What you do alone is not really living

You don't really hear a lot of ambient country music played around here. I was reminded of that in the restaurant where they seated me 15 minutes before it was due to close. I told the server I'd eat fast. She told me not to worry, to just take my time, but I could see them hustling to clean up and get out. Contemporary pop-country music played overhead. It made me remember Texas where some form of country music was always playing.

Memories or pieces of them.

Laying up every night in a hotel room alone.  Standing at a gas pump staring at a trailer loaded down with hogs. Walking in the empty street half drunk watching a sliver of silver moon. Partial events. Fragments of meaning. Emotions not fully felt, barely sniffed, faintly tasted. Maybe most of the ones inside me are this way. Scenes really, not stories.

The waitress out dancing on her night off, New Year's Eve, wearing her tight stretchy jeans. Her great hard-to-believe-hind-quarters rubbed for luck like Buddah's belly by the men. She just danced on with a blasé expression. They all knew each other well. Everything that occurred that night had already happened many times before.

Someone took my hand. Cumbia with us, she said. So I just pretended I could, and then I did.