Same time next year

Three years ago, D took me on my first (and so far, only) rafting trip.  We were staying in Taos for a few weeks, and rafting companies are available to take you all along the Rio Grande.  We opted for a half-day trip, east of Taos.  There were four of us, plus the guide.  He put D and me in the front where we'd get splashed the most, and the teenager and her father in the middle.  He sat on the back bumper and steered.  It took awhile for me to get used to the idea that I didn't sit IN the raft, but rather on the puffy outer edge.

We acquitted ourselves reasonably well, better than we did during the sea kayaking in Mexico, where we capsized and dropped D's glasses in the drink, and were separated for the remainder of the trip.  I ended up with the handsome Mexican guide, so all was well.

I am thinking about that rafting trip, because I am sitting at the same picnic/take-out area, eating lunch and writing.  It's March, not June, and I wouldn't dream of putting my toes in that tumbling icy green water.  But, I recognized the route as I was driving back to Santa Fe from an overnight in Taos, and I decided that this would be the perfect place to munch on my apple and cheese. I am taking advantage of my independent state to stop where I want, and as long as I want.  Yesterday, I was in "get there" mode, and I didn't stop for much of anything.  I had breakfast at San Marcos Cafe with the co-op and took pictures of the peacocks, and I stopped by Kokoman's to check out the excellent wine selection and buy 7 bottles.  Then I drove north along the scenic high road, through the mountains.

It was lovely, and I kept thinking I should stop and enjoy the view. But the power of inertia - in this case forward motion - kept me going past scenic overlooks, adobe churches, decorated graveyards, Chimayo, Nambe Falls, turn-offs to unknown towns, galleries, wineries....I just kept going until I reached M's Topsy Gallery on the outskirts of Taos.  M wasn't there, so I called him for a room. (We had stayed at his house that time in June, trading our Airbnb room in Portland for his spacious adobe house in Taos.) Fortunately, he was able to offer me a room in his house for $50, cash.  When I got there, it was 5 pm, time for happy hour at the Alley Cantina.  I gather he goes there most evenings, bringing along the schnauzers, and sits in the patio waiting for H to get off work.

The scene at the Cantina was very small town.  Everyone knew each other, and the patio table population grew and shrank as people wandered through. We joined a 40-something shaven-headed ski bum/surveyer (D), and a 64-year-old hippie with long white hair hanging lankly down from his baseball cap.  He had a scruffy beard, wide-open blue eyes and wide white smile.  He had excellent teeth.  People came and went, cigarettes were lit, drinks were drunk. Everyone that came through the archway was greeted by name, and most stopped for a second to say hi and pat the dog.  A few joined us.

Conversation was slow and calm -- these people knew each other and everyone's business was old news.  They were just keeping company while they drank and passed the time until the next thing.  The hippie was on his way home to smoke the "herb" that he'd just scored.  D was on his way to visit a female friend who was home after two weeks in the hospital with a punctured lung from a catastrophic car accident.  He was also in telephonic communication with another female friend who was giving him one of her clowder of Persian cats:  she had just lost her house and moved in with her boyfriend, and the boyfriend's dog had mauled the cat.  The cat was still at the vet, but would soon be released to D's care.   He had a kind competence about him that made it seem natural for him to take on these women's troubles.  He smoked and talked, wrinkling up his eyes in a smile, looking sideways at me with a wink.  

A 40-something woman joined us for a smoke while her boyfriend played pool.  She had long straggly brown-gray hair, and a deep freckled tan.  Her tight shirt and cami held small fat rolls at her waist, without apology.  She looked reliable and kind enough, but worn out and no-nonsense tough.  The conversation turned to a matanza that had been held on a local street.  I've heard of matanzas before:  basically it's a Spanish tradition, a pig-roast, held in the fall.  It sounded medieval to me, as it was described:  lots of blood and meat and alcohol.  Once the butchering is done, there's a huge community party, mainly extended families.  D said he'd been to one, and he was the only gringo there.  She said, "I grew up doing those...it was a matter of survival.  We grew and raised our food, and we used everything.  I remember in the winter, digging in the barrel on the porch for the frozen packets of meat."

Talk, and talk, and silence.  D went inside to sit at the bar, the hippie went home, and we were joined by a 20-something man with shoulder-length brown hair, bloodshot eyes, and a thin-lipped frog-like mouth. He was smoking a cigar, and had just risen from a nap.  I never did figure out what his game was, because I grew chilly as the sun set and went inside to text and play phone games while we waited for H to close and clean up the salon.

When I arrived earlier in the day, I had texted R.  He's an OKCupid acquaintance who lives in Taos, and he had recently suggested that we might have a "physical connection."  But I wanted to meet him before having that discussion.  So, part of the reason for my trip north was to see him in the flesh, instead of via Skype.  The distance and our respective work had made it difficult to connect, other than randomly.  Unfortunately, that morning he had said he had three clients contact him, so there was little free time. That had been the case on his previous jaunts to Santa Fe, too.  Clearly, he's not real invested in pursuing the relationship. The stars would have to be aligned just right.  I almost decided to go somewhere else for my getaway, but I wanted the pretty drive to Taos, and I thought I'd check out the Harwood.  (I didn't, as it turned out.)

