a Delay, and a Disaster in Munich DYLAN GALASSINI
Abroad, the old lovers do as young lovers do, or at least should; passion to them is what it was yesterday, and the day before, or the day before that. It’s all the same as a wedding night—passion, that is. Their arms touch, flirting, and I watch unapologetically. And he is so ugly, and dressed so poorly, dressed like an American. His hair is uncombed and ugly, and he looks bored. Or at least ready to go. I can confirm anxious is the wrong word. His eyes are posted forward, and there is no dreaminess.Yet, there is no bitterness. But his wife, her hair is done. Not dyed, like in America, but neatly styled. Still, by no means is she beautiful. She has no need, wondering what goes on behind his eyes. Her look is modest, but her yellow blouse turns to loose lace above her chest, and the shirt shows off what used to be a beautiful body. Now, the massive roll of her gut juts further than her breasts. Gut is also the wrong word because in America, a gut is so round and firm hiding under clothes. The American gut: made from angry beers and laziness. I promise you, the shape is different here. She is not hiding her rolls as she snuggles against her lover’s shoulder, her happy fat matching his happy fat. They have eaten happy meals to build such happy guts, and she looks at him the way she did in her twenty-somethings: happy, when he said just the right number of nice things at the bar. She, still, has the sexual look of waiting and waiting for the ugly man and his ugly shirt and his ugly mustache to take her! Maybe they’d go to the bathroom; is it too late to join the mile-high club? Fuck, in their youth, they probably had. And their love exists between their bodies—so much so, that I can’t stop noticing, and the passerby notice,and we wonder about the two. We wonder if they have children who grew up watching such subtle love, 52 | Montage
