I have tumbled and staggered through my life’s affairs; stumbled and crashed into the out-of-breath old grouch I have become. I am not the “me” I imagined I would become when I was 20, or 30, or even 40. In my youth I did not foresee the over weight and over tired “me” that I drag through each day. The optimistic “me” from the past rejects the baggy eyed, pessimistic fat man in the mirror.

I should be somewhere else; driving a convertible along a slow winding road that follows the lazy river. Are those poplars? Yes, I believe they are; with brilliant leaves that vibrate and sparkle in the sunlight. I am driving and tapping my fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of a favorite song.

“I change shirts, I change money, I change my women to keep from acting funny. Everybody’s got to change; everybody’s got to change sometime.”  

I turn toward the foot hills and I can sense I am nearer to a – a temporary rest. I slow down and around the next bend in the road I see the sign:

JEN’S DINER

FRIENDLY SERVICE

SPECIALS

I pull into a clean parking spot. All of Jen’s parking spots are clean. “Everybody’s got to change…” the silence is so sudden when I turn off the car. Once inside the diner I feel like everybody is a friend. I know them all, strangers I have seen before, and I am just as familiar to their smiles and nods.

As I walk through the diner to a window booth I look at my reflection in Jen’s clean glass. I am tall and much thinner, with dark thick hair and my muscular frame is – do I see muscles? Just as I sit down Jen arrives with a glass of sparkling ice water. Not a plastic tumbler, a real glass drinking vessel. Can it get any better? I read the menu – all my favorite dishes: Mom’s meatloaf, Aunt Carol’s pecan pie, dad’s sloppy Joes, and grandma’s Yankee pot roast. “I’ll have the club sandwich, Jen.”

I walk over to the juke box and drop in a nickel; yep, just a nickel for two songs. A certain song comes to my mind. At first it is just faint in my memory and then becomes clearer as I scroll the play list. There at E2 I hear the words louder: “Blue sky, smiling at me. Nothing but blue sky, do I see.”  I punch E2, twice.

I turn back toward my window booth and as I walk and watch my reflection a woman stands up in the aisle in front of me. “Shall we dance?” she says. Her blond hair is pulled back a little, revealing sparkling ear rings; her skin is silk and cream. She holds her arms out wide, tilts her head just a little to the right and smiles a perfect smile.

I take her into my arms, whisper “This better not be a dream.” And we float across the floor on the words of Willie Nelson. “My name is”…I’ve forgotten my name. The name I use as I stumble through my reality does not fit the lucky, handsome reflection I see dancing with a beautiful woman. I make up a new name on the spot. “My name is Juan Carlos Balderamma” I say. “I fight bulls.” The beautiful woman whispers, “My name is Vanna, would you like to buy a vowel?”  I think again how lucky I have become.    

After the dance, after the club sandwich, after I pay the bill and Jen gives me some change and a friendly hug, I hop back into my car and turn the key. I pull back onto the road, driving down toward the valley. As I come closer to town I see my eyes grow dull and puffy in the rearview mirror. My hair turns gray and thin. My favorite song on the radio is now a series of vulgar groans and screams that spew into my consciousness to the drunken beat of a clothes dryer full of tennis shoes.

Every intersection I come to is a red light; the exhaust fumes of the city burn my throat; I notice my car’s upholstery is worn, torn and grimy with age. On top of that I think my transmission is leaking – I can smell burned oil as I stop and go through my life. I have left stains that I regret wherever I have gone. It is too late to clean them now.

I look in the rearview mirror to see how far back I can see. I can no longer see Jen’s Diner or even the foothills now, just smog and gray haziness where I should see the mountains. I turn the radio off and the traffic noise is just as awful. I try to remember what I had for lunch; all I remember is paying the bill. I seem to remember there was a lady, an old lady I think, that spoke to me. She said she used to dance at the Whiskey or someplace else. Her teeth were loose and she slurred her sentences; I think she asked for money, or if I knew her husband – something like that.

The closer I come to my house the more my head begins to ache. I start to cough, my chest wheezes and hurts like hell as I spit up lung oysters. I start to get intrusive looks from people on the street, as if they wonder how I am still breathing. They all wish I would cash in and die right here; what could be more exciting.  But I won’t give them the simple pleasure – that little bit of something they can rag about and laugh at – a little piece of someone else’s misery that diminishes their own. Screw ‘em. They can cough up their own piece of lung, or crap themselves if they want to. 

My car sputters into the driveway and dies. I stumble into the house coughing and cussing. My god-damn head is pounding and sweating; I don’t even remember what I’ve been doing for the past four hours. But I clearly remember a bull fighter named Juan Carlos; it might be something I read or saw on television. I remember that name. It was Juan Carlos, or maybe someone who knows him talking about bull fights, and he said that sometimes the bull wins. Sometimes, the bull wins.