Is One of You Noel?

Is One of You Noel?

Noel Laflin

8-9-21

My good friend Kyle and I were crouched down next to the train tracks trying to focus in on ground squirrels and a pretty peacock when the train approached us around a bend.

As the engine passed by, just a few feet away, the engineer, as pictured here, called out, "Is one of you Noel?"

Like a kid having done something wrong, I raised my hand, looking guilty, I suppose.

"I like your photos on Facebook," the engineer yelled out, smiling, the train taking her out of thanking distance.

I wonder how many guys with cameras she'd asked that of each time she made the rounds within the park.

Regardless, it made me smile.

And, I'm glad I got a nice photo of her in advance - just coming 'round the bend.

Rock Solid Foundation

 

Rock Solid Foundation

Noel Laflin

8-9-21

Although Bill died some twelve years ago, I am still reminded of him each time I step out our front door as there are two pretty good size rocks that used to reside under his old garage but now flank the walkway.

Construction guys uncovered them a couple of weeks back when demolishing the former driveway and then garage floor due to massive tree root damage. The rocks, although pretty hefty, had been hiding beneath the cement floor for nearly forty years, helping with that firm, although recently cracked foundation; they called out for a new home, residing, as they were, unceremoniously atop the debris pile; so I carried them over to my place. They sit near old clay pots that the man had given me long ago too.

As the old fellow was such a fine neighbor for more than twenty years, I guess I just wanted to have something of his nearby.

Bill would watch over our house when we were gone, and I would do likewise for him. We had keys to one another’s homes so that he could check on things if need be; I also fed his cat when he was away. As payment, although none was necessary, Bill would bring me bourbon upon his return. Cash was never involved – just bottled spirits.

Retired, he took to constructing a massive model railroad and winter village in his garage. By Thanksgiving, it was set and ready to be viewed by all. Trains followed a mile of track winding their way past cottages, schools, churches, ice skating rinks, and a train station, of course. There were snow-capped mountains and skiers racing downhill. It was a wonderland, admired by the entire neighborhood and opened to all for many years in an open-garage-door holiday spirit.

There's still half a bottle of the last bourbon Bill brought me a dozen years ago. I usually drink to his memory around the holidays, remembering an elaborate Christmas village with half a dozen miniature trains passing through.

But I think I'll break that bottle out tonight, here in August, dust it off, and toast to a couple of old rocks instead as they probably remember the train whistle too.

Moonlight

 

Moonlight

Noel Laflin

8-6-21

 

I quietly kick off my shoes and silently begin to undress shortly after John closes the door to his own room across the hall.

 

Ray looks up from the bed and seems a little surprised to see what I am doing here. But then his face relaxes, and smiles as I pull back the covers and slip in beside him.

 

He is warm. He is naked. He is also someone I barely even know before this evening. But because we have shared something important with one another tonight, we figure we are but damaged kindred spirits of sorts; and despite a slow, but persistent, wasting away of his once much healthier frame, he is still beautiful, just in a bit more sad, fragile and undeniably worn-down way.

 

But tonight is not the night for such thoughts.

 

We are in Patrick's bedroom, Patrick's bed - but he is four hundred miles away in San Francisco for the weekend. He won't be home till late tomorrow. And as neither Ray nor I are in any shape to drive to our own homes after a night of drinking and dancing at a favorite local dive on a warm summer night, John tells us to stay over. Ray can have Patrick's bed and I will take the couch.

 

I fully intend to do just that, heading to the living room after John tosses me a blanket and mumbles goodnight, ready to sleep off his own boozy intake from our evening together on the town.

 

But I am suddenly thinking lusty thoughts. I figure Ray might just be thinking likewise.  This is how I now come to be in Patrick's room instead of on the couch.  And why Ray does not object to my being here.

 

"We'll change the sheets in the morning," I say, reading his thoughts.

 

"Are you sure you want to be with me?" he blushes, wondering how this is going to play out. I like the sudden color blossoming across his cheeks.

 

"I'm not as pretty as I used to be," he adds, head down, talking more to the pillow than to me.

 

"First off, I don't have anything to worry about - there isn't anything you can give me that I don't already have. Secondly, and more importantly, I don't want to be anywhere else right now," I answer quietly, pressing up against him, taking in his warmth.

 

He relaxes, and lets me gently do all the things that will really make him smile.  

 

Later, as moonlight sneaks into the room, Ray takes my hand and says he guesses the Percocet he'd taken before crawling into bed is finally kicking in. He yawns, but tries to hide it.

 

I snuggle closer and lay my palm on his chest, feeling his slowing heartbeat, listening to the breaths reaching out in search of dreams.

