Peaches

I’m on the fence about the use of metaphors.

It’s not as if I don’t use them all the time. They’re really handy. There’s nothing easier than using a seed as an example of a re-emergence, or a coming back to life after a hard winter of the soul. It’s just that they’re way too easy to get lost in, and I might find myself chest deep in trees, and roots, and sap, and thorns, and flowers, and new growth, and trying to explain how the biology of trees is relevant to personal regeneration in the aftermath of positive disintegration. However, sometimes I’ll just grab one because it’s so convenient, and I’ve made some catchy phrase to kick it off with, but it quickly fizzles like a candle in the shower. See? I was trying to be edgy by not using storm, but some examples just work better than others, and over explaining is lame.

Amanda Palmer wrote a song called The Thing About Things, and, like a lot of her songs, it makes me feel deeply, sometimes in tears. She sings, in concert with her ukelele, “The thing about things is that they can start meaning things nobody actually said, and if you’re not allowed to love people alive, then you learn how to love people dead.” Not like you love that they’re dead, you understand, but that you give meaning to a relationship that may not have been there in ‘real life’. But if it wasn’t there, then how come I can feel it when I listen to that song? How can there be a connection in absentia?

I like to watch people, they’re fascinating. I like to watch myself, too, and I also think I am fascinating. When I went travelling that one time, I found myself in a place where it was very challenging, much more than usual, to make myself understood. I didn’t speak the language, I was white-still am-and alone. In this scenario, people watching becomes less of a research tool, and more of a survival skill. I began searching for universality, for the things that everyone knows, and knows how to use.

Drunkenness is is not one of those things. I wasn’t drunk, but the guy at the front of the line at El Machetazo’s was, and he really liked telling stories, which IS one of those things, but yet another one of those things-about stories at any rate-is that volume does not break the language barrier. As the fellow’s long suffering wife paid the long-suffering Latina at the till, I listened in, not that it was difficult, or even avoidable.

Before I realized that it was him expostulating, I thought that the person in the baggy and somewhat ragged mismatched fatigues was the woman’s child, as he was so small, but with more constant observation, I saw that he was just kinda wizzened. That, and the fact that he suddenly turned to lock eyes with me gave sudden credence to the Vietnam story that only I, in who knows how many leagues, wanted to hear the end of.

I generally do my best to remain innocuous, but in Panama I was quite white, foreign, and hyper-vigilant, so other gringos, people like Peaches the Vietnam vet, often struck up conversations with me.

I got the distinct impression that Peaches had been drunk a lot since the war, but I never got the impression that his story was untrue. He was toothless, as far as I could tell, with rheumy eyes and pallid skin, like a zombie being enlivened only by-what I now understand to be-famous good cheer. He wore a navy trucker hat with the name of some ship that I can’t recall emblazoned in gold thread that matched the pins on the front of it and his-probably surplus store but still worn with nostalgic pride-camo jacket. Pants. Shoes. I don’t know. Pretty slouchy and thin. And loud, quite loud. I shook his offered right hand and discovered that it lacked three fingers. And that is what he wanted to tell me about.

The hand was an obvious set up-in hindsight-but I immediately liked the fellow. He was one of those seemingly dissolute veterans that was still very much a veteran, and I like those guys. They’re dangerous, and funny, and dark, and tragic, and strong. They carry so much that they can’t get away from.

He really wanted those peaches, though. It had been a long time since he’d had a treat, and the goddamn VC bullet tore right through the can, blowing the peaches everywhere. He also lost three fingers off his right hand, but there was no question of what he thought was the greater loss. That day he earned the nickname Peaches and got to go home from the war, but home wasn’t home anymore, so he moved to Panama, and never left.

He seemed pretty happy. I don’t think he was quite as drunk as I first thought he was. He was just an old timer who liked telling stories, and considered himself charming, and thought that his Spanish was pretty good, but he still had his American accent, so I doubt it, but what do I know.

I liked Peaches. He liked me too, I could tell. It meant a lot to me that he told me that story. Often-but not always-when you listen to an old-timer tell you a tale, you may feel like you’re being indulgent, and patient, and long-suffering, but consider this, that story might never be told again, and if you don’t remember, who will? There are two generations of humans remaining who grew up before the internet changed how stories got shared. Let them indulge you. Keep it going.

Sometimes, when I dip my toes into the tesseract of metaphor, I find myself....elsewhere.

It’s almost as if...