Zeitgeist

This is a short I wrote once-upon-a-class. I quite like it and thought I'd share. Really enjoying other people's work.

"So, since you actually spent some time in Germany, maybe you can tell me what the hell 'Zeitgeist' means," I shouted at Lissy over the din at the Deadwood. For some reason I thought the question was clever or at least appropriate since I was finally buying her birthday drink about four months after her twenty-first birthday and three months after her return from Germany.

We had to pause so I could sing along to Old Crow Medicine Show and Lissy could consider her answer. "Rock me momma like the wind and the rain… This is my favorite song," I said.

"Well," Lissy said, took a sip of her Guinness, and struggled through. There was a piece of white confetti in her hair from Rocky Horror; we had just left the theatre when I suggested I should finally buy her a late birthday present. "At least you remembered late," she had said.

"Vielleicht mann kann sagen…" She slipped into German. "Tut mir leid. Okay it's sort of like the whole… artistic, intellectual mindset of the time. I mean. The Germans just see it differently."

"So you have to be German to get it," I said.

The Deadwood didn't smell the same as it did when you could barely see your hand through a fog of smoke. I missed that. We've come to an age where everyone's worried about someone else's bad habits killing them.

"But I ain't turnin' back to livin' that old life no more …" There was a girl behind us singing along now and both she and I were equally out of tune.

"So, reading anything worthwhile?" Lissy asked

"Just an Orwell essay. How he hates Latin and how we're all fucking up the language. He says the only good English is a direct translation from Biblical Hebrew."

"Oh." Some people laughed at the bar and we both looked back to see Tina Fey reenacting Sarah Palin evangelizing. "You know," Lissy said, "I kind of feel sorry for her. Palin I mean."

"Yeah." I finished my beer - whatever the special was that night - and wondered about how people all across the country could be in love with a woman I thought was a fanatic and a fool. "Don't you ever get that feeling of foreboding? Like everything in the country is changing and you're too small to see it."

"Everybody says that." Lissy shook her head and turned away from the TV.

"But not in so many words."

"If I die in Raleigh at least I will die free…" Old Crow Medicine Show concluded.

"You know," I said feeling a wave of nostalgia for ashtrays. "My parents used to come here when my dad was in law school. They used to live in an apartment right across the street."

"Isn't that weird?" Lissy smiled and looked down at the sticky, wooden table.

"Yeah, random."