s somewhere off I35 certainly was country enough.

I also appreciated the way she referred to a refill as warming my coffee. It showed an appreciation and experience, an experience you’d have to live. You couldn’t read it, hear about it, the simple pleasure of warm coffee on a cold day, the way your coffee slowly cools, and the way a refill warms it back up.

The waiter at Madam Mam’s was a different beast entirely. He had the moves, the posture, the restrained respect you often receive from ethnic waitstaff in Asian and Indian restaurants, but he also had that American casualness, a laxness to his posture, a comfortable stance that said equal, a stance more astonishing in that it probably never appears overseas. He stood American.

Walking by Kerbey Lane, I peeked in the large aquarium windows that faced Guadalupe hoping to catch sight of the waitress we’d had, Heather. She’d offered to comp our salsa and tea, minor items of minor monetary consequence and worth much more to us, a real gift. But I never intended to take her up on it, and then I ordered some cheesecake. In the end, that was comped, too, for four Djarum Splash. I feel bad about the cheesecake, an extravagance being added to the earlier gift, soiling it. I feel like I owe her a fat tab and a big tip.

She had looked good. Something about her was different. I wasn’t sure if it was the hair, the way she’d done her eyes, the dress. I couldn’t pinpoint it, though she was dresssed differently.

She was wearing a slip dress and strappy heels. The shoes looked nice, though I didn’t mention it when I’d first come in. Would have been too forward, or maybe I just thought it would be.

“These are my fuck me shoes.”

“Those are nice shoes.”

“Well, too bad they didn’t work.”

“Why do you say that?”

Shrug. “Well…” She got in her car to go home so Roy and I climbed the stairs to the apartment.

Roy had noticed something, too. “Does that mean we’re guys now? Because we noticed the shoes.”

“Nah. We’re just brothers.”