A Mid-January Midnight - in Shorts

Midnight
in mid-January
sitting outside in shorts
on a bench at the corner of
Santa Monica and Wellesley.
Across Santa Monica Boulevard
~~~~~~~~~~(straight ahead)
is Rocky's Hot Dogs and Hamburgers.
Across Wellesley Avenue
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (to my right)
is Del's Saloon,
into which I have set foot many times.
A perspiring can of Coors
sits on Beside Me Street
~~(to my left)
and keeps me company
as I watch the sparse traffic meander by.
I think about my
being in shorts
at midnight
in mid-January
(it is Los Angeles, after all)
and it brings to mind
where I was a year ago
(Budapest)
and two years ago
(Boulder),
neither in which place I'd be
sitting outside in shorts
at midnight
in mid-January.

I watch the traffic and enjoy the night.
A Lexus, a Honda, a Chrysler
all drive by;
then a Ford pickup truck
and several other cars.
However, my mind is not here on the bench;
no, it thinks about my soon-to-be ex-Mrs.
in bed at home:
a second marriage failure.
I feel pathetic and I'm not even
thirty-two years old yet.
I am momentarily brightened at the thought
of two potential successors, though:
one in Hungary and one in Turkey.
But I've a feeling they would just be
the third and fourth ex-Mrses,
so I decide not to take my act
international just yet.
Hell, they probably aren't even
potential suitors; it's probably just
the Coors talking or
the desire for good drama amidst all
this rubbish.
Questions do remain, though,
and chances saunter past me
like the traffic in front of me.
Perhaps, however, as I am doing with these cars,
I am merely watching great chances pass by me.
I get up to walk home and I walk past Del's.
I pause, for it's definitely a bar
I know well and will only
know better, and, although I know
it would certainly be OK in mid-June or -July,
I wonder if it would be OK for me
right now to be
sitting inside in shorts
at midnight
in mid-January.



West Los Angeles
18.01.00