It had been some time since I “hung out” with anyone, in the bars, parking lots, backyards, drinking and smoking. Cigarettes left my life abruptly one day, several years ago and drinking; I really had no taste for since my twenties. So here I was, my last night in Virginia and the most memorable, before I would get in my car and head back north, returning to New Jersey after a 2.5-year sojourn, for a whole plethora of reasons, none of which belongs here in this story.
Dinner was planned with the two colleagues I had worked closely with over the last 1.5 years, two gentlemen; “L” closer to my age and God and “I” just starting out, late twenties and lamenting on how old he was and that his life was pretty much over. Invited back to L’s house, they armed themselves with a bottle of wine from Rite Aid (who knew) and a pack of cigarettes to jumpstart the younger one’s free drinking quota for a Friday night and the older one’s weekend habits. It was the first time since coming to Virginia and the job, that I was invited to the Friday night ritual of “hanging out” in the backyard of L’s house, sharing conversation, wine and cigarettes - and I was all in.
Had I stopped to think of how I would feel getting up at 4AM the next morning, to drive the 7 hour trip ahead of me, I would probably have made a different decision, but sometimes you need to leave your rational mind out of things and just go with the moment. And so there we sat in the backyard, the three of us, in the fading light, conversing about politics, our views, the world, state of affairs, work and other assorted topics. To my delight, all on a somewhat evolved and intellectual level, respectful and passionate.
After a couple of hours, my young colleague announced that it was time for him to go and catch a friend’s band playing downtown, no cover. We hugged, said our goodbyes and he was gone. And then it was just “L” and me, smoking cigarettes and drinking wine. We spoke of our spirituality, our beliefs and relationship with the divine and what we felt deep down in our souls. We divulged secrets to each other that had only been spoken between ourselves and our “Maker”, agreeing for the most part that they were one in the same even if our names for them were different. And as we walked deeper down into our conversation, he began to share his heart’s dream, a secret he kept hidden, maybe for the first time hearing the words spoken out loud. He was going to go back to his country at some point and wanted to build orphanages. And as he explained to me how important the children are and how important this was to him, his face lit up with an ethereal light and a smile that spread from ear to ear, taking him somewhere else, some higher place. And he remained there for quite some time envisioning it in his mind until suddenly, the light extinguished, his mouth dropped and he came crashing back to earth from where he had taken flight and he leaned into me, looked me straight in the eyes and asked in all seriousness, “Do you think I could really do that?”
Never moving my eyes from his and taking another drag of my 5th and final cigarette, I smiled, leaned into him and said very quietly, “How could you not?”
He leaned back, thought about it for a bit, then looked at me and said, “Yes, yes. How could I not”, and then he was off again in that higher place, a smile from ear to ear and his light illuminating the night.
