There's not enough time to be brave and aggressive, sometimes. And when there's only a second, both of us flying around a bend in the bike path and a sudden smile of surprise attraction, it's even harder. For me, it was a smile that validated the quality of a movie - a happy ending in difficult times - the young carny + carny summertime fling that turns into more.
I'd smiled twice already on that bike ride back to my boat. There was the older man who'd warned me - before the movie in the theater lobby - about the amount of salt I was putting on my popcorn, his concern for my heart and health fatherly with a bit, maybe, of just wanting someone to talk to. And as I left the theater and started down San Diego's Broadway there he was again, crossing the street in front of the bus I'd stopped next to. I smiled again but he didn't see me as he was preoccupied with whether or not the bus was going to stop at the light or run him down.A couple miles later I smiled and held up a "peace" sign to an old homeless man who was staring as I approached, my arms dangling lazily at my sides as I rode casually along the sea wall. He waved back, but with a bit of a smirk like "yeah, fella - you're gonna kill yourself or ride right into the bay like that."And at the turn where a year and a half ago I would have turned, too, when I was berthed at Harbor Island instead of the America's Cup Harbor, you came around the bend and presented me with a split-second "do I smile" decision (yes) and then you were past and there was the "do I chase and ask her to coffee" decision (no, another day). You had short, light brown hair, a bit curly, sassy, bike-wind-tussled, and even in the short time I saw you I could see that your shy smile dimpled your cheeks in a perfect and beautiful way.We passed, I stopped at the light and looked back and you were already around another corner and I was left with the regret of a moment good but gone. I started writing to you immediately, composing this, imprinting your look on my left brain so my right could share it later, or now. I sit at my favorite Starbucks, near my marina. I locked my bike again next to the same two bikes that have been there since I returned to San Diego in January. The bikes never move. They are matching beach cruisers, inexpensive but new not too long ago, one red and one blue. The red has a mass of cobwebs connecting the rear brake to the rear tire and the blue has an open and empty tool kit. The girl working the Starbucks didn't know the story behind them, so I suggested a scenario: There's an old couple, both sick, in pain and incurable, who for Christmas bought each other the bikes for a last ride to their favorite Starbucks. They locked their bikes out of habit, then went inside and sat, held hands and watched each other across the table for that one last coffee. And after that coffee they walked up the street to the bridge and went out of this world together, the bikes a legacy of their act.Real is what we make it. I choose to believe in good stories because they make me feel good. The couple in the movie will live together, he'll work himself through graduate school and she'll finish at NYU and they'll be happy. The older man at the theater will return home after his careful walk home and defend himself in a friendly and loving way saying "Yes, I had some popcorn but I didn't add any salt, dammit." The old homeless man, for a while tonight, will feel a little less invisible. And you... I guess I'd like to think that somehow I'll see you again.
