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I had my bi-weekly call yesterday from an old friend from my political days. Rick usually calls me from the car after he's been for a haircut he gets through the back door of his barbershop.
"My barber tells me I'm lucky to get in," he reported. "Now that he's open again, he's booked up for the next month."
I thought to myself I put CNN on pause, and put down my video game for this?
"Great!"
"Did you see all those stupid people marching in Ottawa last week?" he asked, and didn't wait for me to answer. "Now we're going to have pandemic all over the place. We'll have to close everything up again. You didn't go I guess."
"No," I said. "My daughter and her husband went, and I babysat for them."
There was a long pause.
"My son-in-law is black," I said. "And so is my granddaughter."
"Well, I hope you don't catch it," he said.
And that was the end of that.
Maybe I should have engaged him in a conversation, but I didn't see the point. You can't talk to dinosaurs about what's going on in society. To quote Hannibal Lecter, they don't have a perspective, they have a view.
Rick is filthy rich, a retired automotive executive, who lives large.
The company sends him three cars a year, one that he gives his ex-wife.
His wife left him after he retired because she couldn't stand to have him around. She used to like his jet setting lifestyle because she could do what she wanted, see who she wanted, and generally spend her time doing yoga and spending his money.
So he now travels the world in search of excitement.
The pandemic has pretty much burst his bubble. He can't go to Moscow to visit his son, the oligarch. He can't go to Florida to cavort on the beach with his bevy of girlfriends. He can't go to his fancy gym to keep his buff exterior and now has to settle for carrying rocks down the hill to create a new border for his garden.
And the only person he spends time with is his ex-wife, who recently got a bug and nearly died while they were on a cruise to mark the fifth anniversary of their separation.
He's a good guy for the most part. He's charming and cheerful and used to buy me lunch when the restaurants were open.
But lately, I'm getting tired of his right wing bullshit, which I have to listen to because he doesn't let me get in a word.
I realized yesterday that I couldn't start a conversation about race with him because it would end our friendship. I like him, and enjoy listening to tales of his exploits. But we usually draw the line when talking about politics and the world around us.
We both live in bubbles -- his is much fancier than mine -- and we both spend our lives cocooning, and distracting ourselves from the woes of the real world.
Now, because he's missing all his toys, and trips, and Botoxed babes, the only thing he has to talk about is politics.
And that makes me feel increasingly uncomfortable.
I want to tell him about how I feel about the world but I realize he doesn't care.
He just uses me like one of those boards at tennis camp that people hit balls against. He doesn't want me to hit a ball back. He just wants me to stand there and get bruised and bloodied by his bullshit.
I'm thinking the next time he calls, I'll let voicemail pick it up.
He'll wonder what's going on, then move down on his contact list, and talk to somebody else who really doesn't give a shit.
After I hung up, I wondered why I spend so much time walking with dinosaurs.
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