dallas

Picture me in Irving, Texas, in a parking lot of an office park like any you would find in Santa Clara, Reston, Redmond, or Waltham. The sky is gray. The grass is dead. I'm reclined to near horizontal in the driver's seat of a rented red Corolla, at 10:07 on a Tuesday morning in January. My eyes are closed. My watch alarm is set for 10:25. I'm wearing my peacoat and business casual underneath - a suitably feminine blue cowl-neck wool sweater, pinstripe pants, desert boots with low heels, but not so feminine that I escape being called "Sir I mean ma'am" by the rental car attendant. My Blackberry light is flashing red on top of a messy accordion file on the passenger seat. I am 23 minutes early to a meeting and recovering from a cold and dead tired because I could not fall asleep in the creepy Overlook Hotel where I stayed the night before, popping M&M Peanuts from the minibar and watching a reality show in which psychotherapists coax people with obsessive hoarding problems to stop living in piles of shit. (Literally piles of shit - one featured couple let 22 roaming pet rabbits cover their house ankle deep in shit pellets.) I am trying to catch some sleep before the meeting, but instead I just fall in and out of the zombie zone of consciousness for fourteen minutes, and then get up before the alarm and make my way to the office building, where I collect my security tag, brush a stray piece of potato hash off my sweater, and prepare to dazzle a client with professionalism.

Today was one of those days where I couldn't decide whether I loved or hated traveling. There was, on the one hand, dozing in a parking lot in an unheated rental car in front of squat, lifeless office buildings. On the other hand, there was the bartender I met in my quest the previous night for gay Dallas weeknight nightlife. Check out her biography: poor, Mexican-American, lesbian, ex-Marine specializing in explosives, ex-alcoholic, ex-world champion welterweight boxer, seventeen years a bartender, now a rugby flanker with no natural ligaments in her left knee trying to save money to move to New York to write her book. She was my height, slightly taller, all muscle, nothing wasted. (Later, S., a little too breathily, asked me to describe the bartender's build in great detail. She benches 225.) We connected because I played the same position in rugby; before long she was saying things like, "You understand how it is, you're a jock" and telling me that after she made a little extra cash over the holidays she treated her girl to a shopping spree at Forever 21 and treated herself to nutritional supplements. "I took myself out and got everything I wanted: my magnesium, my whey protein, my NO2 platinum caps . . . " She said it like that, prefacing each supplement with a possessive. Her handshake was like a hungry mastiff. I skipped back to my hotel feeling high having made a new friend in a new city.

My meetings the next day didn't take but two hours and afterward I had four hours to kill before my flight. I found an artificial creek in Irving and in the backseat of the Corolla swapped business casual for running clothes. I admit I was psyched up for fitness from the girl jock talk of the night before. I did not bench 225 but I did jog the length of the creek at a shade above a walking pace and then kicked like a drowning dog through three pull-ups on the jungle gym next to Indian-American tots oblivious to my raw power. Apparently 100% of people who use this park in the daytime are South Asian toddlers, South Asian women, or South Asian old people strolling along in unnecessary winter wear. Then I put half a pig in my face in the form of a barbecue sandwich followed by green beans with bacon and black-eyed peas cooked with fatback. I had vanilla soft serve, again sitting in the driver's seat of the Corolla, pointing toward Boston Market, jawing to S. about Hoarders.

On the way to the rental car return, a megachurch caught my eye and I pulled over to snoop around. "I just want to look at your church," I told the receptionist in the front office. "I've never seen a church so big." She and the people in the waiting area laughed with pride. Nothing was happening midday on a Tuesday, but many days of the week the church offers services in English, Spanish and (?) Nepali, as well as break-out groups for kids, teens, college-age students, young adults, parents, seniors, women, men, music aficionados, and the Nepalese. Plus a cafe. I have nothing epiphanic or derisive to say about the church or the people I met there; it and they were plenty nice. Anyway I was not paying close attention. Half of the time I was supposed to be peering through the windows at the chapel, I was admiring my own junior welterweight form in the glass.

So, the jury is out. Was it a good time, because a sly shopclerk called me "honey" while I perused cock rings at the porn/rainbow flag necklace/And the Band Played On gay general store? Or was it a bad time, because I had to bury my nose in a book to avoid the desperate, smiling eye contact of the woman next to me at my airport gate who wore sandals with socks and said, "Oh, I don't travel so much!" Sorry I cannot tell you why the kiosk attendant cannot tell you more about the status of our flight, lady, I have to read this important book!

No, it was merely a time. A short time - 22 hours total on the ground in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I came home and my parents barely registered my absence. Dad said "You're back!" and then rushed Mom to Home Depot to buy caulk. I felt like a long time had passed since I had been in the zombie dreamland of a reclined driver's seat in a parked car in suburban Dallas, so I wanted more ceremony on return, but only dear Boo paid me any attention. Now on my list of New Year's resolutions: bench 225, move out of the suburbs, sell my Corolla.