On Not Flying to Hawaii

I could be the waitress
in the airport restaurant
full of tired cigarette smoke and unseeing tourists.
I could turn into the never-noticed landscape
hanging identically in all the booths
or the customer behind the Chronicle
who has been giving advice
about stock portfolios for forty years. I could be his mortal weariness,
his discarded sports section, his smoldering ashtray.

I could be the 70-year-old woman who has never seen Hawaii,
touching her red lipstick and sprayed hair.
I could enter the linen dress
that poofs around her body like a bridesmaid,
or become her gay son
sitting opposite her, stirring another sugar
into his coffee for lack of something true to say.
I could be the reincarnated soul of the composer
of the Muzak that plays relentlessly overhead,
or the factory worker who wove this fake Oriental carpet,
or the hushed shoes of the busboy.

But I don't want to be the life of anything in this pitstop.
I want to go to Hawaii, the wet, hot
impossible place in my heart that knows just what it desires.
I want money, I want candy.
I want sweet ukelele music and birds who drop from the sky.
I want to be the volcano who lavishes
her boiling rock soup love on everyone,
and I want to be the lover
of volcanos, who loves best what burns her as it flows.

Alison Luterman

20.10.09

Cable Guy

Recently I read a fellow blogger's post where she talked about living life for the moment and not living with regrets. This past weekend I was faced with one of those moments and decided to tackle it. It didn't give me the desired result, more so just a few laughs, but I definitely can't say that I don't have any regrets.
I've been waiting for weeks to get my satellite fixed. Certain channels (CNN for Headline news with Robin Meade in the morning in particular. I can't start my day without Bob telling me what my flight delays are going to be) weren't coming in because the satellite needed to be redirected. So I made the appointment and they sent out a technician.
Well, they didn't send out any technician, the sent out the nicest looking technician they could find. He was tall, handsome, and could carry a ladder around my yard like it was a stick. My friend and I chose to sit on my front porch and just watch him as he walked back and forth to his truck. He was extremely nice and actually offered to not only fix my satellite, but also to replace it so that I wouldn't have this problem again.
When he was done he had to come inside and check the reception. I was smitten. You know, the kind of moment where you wonder what kind of obnoxious grin you have on your face, and you say stupid things that you look back on and wonder, "What the hell was I thinking?" It got really awkward when he had to go into my room to check the reception in there. Thank god I didn't have my folded laundry sitting around like I normally do, so he could take a gander at my undies. We were standing in my bedroom flipping through channels when he mentioned he's "going to have to get his earmuffs out." I filtered through my mind trying to figure out what he could possible mean. I finally realized he was refering to our sudden drop in temperature from 85 to 45 degree weather. It was obvious he was trying to make small talk and was possibly having one of those "what kind of obnoxious grin do I have on my face" moments as well. As he was leaving he placed a sticker on my reciever so that I had the number to call in case I had any more problems, and then handed me another put "somewhere safe."
After he left and I sat drooling on my porch, I kept commenting to my friend that he was the tallest (being that I am normally faced with a man several inches shorter than me) and hottest man I had seen in awhile. She suggested I should have given him my number, and we went through all the embarassing and silly scenerios that could have ensued. I thought to myself, "I should have given him my number. What do I have to lose?" And the answer to that is, Absolutely Nothing.
I thought back to the fellow blogger's post and decided I needed to live in the moment. I proceeded to call the cable company and try to explain to a guy, probably outsourced from India, that I wanted to speak to the office that had dispatched this technician. The man kept asking me if I had problems and needed teh technician to come back to my house. I finally, and through mass giggles, explained I wanted to give him my number. He sincerely responded, "Oh, you would like give him an appreciative message?" Yes, if you want to call it that. He transfered me to the office and after a few painful moments and a few more giggles, I explained to the woman that I wanted to leave "my technician" my number. She seemed pretty okay with that, and even repeated my number and name to make sure she had it correct.
After I hung up I couldn't stop laughing. Did I think this hottie would call me back? No way. But was it fun to do and consider? Yes. Did I have any regrets? No.
In the end, it gave me a little confidence. When pursuing men, (as they sometimes need to be pursued in today's modern world) there really is nothing to lose. I'll always have my dignity and don't really have a reputation to ruin. And who knows? Maybe someday that "technician" will be on hand to fix my satellite when I yell to him from another room.

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