road dog blues

i'm not really sure why he calls me when he does except to perhaps have a kind voice to validate his mood swings. in his mind, he's still 30 and smoking hot. last time i looked, he had a gut and looked tired as hell from all that gypsy style traveling. wearing a carhart jacket that wouldn't meet in the front, ya know? dude runs himself ragged all over the state just trying to stay in touch with his four girls and find time for a heinekin at the next exit.

i hadn't seen him in over thirty years, since high school, when i looked up from ladies night at the kudzu bar and there he was with a big grin. didn't remember me, he said. i thought he had aged well and told him so. yaya got his number and kept it until she got tired of listening to war stories. i can totally relate.

a few years later it was reunion time so i called his mama to try to find him. we're all about rounding up the herd for big ten celebrations here in the 'burg. go trojans and all that! she wouldn't give me his cell number but did give up the address so he was invited, just didn't show. he burned up the cell towers during those next few months, eager to reconnect with people he never knew that remembered he forgot. me? i've been here the whole time so i was the perfect happy reunion guide. or is that the ultimate little co-dependent? hmm.

his personality was hard to get used to...sort of overwhelming and abrasive in a "look at me" sort of way. little man syndrome, we call it at hen parties. laughs too loud and too long at stupid shit. he calls it happy and i suppose it is compared to kicked back and chilled out. adrenaline serves the gypsy well when getting from point a to b is the goal du jour. for a relationship? not so much.

dog said he was a real womanizer back in the day with a rigid set of specs for a woman worthy of his attention. it's what makes the hair on the back of neck stand up, he said. can ya'll believe i listen to this crap, ear clamped down over cellphone in the parking lot of the store chasing loose cans? me neither. live and learn, i say.

he starts calling a week or so before he's due to a visit with mom and tells me he misses me. "hotdamn!" i think! maybe he's for real under all of that noisy bravado and bullshit. so far, nothing to report.

time will tell.