Lazy Personal Training

Matador at Monumental El Paso, Bullfight (Fiesta Brava), San Luis Potosi, Mexico

by Russell Gordon

I sipped on my glass of red, looked out over the forest landscape and felt his gaze upon me. 

“Am I in your book?”

I smiled, emptied the glass of its contents and looked him dead in the eyes, “Of course, it is a book on all of my relationship mistakes.”

He had a full belly laugh and almost fell out of his lounge chair.  He poured more wine into my glass as his laugh quieted. 

From his body frame one could tell he may have been very good at baseball at one point in time.  His stalky, muscular build would play well for him on first base.  Lord knows, first base was where he always wanted to play with me.  His face was tanned, chiseled with a small amount of stubble left over from the day before.  His dark hair seemed to always stay in place even though he never did anything more than run his fingers through it.  He once said to me before going out, “I don’t have to try, so I don’t.”  He was always very blunt and got right to the point.  It was what attracted me to him in the first place when I was younger.  Some how this brute, blunt man captured my attention.

“You love me.”  He said this as if he was so sure of the answer.  He was always so sure of himself.  His ego practically choked me on occasion. 

No, I didn’t love him now, I never did and I never will.  I didn’t verbalize this to him.  I was silent.  I was starting to think it was a mistake just sipping wine with him out in the open air.  I could feel him move closer to my chair, his hand on the back of my chair leg.

“I already told my friends that I’m in your book.”  His voice was the type of voice that carried across a crowded room.  People often told him to calm down, speak softer.  We attended a friend’s party, where those very words were spoken to him in a harsh whisper.  His reply, in high volume of course, to this day makes me laugh, “I can’t and I won’t, Dorothy has trouble hearing and I'm loud, we’re the perfect match.”  His friends described us as The Bull and The Matador. This memory quickly faded and I felt uncomfortable with what I was thinking but I knew I had to say it.

“You do know the book is called War on Love?  How do you want me to portray you?  I’m going to tell the truth.”  I took a quick sip of wine to wet my lips.  “You’ll make it in.  I’m not sure if you’ll like what or where I put you within the book.”

He smiled, picked up the bottle from the cement floor and topped off my glass, “You break hearts for a living.”

“Don’t be like that.  We both know what you were doing when we met.”

“I know, I know...Seriously though, Am I in the book?”  His eyes pierced my right eyeball.

“Oh no!  Not the crazy eyes.  Stop looking at me that way.  Fine! Yes, you’re in the book.  Why is it so important to you?”

“I just wanted to hear you say it.”  He sat against the back of the lounge chair and took a swig of wine from the mouth of the bottle.  In true Bull fashion, he let out a rumbling bletch that echoed through the trees.  This was not as 'cute' as I thought it was in years past.