Just Kidding

The dreamy, dulcet dinner jazz tinkled throughout the lounge. A slowly revolving overhead fan kept the humidity at bay as best it could. It was a losing battle in terms of both temperature and moisture. Beneath that fan, the couple did what couples do in a lounge. They lounged. And they glistened. But mostly they courted. Or was it wooed? Whatever it was, it was old-fashioned in its simplicity. There was no swiping left and certainly no swiping right.

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else other than right here right now,” said the man, looking deep into his paramour’s eyes.

He swept an errant hair behind one of her ears.

“You look lovely,” he said.

“You’re just saying that,” she whispered.

“Well, you don’t look so bad yourself,” added the woman, feeling his forearm.

“I would promise you the moon if you wanted me to,” he said.

She didn’t need that, at least not right there, and not right then. I’m not saying that she never would, but in the immediacy of the moment it wasn’t necessary.

She traced his jaw with her fingers.

“You have a strong jaw,” she said.

I didn’t see it, and I don’t think he believed it. But he certainly didn’t mind hearing it. We often hate in others what we hate about ourselves, and in that same way we also love in others what we wish for in ourselves.

Drinks were served, and the candle on the little table flickered as the mood shifted from jazz to rhythm and blues. Maybe it was Barry White. Or Sade. Memory is an illusion that we believe to be true. And sometimes we share that illusion. But whether things really happened the way we remember them is fodder for another time.

In the slow slide of seduction we often gloss over the things that we don’t care to remember. Hindsight is 20/20, they say, but when it comes to love, it might be more 20/40. And that nearsightedness is in regard to both the feeling and the distance in time one is from that feeling.

But neither of those applied now.

“Champagne!” ordered the man.

“That’s not necessary,” said the woman — a comment that gave me pause as their server.

When is champagne ever necessary? Isn’t that the actual point of something like that? Are diamonds necessary? I don’t think so. The monk Dom Pérignon didn’t say, “Come quickly, I’m tasting stars,” because he was actually tasting stars. But I digress.

That couple, though, had progressed. And progressed rather quickly. Champagne and/or stars weren’t necessary.

“I can’t wait to watch the sunrise with you,” he said, which was really jumping a few steps ahead.

But much like a dance, courtship only involves you keeping in step with your partner, not necessarily with everyone else.

And if one were counting, he had now promised her the moon and at least one star.

Sooner or later such debts come due, but isn’t that what credit is all about? Enjoy now and pay later? And besides, they were running a tab.

“Maybe I’ll take you to Hawaii, or the Caribbean, or the South of France,” he said, maxing out the believability.

She just sighed and rested her head on his shoulder.

Not all bar dates are a reason to make out in public. Some are more of a slow simmer. Hotels are the main province of lounges, and that’s no accident. Rooms right upstairs? Really?

The couple hadn’t even kissed once, at least not that I saw, but there was lots of handholding, finger touching and physical closeness. Seduction is so often what we don’t have readily available, and that’s what makes it so special. Wasn’t it Vincent van Gogh who said, “The sight of the stars makes me dream?”

“Hey, you guys!” said a very late adolescent excitedly bursting into the room and shattering the mood.

“You can see both Jupiter and Venus in the sky from the patio!” he said, stopping short in front of the reclining couple. “They’re kissing!”

The couple slowly sat up straight.

“Are you guys almost done with your pre-graduation thing?” asked the man who now I assumed to be the father.

“We are,” said the teenager.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked, narrowing one eye and cocking his head.

“Nothing,” said the now-obvious mother. “Just talking.”

“Gross,” replied their kid.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why,” once wrote Mark Twain.

• If you missed the Jupiter-Venus conjunction this week — a boon for both astrologers and astronomers — don’t fret, it will happen again, in 2028, sometime in the morning.

• Graduation day is both an end and a beginning, both for the student and for the parents.

• “This miserable scribbler whose letters in the Alta (a contemporaneous newspaper in San Francisco) sickened everyone who read them,” began the April 18, 1868, review in the Marin County Journal, the day after Twain’s speaking appearance in San Rafael.

• You’re never too old, nor have you been together too long, to dance or to court. Just saying.