{bazima.com}

I'm sitting in a cafe working on a story about, more or less, fucking rock stars (I'm using fucking here as a verb not an adjective, although the latter is not altogether inappropriate), and there's a guy at the bistro table behind me talking on his cell phone.

"What? What do I want for Christmas? Why are you asking?" He's saying.

He has his laptop in front of him, too. Wouldn't it be funny if he dialed in to Bazima five minutes from now and found this? It would especially be funny because, like, who ever reads Bazima?

Anyway, when he first started speaking into the phone I thought he was deaf because he sounded like, well, you know, the way deaf people sound. All deep-throated Marlee Matlin style. And the only reason why I started paying any attention was because he's the only one in here speaking out loud. And, yeah, because suddenly I thought Blair Warner's palsied cousin Gerri from The Facts Of Life was in the room.

But, by the time I hear him answering the what-do-you-want-for-Christmas-question, though, his voice has suddenly, mysteriously cleared up. It was as if he just had a loogie stuck in his throat. He must have swallowed it. I can see his reflection in the glass door in front of me. He looks like the actor Campbell Scott in his "Longtime Companion" days--young. He's a strange bird, that one. A vaguely handsome actor who keeps tricking you into thinking he's cuter than he is.

"Well," Campbell Gerri Scott is saying, "Do you want me to answer that truthfully or do you want me to answer that like a normal person?"

This makes me smile. I'm not sure why. I have no idea what he means. Maybe that's why. It's a one-sided snippet of a stranger's conversation that suggests his side of it is going to be ridiculous. Something tells me that the other side of the conversation -- the person I can't hear on the other end of Campbell Gerri Scott's cell phone -- is equally ridiculous.

He goes on to say that he neither gives nor recieves Christmas presents. "I'm the type of person who gives presents all year-round. I don't like birthdays or Christamases. I don't believe that you should reserve gift-giving for those times. If I see something that I think someone would like I just buy it for them, doesn't matter what time of year it is."

That said, he goes on to call off the items on his monster wish list from memory ending with a Bruce Springsteen box-set. It then becomes clear that the person on the other end of the phone has asked Campbell Gerri Scott to defend his desire for this particular item. He repeats the question back to the inquirer.

I can't listen anymore. This is a good time for me to go pee. Plus, I've spent too much time procrastinating. Must get back to fucking rock stars. Campbell Gerri Scott is sitting right next to the bathroom door and as I walk by him I look at him to see if he looks like Campbell Scott in real life and not just in the blurred reflection of the glass door in front of us. He does. Minus the posture. He looks kind of dumb. The way Campbell Scott carries himself makes you think he knows everything about a whole lot. Anyway, Campbell Gerri Scott stutters into the phone as I walk by. And just as I shut the bathroom door behind me I hear him say, "I just lost my train of thought. ...What was I saying?" This makes me smile. Maybe he got distracted because he recognized me from my online persona. Because that's usually the way I think.