Really Kindly in Various Endearments

My room has the ghost smell of wine and a hint of cinnamon, which I'm liking and hoping won't go away. Josh and Adam's friends are long gone. I met one of Aaron's doppelgangers tonight, which was interesting.

Today, my Cadillac got stuck in the driveway. This happens. The plow guys like our house especially for snow dumping. The pile in front of the porch is at least a foot over my head (and I'm 5'8), and it extends a foot or two into our driveway. Cadillacs are notoriously low riding. So, stuck. I started trying to dig myself out, but my snow shovel was too wide to fit between my car and the freezing white, more or less solid monstrosity. My neighbor on the right, whose house I admire so so so so much - smoky blue with cherry red trim - ran out with a thinner, warm-weather shovel and dug me out, and then pushed while I gunned it in reverse. I thanked him and gave him a hug. He's a bashful Yooper man, bright orange hunting cap, well worn Carhartt jacket and pants, impressive no nonsense boots. He was smiley and obliging, as if my getting stuck was his fault: "I know how frustrating it is and I'm sure you were in a hurry." He's getting cookies tomorrow.

That concern, outward extending, innate and concerned, honorable, gorgeously communal and paternal, is the sweetness I had trouble explaining to Aaron last night. Not ostentatious, not strutting, shy even. He didn't expect a hug, he didn't expect thanks. I pulled the car to get onto one side of the road and he waved at me, smiling, as if I was pulling away and as if that wouldn't have been rude. I had to run after him.

I don't like being called a sweet person. I feel a gut urge to correct the proneur, but I know that, if I do, I'll sink under very nice insistence that that I'm being modest, or falsely modest. I think there are sweet people in the sense that it's easier for some to be morally scrupulous, and I'm not always one of them. I can be so vicious and I like it. My sense of humor is vicious. Maybe I don't rape people or steal cars, but a majority of people don't and I don't think that's enough to make them sweet, good, whatever word for essentially pleasant. I laugh at bad poetry, despite the fact that the poet meant his poem just as much as, possibly more than, the good poet. I love sexist and racist jokes best. I'm condescending. I don't go out of my way to be kind to people. I don't run outside to unstick their cars.