 

"You know," he whispers, eyes opening slightly, tracing my face with his fingers like he means to memorize it, "until tonight, no one other than my doctor - and he doesn't count - no one has touched me in so many intimate places in such a very long time. Thank you."

 

And with that, he kisses me and falls asleep.

 

Ray, a lad I barely knew before this night, will be dead from complications due to AIDS within the year. John shares the news with me by phone one day.

 

I will go on to live long beyond him. It's been - God help me - a quarter century, to be precise.

 

And I don't know how, or why I am still here - albeit older, greyer, softer around the belly, wiser ... I don't know about that last word; I probably should delete it.

 

But that doesn't matter right now as I remember a blissful night, and two grateful younger men who fell asleep in one another's arms on a warm summer evening long ago. And while the dreams lingered, neither worried about a long-term future. Or the distinct possibility of a much shorter one.

I Know You

 I Know You

Noel Laflin

8-4-21

Of all the hummingbirds around this place, there is one, in particular – a slender young Allen's female - that is not afraid of me.

I am certain it’s the same one I helped to find her way out of the garage six months ago. She was pretty tired by the time she let me assist her to daylight and we were eye to eye for several minutes during that time. I think we memorized one another’s features. I certainly remember her. She was just so damn cute.

Perhaps we bonded that day and she has allowed me to be in close proximity to her ever since. I can be just a foot away from her favorite feeder, and unlike others, she still comes in to drink, non-pulsed even when I move – unlike all of the others.

Hummingbirds have no sense of smell, but their eyesight is light-years ahead of mankind, so perhaps she remembers me in the same way that I remember her, and knows that I pose no threat.

It’s just a small thing, pun intended, each time we meet, but it always makes me smile.

Sweet Jasmine

Sweet Jasmine

Noel Laflin

7-27-21

The Doors 'Light My Fire' hit number one on the Top 100 Chart fifty-four years ago this week - way back in 1967.

I was fourteen.

I clearly remember listening to that particular countdown with my best friend on his transistor radio. We were lounging about in traditional old cutoffs, tee shirts, barefoot, of course. It was a hot, sultry summer day, and the air was sweet with the smell of jasmine covering his folks' patio.

He said in advance of the top pick that it would be this song.

And as he was older, and wiser, and followed such mysteries, I believed him.

Libations

 

Libations

Noel Laflin

7-16-21

Twenty of us stepped aboard a gleaming white vessel this warm, July morning; we all found places to stand or sit and talk as the boat quietly made its way through Newport Harbor, past the former home of The Duke, the old Pavilion, the Lido Ferry, whale watchers returning from the hunt, folks on paddleboards, and finally past the thousands of grey colored breakwater stones.

The pace was slow, deliberate, and the water smooth as glass.

We were paying final tribute to a friend, and everyone (crew and passengers alike) was pleased that the weather was being brilliantly cooperative.

At the appropriate point, the captain cut the engines, a prayer was said, and ashes were presented to the sea - all within distance of the man’s former childhood home just off the coast.

A brown pelican passed overhead.

Red roses were lovingly tossed off the bow.

The vessel then gracefully circled where ashes sunk and roses floated.

Filled champagne glasses magically appeared, distributed to young and old alike by the first mate.

A toast was raised to our honored friend and glasses were drained – some libations poured over the railing and into the sea itself.

We then headed back from whence we started.

 

Putting Down Roots

 

Putting Down Roots

Noel Laflin

7-14-21

There’s an old plum tree stump that really needs to be removed one of these days as I could use the space to plant something new in its place.

I was already to do just that earlier this spring when a colony of bumble bees decided to move into the rotting stump and call it home.

As I like bumble bees - and as the planet is in dire need of every bee available for the foreseeable future - the removal project is on hold. Come the fall, the queen will leave this space and set up headquarters elsewhere – or so I have noticed with other hives around here in the past.

But suppose she decides to stay in her new home, tired of the constant moving. It’s pretty nice in there by now, I suppose, as I have been watching the workers enlarge the holes in which they come and go, burrowing down old termite tunnels, enlarging them with each passing.  It almost makes me wish I had a teeny-tiny drone that could fly into one of the holes and investigate, sending back pictures. It would be like a scene from the old classic, “Fantastic Voyage;” only I wouldn’t be on a miniaturized mission to unclog a dying man’s artery.  No, I would just like to see what’s going on inside the old tree that used to provide us with so many plums, and for now, the bumble bees call home.

So, we’ll hold off on tree stump removal for now.

And maybe longer if the queen decides that our garden is a pretty nice place to call home, and put down roots of a different sort from the ones that were here earlier.