modes

I find myself in full fantasy mode lately. I have a BF (who I saw a couple of weeks ago) and I’m not interrogating my romantic choices - but he’s not here. Do I have an impulse to throw myself at that boundary? No, but I can steal a look, now and then, like a hotel souvenir - can’t I? Yesterday morning, Lisa and I stopped at Steep, a coffee shop on science hill, to pick up something breakfasty. At one point the small shop filled with the aroma of apple pie and in my mind, I had a flash memory of this guy, Jordie, last fall, coming into this shop in his little Yale blue and white soccer shorts. He’d looked fit. In memory, he seemed to move slowly, like individual video frames. There was an interesting, uncomplicated strength, something polished and fresh about him, like a shiny new phone. “Here,” Lisa said, passing a coffee to me. Then she gave me a sly smile and a tilty-headed look, asking, “Where’d you go? You looked like you were lost in some bliss.” A guilt washed through me, as thin and unpleasant as cigarette smoke. The thought of telling her struck me like a slapping hand. Submitting this fantasy to a roommate focus-group seemed wrong. The whole fantasy was bunkum, an unimportant memory, mapped to a fragrance, as if his taut, tanned, muscular legs had significance. “I was daydreaming,” I said, with an ‘I don’t know’ shrug and grimace. . . . Webster: Bunkum: a foolish or insincere idea.