Sweaty Palms

Eccrine glands. Produce a sticky substance in the palms of monkeys, that in moments of stress and fright allows a sure grip on branches. We, The Select, no longer living in trees, just get sweaty palms when we're nervous. I was smoking a cigaret in the approved smoking area behind the pub, last time I was in town. It's near the back door, which is the door almost everyone uses, and whenever I sit there, someone usually sits down next to me (there are three chairs and a huge ceramic ash tray) and asks me something. A woman I don't know that well, I see her at the pub and we have some friends in common, sat down next to me. She said she had heard I was a writer and had 'looked me up', had read some things, was curious about how I spent my time. She knew I had stopped working at the museum and lived alone. I told her that I wrote very slowly and read very fast, spent most of my time reading and writing and walking logging roads in the woods, that I cooked and ate and slept very well. It took me a while to realize she was flirting with me, and when I did, I told her I was suffering from a degenerative sexual transmitted disease. She saw through the bullshit and asked me why I avoided relationships, and I tried to explain my sense of time, and the sundry compromises. She gave me her card, wants to meet me for a Guinness the next time she's in town. Her Mom's in a rest home here, she's doing post-post Doc work in California on dementia. Later, I'm perplexed why anyone would not find a Pileated Woodpecker amazing. Amanda had never actually noticed one, and I knew she'd never understand rolling an apple to a fox. Active and independent living. I'm ambivalent about social networks, bailing out people that build in flood plains, and subsidizing questionable crops (wheat in western Colorado, soy beans in fields that seem designed to fail), on the other hand, I'm drawing Social Security.