It is the first Friday in August, and it’s friggin’ hot outside. More humid than anything, really. Not much in the way of breezes. On Thursday night, I stop by the cigar shop in Hoboken and get a nice mid-sized cigar for a lunchtime smoke. I got a Jaime Garcia, nice size, good cigar.
When I went outside to get my lunch, I found my spot filled with construction equipment so I would not be sitting and puffing away as I planned. I kept the Jaime Garcia in my shirt pocket and opted for the small Romeo and Julietta that I generally enjoy when on my lunch break. A rethink was required.
When I was walking back from getting my Halal food, I passed a building that is under some sort of construction or renovation. I figured that would do. I finished my Halal food. The guys in the truck generally hook me up, but it was a bit boring today.
Just not getting the same thrill I had gotten in the past. It was satisfactory and filling but bland overall. Not their fault at all. Just tired taste buds on my tongue.
Bill and I watched the newest episode of Ted Lasso. He’s back with some of the same characters. The episode took place in Ted’s hometown, with Rebecca, Keeley and Higgins flying over to see if Ted would go back to Richmond and coach the women’s football team.
We sort of know how it will turn out but they’re releasing the episodes one at a time rather than making everything available for streaming all at once. Last night we watched the last 2 episodes of the third season. Of course we’d seen them before, a few times, but it really is such a good, heartwarming show we really didn’t mind.
So I sat on the steps next to a sign that said ‘Rat Poison’ was in the area of the building undergoing renovation. A few people smiled as they walked by, I guessed the smell of the cigar was not as off-putting as I thought it would be. Most of the time all you can smell on the streets is weed, and it doesn’t seem to be a natural smell of weed, but rather something artificial.
As I sat, Marcus strolled by with his Chick Fillet in a bag. Today is his last day and he really hasn’t said much to me at all. I suppose that’s how it will be. His leaving won’t be a bang, but a whimper. He walked by, looking either straight ahead or looking ahead, and in any event did not see me or if he did, he didn’t have anything to say to me.
Now Marcus has left the fruit stand, having handed in his gloves and fruit-picking equipment. There was no face to face goodbye but he left a note, which was something in itself. He urged me to work with the team, though I thought I was doing that.
Perhaps I need to be more gregarious? I don’t know. He mentioned that there were a lot of personalities, but I should just try and no one wants me to fail. He says I have a knowledge and a sense of people that the team doesn’t know about and Marcus would like me to show it. That was nice, wasn’t it? Was it?
I discussed this with Bill and it was a good talk. I explained that I work by myself, alone for 90% of the time. It’s a fact. Marcus didn’t seem to realize that. He never saw me at the major fruit stand, working alongside Kimberly, Janis and Violet, not to mention Yancy.
Bill reminded me that Marcus is more than half my age and is still growing, as am I.
A Google Gemini rewrite as a James Baldwin essay
The Oppressive Weight of August
It is the first Friday in August, and the heat does not merely sit upon the city; it demands a total surrender. It arrives less as weather than as a heavy, inescapable humidity, thick enough to smother whatever light breezes might have contemplated crossing the Hudson from the mainland. In such weather, one is forced to invent small rituals of survival. On Thursday night, I had walked into a cigar shop in Hoboken to purchase a Jaime Garcia—a fine, substantial cigar—intending to carve out a moment of solitary grace during my lunch hour.
Yet the city, in its indifferent velocity, rarely respects a man’s quiet design. Returning with my lunch, I found the small refuge I had envisioned swallowed up by heavy construction equipment, iron and dust where I had hoped for shade. A man learns to pivot, or he breaks. I left the Jaime Garcia resting in my shirt pocket, a pleasure deferred, and retrieved instead a small Romeo y Julieta—the humble, reliable smoke that usually sees me through these brief intervals of freedom.
I carried my halal food toward a building currently undergoing some noisy, uncertain renovation. The men in the cart had treated me well, as they usually do, but today the food tasted flat, lacking the sharp, vibrant thrill it once offered. One cannot blame the cook for the sudden weariness of one’s own tongue. It was simply the heat, or perhaps the quiet realization that familiarity, if leaned upon too heavily, eventually dulls the senses.
The previous evening, Bill and I had sat together watching the newest episode of *Ted Lasso*. There is something undeniably gentle, perhaps even radical, in the show’s unashamed commitment to warmth. They are releasing these episodes week by week now, forcing us back into an older, more deliberate rhythm of waiting, rather than permitting us to consume the entire artifact in one sitting. We had already rewatched the final episodes of the third season—we had seen them several times before, in fact—yet we returned to them willingly. In a world defined by a relentless, cold efficiency, one does not lightly turn away from art that attempts, however naively, to soothe the human heart.
So there I sat, perched on concrete steps directly adjacent to a painted warning that rat poison had been laid nearby. A few strangers smiled as they drifted past through the muggy air. I took this to mean that the rich, traditional aroma of tobacco was not entirely unwelcome, particularly on streets now permanently saturated with the sharp, synthetic tang of modern marijuana—a scent that seems increasingly detached from anything grown in the earth.
As I sat there, Marcus strolled past, carrying a paper bag from Chick-fil-A. Today marked his final day among us, yet he walked with his eyes fixed straight ahead, wrapping himself in a deliberate silence. His departure was to be marked not by any grand gesture or explosive reckoning, but by a quiet, fading whimper. If he saw me sitting there on those poisoned steps, he gave no sign, offering not a single word.
Later, I learned he had surrendered his gloves and equipment at the fruit stand and slipped away entirely. He chose not to say goodbye face-to-face, leaving behind only a written note. In it, he urged me to make a greater effort to integrate with the team—a counsel that struck me with a quiet, disorienting force, for I had honestly believed I was already doing precisely that. He wrote of the complex web of personalities in the room, assuring me that no one wished to see me fail, and suggesting that I possessed a depth of knowledge and a sensitivity toward people that the others had yet to see. He asked me to reveal it.
It was a gentle gesture, I suppose. And yet one is compelled to ask: was it truly?
I brought the note to Bill, and we talked through the quiet friction of it. I tried to explain the reality of my daily life—that I work in isolation, alone for ninety percent of my hours. Marcus had never truly witnessed my labor; he had never seen me standing side-by-side at the main stand with Kimberly, Janis, Violet, or Yancy. He had judged the architecture of my routine from a distance, mistaking solitude for detachment.
Bill looked at me and offered the only truth that ultimately mattered. He reminded me that Marcus is less than half my age, that he is still in the long, painful process of becoming who he is meant to be. And then Bill added, with a soft, persistent clarity, that the same remains true for the rest of us as well.