Day 121 - May Story

May Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

The doorbell rang at ten in the morning. Hutch answered his door, but no one was there. He looked around. Nothing. It was a bit odd. Hutch slowly shut the door. He hadn’t been expecting anyone, but at the same time he was a little bit disappointed. Doorbells were full of intrigue and surprise. Strangers rang doorbells. Deliverymen rang doorbells. But then again, so did solicitors and religious fanatics. Still, it would have been nice if someone or something was there. After all, he had answered the door. And it wasn’t like he was particularly slow about it either. Hutch worked in the sales department for an event planning company. He got to show up late to work and leave early and finish his work while at home as a concession for not receiving a raise for the last three years.  Hutch was a fairly honest worker and actually did complete quite a bit of work while at home. Of course there was also a time or two that he did sleep in or claim to be with a client at a site visit when really he was off running personal errands. But he assumed a little of that was to be expected now and again.

Gavin was Hutch’s best friend at the office. That didn’t speak to the depth or strength of their relationship; it simply meant that neither had very many other options. They were the two men at an event coordination company, surrounded by a lot of women. Neither minded it, but they had bonded quickly over those moments when they needed a testosterone outlet.

Hutch told Gavin about the doorbell and Gavin told Hutch about the wonderful celebration they were going to have that night.

“I don’t want to go out tonight.”

“That’s too bad, because you’re going out tonight.”

“Why am I going out tonight?”

“It’s a holiday.”

“May first is a holiday?”

“Yes. And you’re going out.”

“Why?”

“Because raucous things occur on May Day.”

“Raucous things?”

“Raucous things, my young friend. And we are two young and capable men and we should take advantage of them.”

“You make a convincing argument—“

“Indeed I do.”

“But—“

“No. No buts. We are young men and raucous things occur on May Day. There is no argument for that.”

“Explain it to me again.”

“Pagans. Celts. Women who believe in nature and spirits and rituals and things like that.”

“You understand that women who believe in nature aren’t all Pagan hippies looking to have a love affair and that ‘ritual’ is not a code word for orgy.”

“Raucous. Things”

“You just like saying that word.”

“Indeed I do.”

“You make it sound disgusting.”

“Yes.”

“And you know that basically nothing is going to happen tonight.”

“Yes I realize there’s a very good chance of that.”

“But we’re still going out.”

“Yes. Yes we are.”

Gavin and Hutch went to a bar called Triple Crown that was not a sports bar. The bar had no references to the horse race or to baseball. It also had no references to a May Day celebration or anything else that was earthy or pagan or ritualistic. Gavin was not to be deterred.  Hutch made no real attempt to meet any women, or inspire any sort of revelry, and yet it was he who ended up talking to a young woman named Rebecca. He asked flirtatiously if he could call her Becky or Bec and she had agreed. Hutch told her what he knew of May Day, which was very little, and what his friend Gavin thought it celebrated, which was mostly wrong. Bec thought that maybe they were communists, but Hutch didn’t understand the reference.

“May Day celebrates labor and labor struggles. It was very very communist and very very Soviet Union.”

“I thought it was pagans and earth spirits and women dancing around in fields conjuring up nature elements.”

“Labor. But yours sounds fun too.”

“It’s what I heard.”

“You got it wrong.”

“It was what I heard.”

“Are you asking if I’ll go streaking in the park with you?”

“I… is that an option?”

“No.”

“Then no. That’s not what I was asking.”

“Are you sure you’re not a trade unionist?”

“Not that I know of.”

“We could discuss Marx or the proletariat or the struggle.”

“What struggle?”

“I was hoping you knew.”

Bec told Hutch some other facts about May Day that he had never heard of. She explained to him the idea of Christians stealing pagan holidays and assimilating them into their own festivities. Hutch didn’t know what that had to do with spring or May, but he nodded and agreed. He had found that to be a useful tactic when people explained vast conspiracies of history to him as if they were plain and ordinary fact. He figured she was right, but he didn’t know. Bec added that May Day was at one point a day for lovers and kissing and giving candy as part of a sort of hide and seek game. That sounded like a lot of fun. She explained how Valentine’s Day had either been made up or co-opted by the greeting  card companies, but either her explanation was a little jumbled or Hutch was getting a little bit drunk, because it didn’t seem possible to him that the company could invent and steal the same idea.

Hutch left the bar with Gavin, but also with Bec’s phone number. He wasn’t going to get to go streaking in the park with her or discuss the glorious revolution over vodka, but he would be able to call her at some point in the near future.

Hutch told Gavin about May Day. About the other May Day. Gavin had also discovered there was also such a thing as Lei Day, which was primarily celebrated in Hawaii.  A man at the bar had several fake plastic Lei’s to hand out to women, but had quite a few left so he gave Gavin a blue one. Gavin couldn’t remember what the point of Lei Day was, but they both figured it must have something to do with celebrating Hawaiian history or heritage or something of that nature.

“There are too many holidays on May First.”

“I concur.”

“There is no reason for there to be so many holidays on one day.”

Hutch concurred again.

“We need to spread them out. Nobody needs to celebrate that much on one particular day.”

“We certainly don’t.”

The next morning, the doorbell rang. When Hutch answered the door, there was no one there. But there on the front stoop, was a small basket of spring flowers and candy. The flowers were beautiful. There was a card that read “Catch me if you can and a kiss is yours.” Hutch looked for a deliveryman, but there was none to be found. He took a few steps outside so he could look both ways, but seemingly there was no one.

It was a pleasant mystery to be solved, but he thought he already knew who had left him the basket. A bold move, he thought. Not waiting for him to call, and taking the bull by the horns. He liked this girl more and more. Eating a piece of the candy, Hutch thought that May Day really did beat the hell out of Valentine’s Day.