I'm a man who likes to talk

You're the man for me, sir

Something my two-year-old son has started doing recently is putting his arms around my neck and saying “This is my friend Papa.” Little hands the size and heft of ravioli. He’ll say it ten or twelve times in a row, sometimes. It gets to be a little tough to hear, it sounds so good.

Whenever I want to wash his hands, I call them his paws. I never call them paws any other time. He usually objects when I try to wipe him down after dinner. “You don’t want to wash your paws.” / “Sorry, gotta wash your paws.”

Sometimes I’ll say “this is my friend Rocco,” just because I feel like I ought to say something to him in return after he says “This is my friend Papa.” But it doesn’t feel especially important to say anything. Not that that ever stops me. I’m a man who likes to talk, as the fat man says in The Maltese Falcon. I like a man who likes to talk; you’re the man for me, sir. Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. I’ll tell you right out - I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk..

Of the three of us parents, I’m the only one who ever refers to himself in the third person when talking to Rocco. I like talking about myself in the third person in the right circumstances. Child of a certain age, they’re not so clear yet on the difference between I and you and me and your, so it makes more sense to say “Papa and Rocco” sometimes, instead of “Me and you.” It’s an affectation, and not the kind of affectation I’ll take out of the house, but I like an affectation once in a while. I like it in old movies when old married couples refer to one another as Ma and Pa, too.

The other day Lily asked if I knew that I did it — talked about myself in the third person with Rocco — and I said sure I did. That seemed to put her mind at ease about it.

I asked if she minded the habit, or merely noticed it. She gave it some thought. Mostly noticed it, rather than minded, especially if I knew I was doing it.

That’s fine, I said. You let me know if you start to mind it more than notice it, and I’ll see what I can do.

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After I got the new job, I picked up a few new pairs of dress pants, a few nicer shirts for work. I wanted to look sharp. I run a lot of errands for work, you know, talk to a lot of people. Get in and out. Post office sometimes, grocery store often, gas station, copy shop. Got a lot of places to be. I like it that way. People seem to like talking to me when I’m out running errands, especially when I’m dressed a little sharper than I used to.

Other day, picking up the big monthly calendar in the copy shop, older man stepped aside to me: “Young man,” he said, “you are looking sharp.” You couldn’t have told me a thing for a month. Not one thing. I was running as high as a man can possibly run without peeling clean off the Earth. I said thank you, but he was already laughing, pleased with himself and with me.

This morning buying Creamsicles for work. Eight boxes of Creamsicles. Once I had to buy a twenty-four case of beer for work, last-minute, for Saint Patrick’s Day, and I’m a red-headed man, I know it’s mostly auburn, sometimes more brown now than auburn but I’ve been red-headed all my life and will be until it’s all silver, crossing the street, a crowded street, carrying a twenty-four case of beer on Saint Patrick’s Day, and I felt like the mayor. Cars stopped me every five seconds. Every three seconds. “You’re coming with me!” I don’t ever want people to stop talking to me when I’m out running errands.

Woman behind me putting her groceries on the belt, asked her if she could use a hand, mostly she didn’t but she did want to talk. Two grandbabies, youngest in day care, only one years old, a little early for daycare, children are a blessing. (I’ve got one myself.) Then you know. You know they are a blessing. (I do know, yes ma’am.)

Now there is nothing hokier folksier treacly more false-sounding than this sort of exchange written down, yes ma’am no ma’am blessings, but I tell you standing in the grocery store line saying these things to each other, it sounded fine. It sounded fine and real and true and good to say these things to each other; she gets up every day at five to take her grandbaby to daycare for her daughter (Then you know you are a blessing too), then she laughed. When someone says blessing like that, and I know they are religious, it feels good, like sharing soup with someone who really needs it. I don’t mind repeating the word blessing, the way they say it to me, not in the least.

Grace and Lily aren’t like that. They’re the same no matter who they talk to. They sound the same, they say the same things. I’m not like that. Sometimes I think that’s a good or at least an interesting quality in me, and sometimes of course I think it’s because I’m a double-dealing slippery no-self changeable sort of everything-to-everybody type. But buying those Creamsicles and talking to my neighbor in line, I really was religious. I really was blessed. I really did mean every word.

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For a long time I was sorry to have to get a job. I didn’t want one. I used to date a man, long time ago, who didn’t like having a job, who quit his to write full-time. I can understand that, to a certain extent. Only to a certain extent, you understand.

It had been a good job, his job, and he wasn’t making much money from writing at first. You might guess what happened next. I started giving him money, never in any sort of regimented way, just whenever he couldn’t pay a bill and got very upset about it. Then afterwards I’d have to try to console him for giving him money. I didn’t mind giving him the money, at least not at first, but I did mind having to make him feel better about it. And after a while I did mind about the money, too.

This went on for a while. Not very well. Once his car broke down, and he couldn’t pay for it to get fixed, so I went over to pay for it with him. I had been thinking for a while how to ask him about it. I said, Have you given any thought to how long you’ll go before you’d consider getting a day job again, if you’re not making enough money to pay for your bills? And he said, very fast, that he would kill himself.

Well, I thought, that’s what I get for asking. I don’t mean that I can’t relate to quitting a good job, or trying something new, or even floundering for a while, because I’ve done all of those things. I considered his position a perfectly human one. What bugged me was that he didn’t even want to think with me about how he was going to get out of it.

I don’t think about that relationship very often — we broke up shortly thereafter — but I thought of it when I was last looking for a job. I thought, Better do anything besides that.

I felt that served me very well. It felt good to think, I’m not going to wake up anybody crying about my car if I can help it. It felt good to think, My God, I’m going to take care of myself and my people if it’s the last thing I do, even though it wasn’t anywhere near the last thing I was going to do. Sometimes you’ve got to be a little dramatic, I find, in order to work up the nerve to get out of bed and do anything.

Sometimes, in the months I was looking for a job but before I found one, I’d just go around muttering A man’s got to have a job, like I was John Garfield or something. But it really worked. I don’t mean saying that got me a job, I mean that saying it kept me moving until I found one. It’s a true thing, and I wanted to make it true, and it felt good to know that no matter what, I’d go get a job if I had to, and find a way to like it if I could, and if I wanted to — just to show off — just to show that lousy sonofabitch — find a way to love it, while I was at it.

It’s good, what I mean to say, not going around loving everybody. It’s good to go around liking everybody you can, and loving quite a few, and hating the everloving guts out of five or six or seven. But not more than seven, if you can manage it. More than that and your own self starts to get a little unwieldy.