A Guy Like That

A guy like that must

know how

to make a charming

apology or 

he'd be dead.

Indicative of this

great charm, his people

went on loving him. For years he drank

a couple hundred drinks a month

and kept pouring

on the insults (I mean, he'd really insult you.

He'd say the things that keep you up

all night chewing a dark hole in your guts).

but then,

once sober, he'd show up at your door brandishing

one of those magnificent apologies,

full of duende and meaningful silence

and more sweetness than

any of us had seen all year. Yes,

there was something to it. I must have

gotten at least four or five of them myself alone.

Then one year, this guy sobered up.

We didn't see him for a while, but when we did

he was nice all the time. Really a great guy. Very,

very sweet. Nobody wanted

to say he was boring.

There was this other guy

we knew for a while. Very rich.

I don't know what kind of a guy he was. Only

that one day, he shed the skin

of his life as a businessman. Up and

went to Mexico to “ride the snake.”

He wrote a three-part new agey

novel about what

happened inside him,

some mystical realism

stuff, and the truth is that

none of us cared much

for this book. See, it was a little

much, didn't make a

whole lot of sense. We just couldn't

follow it.

The one thing

I remember though is that

his son liked it. He had this

twenty-something year old son

who thought he

was the shit. Talked

all the time about his dad

and that damn book

on first dates, at bars and

dinner parties, at

his job.

Like I said, I don't know

what kind of a guy this guy

was. Only that

his son wouldn't

shut up

about him.