Anyway, when I texted "I'm here!" R texted back "cool!" and offered to buy me a beer at the Mesa Brewery at 5.  I suggested he join us at the Cantina.  No, he opted for breakfast instead.  So, I went home with M and H and we had dinner (spud-encrusted cod, and a pinot grigio from my stash.)  Then we watched subtitled Korean soap operas, and I went to bed.

I walked down to the Plaza the next morning.  El Gamal, our breakfast place, was on Dona Luz, just behind Taos Plaza, in the parking lot by the Guadalupe church.  I had noticed it on previous trips, without really noticing it.  It's a hole in the wall, with a small covered porch that features crowded tables and stools along the street bar.  The building is long and narrow.  The front room has varied tables with a service bar to the left, a stage, concrete floors, and open ceiling with white painted rafters. The single unisex restroom is at the back.  You walk past a pool table and alcove-rooms, the floor slanting at each doorway and threatening to trip you up. At night it's a bar and apparently quite active, but this morning there was one blond gent with scruffy hair and white t-shirt settled at an outside table, a woman and child inside, and a kerchiefed young woman waiting tables.  She brought me weak coffee in a tall glass with a thin cardboard hand protector.

R showed up while I was sitting at the outside bar with my coffee.  I was talking to C about the schedule mess-up back at the co-op.  (My boss had mistaken her departure time and had to leave that afternoon instead of the next day.)  I greeted him, and he went inside while I finished my conversation.  He came back out and squinted at the sun....let's go inside.  Okay!

He's stockier than he appeared in our Skype talks, with large hands, thick neck, and a broad chest showing through the V of his shirt and brown corduroy jacket. The thin blond hair is just as unkempt, however, sticking out on the thinning top and slamped to the sides.  His heavy-lidded blue eyes are just as apt to suddenly open wide, the mouth just as apt to drop open in response to a puzzling comment.  His smile appears as a forced stretch across the teeth before it settles into a surprising charm, but just as abruptly the lips snap shut while his eyes look down and sideways.

The conversation was not uncomfortably forced, but it felt random, like his thoughts were stressed and elsewhere, and he had to make himself respond appropriately to the here and now.  We talked about New Mexico, and I told him that I'd found old information about him online. He said, I doubt it, there are a lot of people with my name.  Yes, I knew about the actor and some of the others, but the info I found was about a computer store in Taos....Good for you, he said, that's me.  And he showed me the card.  But, he's not working there any more.

He had a pita breakfast sandwich, and I had eggs Florentine on challa with a yummy sauce.  We talked about Airbnb and about travel, and he consumed his Turkish coffee and spicy condiments, saying, it's good for respiration.  I asked if he had asthma, and he said, no I live at 14 thousand feet, in an Earthship.  At that point, a 20-something dread-locked man at the next table entered into our conversation.  He owns property up at R's complex, and they immediately began trying to place each other.  "Do you know....?  which lot do you mean....?  you wanna sell...?  Oh yeah, he's selling, but she took the house..."

Yes, Taos is a small town, everyone knows everyone else.

And that was the end of our date.  Forty-five minutes in, and he was up and paying the bill, coming back with a handshake offer which I converted into a push-away hug.  I settled back to finish my coffee and check my iPhone while his silhouette passed the window, staring straight ahead into his day, no backward glance.  My guess was that he would not want to be contacting me again, and I was glad that I had not taken him up on his offer to share a room in Espanola.  However, he did text a somewhat equivocal message later.  He's an odd duck, but not malevolent.  I'd be interested in seeing how the Earthship community works, but my guess is that they are all marginal and quirky in some way.  Like R.

Meanwhile, however, I wrapped up the visit and began the drive back to Santa Fe.  And here I am, sitting by the river, watching rafts and kayaks pull out, listening to trucks rattle past.  A chilly wind snatches at my paper, which I hold down with purse, knitting bag, and my writing hand.  My hair flies about my face, crows soar past with a brief caw.  Whitecaps break, water rustles over and around rocks and boulders.  I'm in no rush to move along.  There's nothing much to do until rehearsal, no need to push it.

I think about independence.  I want to finish the book I took from S's library and mail it back, along with his house key.  And that will be that.  I am still figuring out what to do with my desire for friends and lovers, and still figuring out why the relationships with men get so tangled.  But, each of these flawed humans has brought something good to me.  Today, it's this time by the river, the river which also holds memories of D.  They are good memories, and this was a good trip.  I can follow V's advice:  when I start feeling sorry for myself, think about the benefits of independence.  Yes, I need people, but I can be choosy about whom I let into my life. I don't need to lose myself in the process.