wine

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I’d cycled to the nearby square to buy wine and a few groceries. It was a stifling hot June day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and all the young people were out protesting the recent killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. Cars passed through the protest, hooting in appreciation, and probably terrified of having their cars damaged if they acted any other way. When I emerged from the liquor store there was a commotion in the street. I’d been expecting it. Someone had walked through the protestors shouting and screaming at them. Of course, there was retaliation, and everyone was angry… as people so often seem to be. I took a longer route back to my bicycle and cycled towards my apartment. Arriving at the small reservation pond across from my building, I stopped to see the Canadian Geese and their Goslings as they gathered around the area between the pond and the bike path. After a few minutes I made my way back onto the path and started to cross next to an old man to my right. I was keeping my eye on him because he seemed slightly unsteady and I was worried that he might walk out in front of one of the onrushing cyclists. When I looked to my left, there was my ex-girlfriend, about to crash into me, with her boyfriend just behind her. I rushed out of the way and heard her boyfriend ask, ‘are we going along to the end of this path?’ ‘Yes, that is the plan’ she replied, and her voice sounded like a sensual summer song reviving all memories of the times her and I had spent on that path. I couldn’t help but turn to watch her cycle away… those legs, magnificent. Her boyfriend was a tall, skinny American guy. I was somewhat surprised that she was not with someone from Eastern Europe who looked more like a genetically engineered Olympic swimmer. A wave of sadness hit me and then passed, and I felt fine… happy for her. As I arrived home, ate lunch, and drifted down to the pool to spend some time with Madame Bovary, a fresh sadness seeped into my core. I couldn’t quite find the root of it and was sure it was just general apathy. But there was a lingering thought… not so much of my ex but of every ex I have known. How I always seem to end up alone and how I seemed to prefer it that way even if it means a period of pain for quite some time. I opened a beer and tried to soothe my mind and mood. This led to more beer but simply resulted in a discomfort and greater sadness. Grabbing my facemask, I left the apartment and went for a brief stroll around the pond. It was a gloomy walk filled with solitary thoughts of different forms of deaths and estrangements and isolations and sufferings. I sauntered mournfully back to my apartment, opened a bottle of wine, and eventually felt the force of its effects pushing out the thoughts and replacing them with a numbing buzz that was not altogether unpleasant.

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