Parmenides in love

It’s “KEEN-wah,” you smirk over at me.

That’s not how it’s spelled…

(I thought it was Quinn-oh-ah.)

You take a sip from your glass of murlott.

How do you say this one?

Fuh-jite-uh?

Ugh, don’t be gross.

The evening was not going well. I wasn’t really expecting it to. The only reason I thought we were going out was because we had to work together, and you thought we should bury the hatchet. The lights are kind of low; the menu is a dirty photocopy job. I’m not sure I really want to be here in the first place. You did look cute in your Halloween costume the week before – white jeans, white sweater, party store wings and halo – but that only occurs sourly to me now.

By then, I was sure that you hated me – you said so as much yourself when you called me an asshole for making one of your employees cry yesterday morning. It was opening day, and she showed up “not in uniform,” so I sent her home to get changed – what else was I supposed to do?

When you asked me to meet you at ‘my brother’s bar,’ my eyebrow couldn’t help cocking up.

Your brother has a bar?

No, that’s the name of the place.

Bummer. I thought I’d hit the jackpot.

We planned on having drinks first and then listening to some live music over dinner at El Chapultepec. But as things stood, I hadn’t even made it through our appetizer order without fucking up. We were one drink in when Angel showed up. At first, I was relieved. You must have told him we would be there, even though you will deny it later. I guess he was your emergency option in case things needed to wrap up quickly. Angel was your age, maybe twenty-one, and handsome – way more handsome than me. Dark haired, lean, and unambiguously a few generations of breeding from the southwest, it was obvious that he had a crush on you to boot.

At least I could fuck with him.

Angel thought of himself as a charmer – and as a budding intellectual. So, when you asked the two of us what we’d like to be when we were older, I almost blew a spit-take when he replied:

I want to be wise.

What a joker. I knew I had him by the socratic balls.

For the next 30 or so minutes, I toyed with him – ever so slightly, and with an earnestness that any straight-man could hope to muster in a platonic dialogue. I had him running in circles, chasing his tail, contradicting himself, and ultimately exposing, wait. I saw you smile at me.

This was unexpected. I smiled back and then Angel noticed that we were looking at each other. Frequently. This lasted for about six minutes until, with his tail between his legs, he limped out of my brother’s bar. He ended up the third wheel on our accidental first date.

You noticeably got jealous when the waitress complemented me on my hair. The food she brought over on paper plates was authentic, as was the heat, and the jazz. We stayed until closing but we weren’t done talking. We got in your car and drove up into the foothills of southwest Denver.

We snaked up through southbound 285. I had been on this road before back in New Mexico years before. The cliffs of the switch-backing highway hiding more and more of the tracing moon.

For a moment, I thought you were driving me somewhere quiet, where you could kill me, and I wouldn’t have minded at all.