The Worm just gets weirder
Life has gotten good and busy again, good-bye boring, although it remains far from pre-crises spring madness. The weekend before, Manila Moxie visited; then this past week another friend, a Chinese woman who emigrated to the US fifteen years ago, was in town, and also staying with me. Good company, albeit a bit exhausting. Tonight is my first evening alone, and it’s rather nice.
Last weekend was the big Weihai Lu open house, an annual thing now in its third year. Zipping previously to openings at IFA and M97, and managing to lose a pair of vintage Dior gloves in the process, I collected my visiting friend and then zipped along to Weihai. My gal Kazza has a gallery there, and I had volunteered to make martinis for her show’s opening.
She’d hired two waiters, “your bitches!”, to mix and serve, and I joined Kazza in playing hostess, we got a lot of people in, and some press and some sales. It was fun, and even without my Dior gloves I was in full swishy mode, dahling.
About 45 minutes in, I escaped to the bathroom, and coming back in I heard a still if by now barely familiar voice come at me, “Oh! Hey there…” It was Worm.
It had been exactly a month since I’d last seen him. I barely recognized him, his hair is out of control shaggy now, and he had shed the WASPy peacoat he huddled in all winter.
I got pulled back into other social whorls, he chatted briefly with our mutual friend Happy Fish - who is privvy to the whole secret drama - and then he retreated with his friends to sit at the back. I brought them martinis, and Worm “cheers”ed me, before I had to rush back to make more drinks.
He skulked there for a good half hour, even after the friends he came with left. Watching me, it seemed; whenever I glanced his way, he quickly averted his eyes, then looked tentatively back at me, then away again. Finally I went back over - not to force any discussion of what if any remnants there are in the wreckage of “us”, just to catch up, see how he is.
“How’ve you been?” I ask lightly.
“I gotta go now.” Worm puts down his drink and flees. Pushing through the crowd, out the door.
I pause for a few minutes then follow him outside. I see Worm’s figure retreating down the lane, only a few meters away; obviously he had stood just outside the gallery for several minutes more before really leaving.
“What was *that*?!” I puzzle to myself. Not the first time I have asked that with regard to our introspective old Worm.
“What *was* that?!” Happy Fish asked me a few days later, at another opening. I shrugged. “He’s SOO weird. You need to, like, get in his face and be all, “Why are you so weird?!”
But I know why. He’s wounded, fearful, prefers fleeing to dealing. I know him. That’s the problem.
