walking distance.
Watchmen.
Living rooms straight out of The Saturday Evening Post.
More kink meme stuff done between actual, you know, WORK. Because I like procrastinating.
Also: in my experience, most old people are way bitchier than this in real life.
You don't like coming to these places because they are too familiar.
(Others crave the comfort of familiarity - you keep far from it.)
The waitress is young - a teenager, perhaps a little too well-fed. She looks at you from under heavily made-up eyelids with something close to pity, that oft-worn expression of 'Will I ever be so old?' which you find most young people tend to have in the presence of the elderly.
The elderly.
It's still strange to apply the phrase to yourself, that which once conjured memories of mildewed attics and feeble hands clutching mahogany canes; of the thick dust that layered grandfather's folded coattails, back in Potsdam as a child (fit well enough for Prussian kings), and you pointedly choose to ignore the surfacing memories, accepting a refill on your coffee with a polite thank you, instead.
You almost don't see him, sitting at the opposite end of the counter.
You wish you hadn't.
-
There is a warmth to his small apartment that is absent in your own - the antiquated fireplace, straight out of a Rockwell (rendered lovingly in acrylic on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post), countless photographs of dead people and dead places and dead ideals hung over faded wallpaper, and you'd feel a certain arrogance over the fact that the man is so obviously drowning in nostalgia if it weren't for the fact that you're so postively terrified of it.
He tells you, with a self-deprecating smile, to make yourself at home. When there are old publicity fliers of yourself framed sharply over his coffee table, like hunting trophies of captured quarry (you'd been seventeen, then - reckless, clever, foolish), it's difficult not to.
He pours coffee in cracked teacups, and the humble domesticity of his possessions suit him, somehow. Although he is older, his hands and face are lined with fewer wrinkles than yours. But then, you think (not bitterly, yet not quite kindly), there is no disease, no lingering sickness, slowly eating him away from the inside.
Then he sits beside you and begins talking of the past, and you think: perhaps not.
-
This is the second time within a week that an old adversary has treated you as a friend out of mere convenience.
(You're uncomfortable with the responsibility.)
He's regaling you with anecdotes, of when you had met under less pleasant circumstances, smiling and stupidly wistful. This goes on for longer than you can stand before bluntly, you interrupt him. His face pales as you tell him of your illness, and you gain cruel satisfaction from it.
He rises without a word, presumably to fetch more coffee. You look to where you hung your hat and coat, hoping to leave before he returns, but just like in the old days - he's quicker, better than you. Coffee pot left forgotten on the table, he strides over to you, purposeful in his movement, and simply gathers you in his arms like a lost brother. His hands are warm but not comforting.
He begins to speak again, trying to give hope where you both know full well there is none, but you're not listening. You may be a substitute ally to him, but you refuse to return the favor.
His words are merely fanfare for ghosts.
Living rooms straight out of The Saturday Evening Post.
More kink meme stuff done between actual, you know, WORK. Because I like procrastinating.
Also: in my experience, most old people are way bitchier than this in real life.
You don't like coming to these places because they are too familiar.
(Others crave the comfort of familiarity - you keep far from it.)
The waitress is young - a teenager, perhaps a little too well-fed. She looks at you from under heavily made-up eyelids with something close to pity, that oft-worn expression of 'Will I ever be so old?' which you find most young people tend to have in the presence of the elderly.
The elderly.
It's still strange to apply the phrase to yourself, that which once conjured memories of mildewed attics and feeble hands clutching mahogany canes; of the thick dust that layered grandfather's folded coattails, back in Potsdam as a child (fit well enough for Prussian kings), and you pointedly choose to ignore the surfacing memories, accepting a refill on your coffee with a polite thank you, instead.
You almost don't see him, sitting at the opposite end of the counter.
You wish you hadn't.
-
There is a warmth to his small apartment that is absent in your own - the antiquated fireplace, straight out of a Rockwell (rendered lovingly in acrylic on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post), countless photographs of dead people and dead places and dead ideals hung over faded wallpaper, and you'd feel a certain arrogance over the fact that the man is so obviously drowning in nostalgia if it weren't for the fact that you're so postively terrified of it.
He tells you, with a self-deprecating smile, to make yourself at home. When there are old publicity fliers of yourself framed sharply over his coffee table, like hunting trophies of captured quarry (you'd been seventeen, then - reckless, clever, foolish), it's difficult not to.
He pours coffee in cracked teacups, and the humble domesticity of his possessions suit him, somehow. Although he is older, his hands and face are lined with fewer wrinkles than yours. But then, you think (not bitterly, yet not quite kindly), there is no disease, no lingering sickness, slowly eating him away from the inside.
Then he sits beside you and begins talking of the past, and you think: perhaps not.
-
This is the second time within a week that an old adversary has treated you as a friend out of mere convenience.
(You're uncomfortable with the responsibility.)
He's regaling you with anecdotes, of when you had met under less pleasant circumstances, smiling and stupidly wistful. This goes on for longer than you can stand before bluntly, you interrupt him. His face pales as you tell him of your illness, and you gain cruel satisfaction from it.
He rises without a word, presumably to fetch more coffee. You look to where you hung your hat and coat, hoping to leave before he returns, but just like in the old days - he's quicker, better than you. Coffee pot left forgotten on the table, he strides over to you, purposeful in his movement, and simply gathers you in his arms like a lost brother. His hands are warm but not comforting.
He begins to speak again, trying to give hope where you both know full well there is none, but you're not listening. You may be a substitute ally to him, but you refuse to return the favor.
His words are merely fanfare for ghosts.