Summer Pants

Although he originally planned to stay for six months, Brian cut out from the Buddhist Monastery three months early. He drove north from Virginia, stayed with our friend Joe in New Jersey for a couple of days, and then disappeared into the wilderness of western Connecticut where he remained incommunicado for months.

I called Joe to ask if he had any news, he didn’t, and we were both a little worried.

“He’s pretty out there,” said Joe.

“Yeah, but being ‘out there’ has always been a part of Brian’s charm,” I said.

“True, but, I mean, I don’t know.”

When I hung up with Joe, I called Brian, hoping for the chance to judge for myself whether three months in a Buddhist Monastery had done a number on his head, or perhaps enlightened him beyond the ability to relate to us mere mortals. I left a message, didn’t hear from him for a couple of weeks, and left another. When he finally called, of course, he was fine. Out there, yes, but no more than ever.

“I was worried about you,” I said. “After Joe told me you left, and then not hearing from you for months, I started thinking all kinds of crazy things.”

He admitted that when he first left the Monastery, going to Joe’s place and watching football on a big screen TV without any time to decompress had been a little more than he could handle. “I’m sure I was acting strange. Of course I was. Anyway, I would’ve called you earlier, but I just didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

“I understand. I’m just glad that everything’s okay. How was it? Why did you leave?”

“I’ll tell you all about it when I see you,” he said. “I’m coming to the city in March.”

This was all a couple of months ago and, true to his word, Brian is back in the Big Apple, working on a job at The American Museum of Natural History. “It’s awesome, dude. I don’t even bother leaving for lunch, I just take long walks through the museum. They have so much cool shit there. I love it.”

We spoke last week and made tentative plans to see each other over the weekend, but neither of us followed through with a phone call. “I barely even left the house,” he told me. “I went food shopping, that was it. The fucking weather.”

“I hear you. I had to get a prescription filled and was totally soaked by the time I got to the pharmacy and doubly soaked by the time I got home.”

“The wind,” he said.

“Totally. It stirred up the rain from all directions. All kinds of shit was strewn in the streets — garbage cans, plastic bags…”

“Umbrellas.”

“Yes! When I was leaving the pharmacy, there was a woman just ahead of me. She stepped outside, opened her umbrella, and in an instant it turned inside out. She stood there trying to figure out a way to fix it, but it was beyond hope.”

“Dude, get this: I went to the supermarket, right? I had exactly two pair of clean pants, my heavy denim work pants — no way way I was going to wear those, they’d still be wet by the time I go to work on Monday — and a light weight linen pair. So I threw those on — without any underwear — and ran to the supermarket. By the time I got there, I was drenched. I looked down and realized my pants were totally transparent. You could see everything. Everything, dude.”

“Oh man, that’s fucking hilarious. So what did you do?”

“Fuck it, what could I do? I had to do my food shopping.”