In the store downstairs I was buying toilet paper. I had the roll of it on one hand, stuck around my index and middle fingers. For the moment in which I turned from aisle A to aisle B (there are only 2 aisles in the place so this was The Limit) I stupidly enjoyed that feeling of extending my fingers in this way, and feeling like a clown, and toying with the roll of tissue like a puppet.

But I put the tissue back. Onto the shelf. Because there was a pretty woman standing at the counter, her pretty ass popping out of her shorts as she stood on tip-toes to talk with the sandwich-maker behind the glass cabinet. I did not want a pretty woman to see me buying toilet paper. Or peanut butter. Or Milk. No, something dug itself out of me, and I had to impress her somehow with my desultory strut, with my purchase of the darkest beer in Atlanta, with my crumpled wad of twenties.

(My "wad of twenties" is really mostly ones and fives, I just put the two twenties on top to impress the pretty girls at vacuous moments such as the one I just experienced.)

She didn't care. She splayed herself against the cold-cuts cooler and pointed to the lettuce. The salami. The cheddar. She saw not my beer, my strut, my precious time.

So here I am drinking beer, lacking toilet paper, lacking milk, and feeling the air conditioner blow across my face. Sometimes I can feel the air go down my shirt, all the way around me, and the air itself feels like the kiss of paradise.

But I am not feeling that today, or this week, or at any time in the last 3 months. But it is something I know exists, somewhere in the breath of what we all say to each other.