"HOME- PART ONE"

“HOME- PART ONE”

Even as a kid, I knew the paunchy, middle-aged guy talking to the va-va-voom blonde in her aerobic tights at the bar was interviewing mistresses. I would know this because he would have had on the standard issue uniform of the paunchy, middle-aged man on the make, a perfectly predictable exoskeleton of pressed dark jeans, white Brooks Brothers button-down, black Gucci loafers with no socks, blue blazer with gold buttons, and a boozy accretion of flesh around his jowls.

He would have drank scotch because that’s what rich guys drank. He would have a voice louder than Armageddon as he impressed her with his damnation of Washington, D.C., integration and The Enlightenment. He would have called her “darling’” or “sugar” or “honey child” and or something else equally cringe-worthy. For her part, she would have smiled just as long he kept buying cocktails or until his hands got too chummy with her backside.

My loyalties would have been with her. She might have even been a secretary at the law office where I worked as a runner in high school. She would have been pretty in a working girl’s way. She would have come to the big city out of some rural hamlet where she was the drum major and 4-H Club Sweetheart. She might have even finalized the divorce from the all-district quarterback she married straight out of high school.

Her venom would be reserved until the next morning, when she crucified him for the amusement of her female co-workers. In fact, stories about these men were often exchanged among the secretariat, humiliating stories of socio-sexual incompetence which no amount of money could ever wash away.

But more often than not, she married the prick, trading forty years of relative comfort for her soul. She became chattel and he went to bed every night wondering where the next richer guy was coming from.

These were my first lessons in micro-economic theory and sexual politics.

At sixteen, it was hard to tell the winners from the losers.

I had a ringside seat to it all as my father had not one but two bars in his office, a sprawling affair seemingly built for the purpose of entertaining “big wigs,” a phrase I accepted without ever analyzing its etymology or meaning. For me, “big wigs” meant only work for my father, jewelry and furs for my mother, and cars and a country club membership for my brothers and me.

By the time I was ten, I could make a whiskey sour (try putting that shit on your college app), placate a drunk (“No, Mr. So and So, he didn’t mean it like that.”), and lie to a wife (“No ma’am, I haven’t seen him all night. Dad says he’s still ‘on the road.’”).

I swear to God I’d live it all over again to see my father’s knowing glance of approval just one last time.

But now the paunchy, middle-aged guy at the bar was me and the blonde in the yoga pants next to me was my yoga teacher.

Some might have picked a scraggly–bearded Indian guru. Others would pick some New –Age swami who played backup sitar for Norah Jones’s daddy. Still others would have gone with Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid.

But not me, I picked a brassy, margarita -swilling 1940’s pinup, a lippy, twice–divorced blonde with pink streaks in her hair and enough ink to fill three arms and whose studio website boasted a “Happy Hour” yoga class. The most cynical of my friends might have guessed right away that I’d have chosen her to be my yoga teacher.

(I could hear it now: “Sure she’s your yoga teacher.”)

No one could have guessed that she would become my mentor, healer and friend, but ours is a relationship that transcends the petty tyrannies of sex, gender and age.

We first met as I limped into her studio two and a half years ago, it being the only one on the entire internet that with a “Happy Hour” yoga class.

I was greeted as if I had been expected, perhaps even late.

She asked what brought me and I told her I had a bum knee and went to bed most nights dreaming of killing people. I knew we had a winner when she told me to sign in, drop my shoes over there, grab a mat from the back and that she’d do what she could.

Throughout that class, she spoke primarily to me, the newbie, completely solicitous without even a hint of condescension or patronization. Even when she wasn’t speaking to me, she seemed to be speaking to me. Each cue to each pose resonated in my mind. She adjusted my stance, suggested subtle refinements to keep pressure off my knee, and told me what I would be feeling in certain poses and how that it was a natural reaction of the body. She drew me out, asking questions and eliciting responses, to which she listened without judgment.

I gradually began to lose my sense of self-consciousness and embarrassment, instead feeling for the first time that I might actually belong in a yoga class. The inability to touch my toes or stand on one leg all of a sudden became simply the starting point of my practice rather than an impediment to it. Rather than feeling like an outsider, I felt as if I belonged.

And then I had a most unlikely revelation.

As I grew older, I had noticed my father’s tendency during his office parties to gravitate not to the louder, more boisterous types-or even the “big wigs”-but rather to those who looked to be most uncomfortable in their surroundings, most often the shyest, plainest and quietest.

He would insist they sit next to him- the life of the party- and they would bask in his reflected glow, his bright eyes twinkling as he drew them out of themselves.

He seemingly ignored all others as if these strays were his entire world, asking questions of these lost pilgrims, hanging on their every word, making their life seem fascinating and part of an all-inclusive cosmic whole. And if he found their family was from New Harmony or Rusk or Alto, he would be utterly delighted and scream across the bar to someone of similar provenance that “these here are some of your people.” These people would leave buoyed by vague notion that my father had choreographed the entire party on the basis of this kinship.

He would dote on them, often berating me–the erstwhile bartender and waiter-that their drink was empty and apologize to them that it was hard to get good help. That was my cue to pop up and bring a fresh glass and napkin and make apologies for my gross dereliction of duty.

“Damn it, boy, you got to do better,” was his highest praise for me then, indicating that I had played my role well.

Thirty-seven years later, I came to realize that my father was my first yoga teacher.

I also came to realize that perhaps I needed more than simply my knee to heal.

I needed a bridge from that life to this one.

I needed someone who spoke my language.

This was it. This was home.

© (2013)