Sadness (and food)

Stopped by Elmwood Taco and Subs last night after work.

There was a guy there, I've seem him at a restaurant there before, in the last couple months, but I forgot where.

For some reason, he breaks my heart.

Early to mid thirties, maybe not slender, but a healthy slim build. Maybe an inch taller than me. The set of his face, unintentionally hard, roughened by teen acne by the looks of it, and waxy, along with his somewhat stiff gait and posture, points to some congenital situation. My initial thought was pre-natal alcohol syndrome, but I don't think that is what it is specifically. But something like that. His light brown eyes are angled. His hair is sandy and hinting at impending loss, and he has a fashionally inept sandy moustache; he looks like a guy from 1988 still stuck in pre-New Wave 1980. His clothes are unremarkable.

As when I saw him before, he had a tray mounded with food. A big box of flat waffle-cut french fries, what must have been two entres; I just glanced at it. A couple of the free newspapers on the little table waiting to be read while he drank and ate.

But something about him is so fucking sad. He certainly looks intelligent, perhaps even a failed intellectual, one trapped in his blue collar family past in this past-trapped blue collar city. I am finding it beyond my understanding or awareness to understand Why he draws this devastatingly sad empathy or hopefuly compassion out of me. But he does.

Maybe I see myself in him. A sympathetic resonance. A quiet awkward man - but a Good Man - growing old alone, burying my loneliness and sadness and remorse in piles of food. Eating alone, and it being perfectly normal and acceptable to me when it would be untenable to most people - to Most People. Awkward in his body. Almost there, like where I should be, but never quite.

You walk by some people, as they sit behind restaurant windows, eating alone. And some make you feel nothing - there are people to whom a meal by themselves is a relief after a day of constant dealing with customers or students. But some others... you can feel their sadness, for some even their burying their sadness and grief for life with food, whether they are shoveling it in or delicately savoring. Trapped behind the window. Trapped in their seat at the tiny table. Trapped by their body's demands even if not properly met. Trapped by this snow and cold. Trapped by this little city decaying shoved up against the boundaried river.