See what happens; you starve a human of warmth long enough, he grows sick, starts looking around for someone to kick him.
Kick me, Coral.
And if someone doesn't kick him, he takes his sick up a notch, takes to believing a kick to the thigh might do more than warm him up; might prove to turn him on, even.
Kick me, Coral, kick me!!
"Anton," Coral said, her eyes fixed on the trunk of the Japanese Maple that grew behind me, "sometimes when you talk at me, I get the feeling you view me as this sleeping child you're shaking, trying to wake up. I hate that. Hate it because I don't want to see myself as a child. I want to see myself as your equal. But sometimes you say things that do wake me up. Like what you just said--humans breaking the spirits of fellow beings. I see you're right about that."
I didn't say anything.
Coral opened her hands, shifted her eyes to the leaf-strewn patio at my feet. "It's not like it's a revelation, or anything. More like I was aware of that higher perspective, but it was lying out of reach inside me. Some day I would have gotten a hold of it, I'm sure, but, see, you came along and forced me to get a hold of it now." She looked me in the eye. "So it is important to me that you continue telling me what you know. I just wish we could find a way of doing it without you talking down at me." She looked down at the leaf-strewn patio.
Cry me a creed! The girl sees me as her guru. Well, given my elder status, the great well of wisdom I held my pale above, I guess I could serve in that capacity if she so desired.
I placed the fork on the bench. "You're amazing, Coral. The more I interact with you the more I'm amazed by your depth and maturity. Here I was all ready to have this dog talk end our friendship. Dog talk like this sure put an end to all my dog-loving girlfriends. Oh, they all led me to believe they were strong and all, but, turned out, they weren't. Turned out, they preferred to go on living in denial, investing in the easy love of a dog, rather than facing up to the hard labor involved in loving a complicated fellow human like myself."
Talk about complicated; here I had said shed my guru advice in all seriousness, and here I had Coral laughing so hard she was kicking me in the thigh. And, no, her kick wasn't a turn-on at all; the tough Alaskan kicked really hard.
"Jeez, Coral, what's so funny?"
"You, thinking you're complicated. You're as simple as every other male. Your testosterone requires you to see yourself as the alpha dog, but when the world around you inevitably measures you otherwise, you put what energies you have left into placing everyone and their dog below you."
Boy, no girl of mine had ever kicked me so deep into the doghouse as that.
"Look, Anton," Coral said, looking me in the eye as hard as she ever looked me, "all I'm saying is that it's not wise to look down on your fellow humans. Every individual is here to climb the stairs they're here to climb. Just because your stairs include a couple of stars, doesn't mean you should look down and insult those whose stairs are made of mud and stones. Who knows, with that kind of attitude, you may find yourself in your next life wading through some muck yourself."
The gal of the girl, putting on guru airs.
Coral took her eyes off my eyes, planted them on the trunk of the Japanese Maple that grew behind me.
I turned to see what she saw in that trunk. But I couldn't look into the trunk for the contempt I held for those who put on guru airs.
****
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