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I live in a big city. Not the biggest in the country, but one of the biggest.
But damn can it be small.
N and I planned dinner tonight. She is having boy problems (too many), I am having girl problems (too few) and as you can imagine we were going to be LOADS of fun.
Because I haven’t had sushi since I got back from Japan, we went to the hot Japanese place in this big city and asked for a table for two.
While we waited – well, you my fine reader, you know what’s coming next – we ran into another coworker who was so excited to see us. She insisted that we sit with her, it would be like a party… because 25 was meeting her there… YAY. (This coworker knows nothing of 25 and me, just that we seem to get along at work.)
Are you kidding me?
This big city has a lot of restaurants. Really, look in any direction and you’ll see lots of them.
And that was where I was reminded once again, that great friendships are so often about what is not said out loud.
N suddenly grabbed her cell phone out of her purse, flipped it open and started talking.
“Yeah, we just got here. Oh you want to go there instead? Are you sure? Ok… we’ll be right there.”
She snapped the phone shut, shook her head and apologized to me and the woman we know.
It turns out the the friends we were meeting decided they really didn’t want sushi, we were off to Italian instead.
And that’s where we got our table for two and talked about our boy and girl problems.
My first long-term relationship was in college. D and I spent almost three years together, three years that included all of the great things that come with college; formals, naked sleepovers and youth bliss, as well as all of the crap; a crazy stalker, teen angst and bad behavior brought on by immaturity.
Then our 20s came along.
And my theme this week in almost everything I do is how we don’t know shit when we’re in our 20s.
I moved east and treated D badly.
She moved west and tells me now that she treated other people badly.
Our 20s passed and then in our 30s we reconnected at an odd time. I was getting divorced, she was getting married.
We saw each other for the first time in almost 10 years in New York, less than two months after 9/11.
Immediately upon seeing her, I was reminded of everything good about our relationship, all of the reasons I wanted to be with her and only her in college.
At a time when my marriage was over and when the world was a new place of terror, I felt that feeling of being safe and loved and comforted, all before she ever opened her mouth.
Since that day I have sought her out time and time again when I need that feeling, and I am a lucky person that she has always been there for me.
This week we have spoken several times as I try to bounce back from the end of the relationship with 25. I get off the phone and feel safe, loved and comforted.
Perhaps it was because we spent emotionally-formative years so intimately, perhaps it’s just that special chemistry that comes along so rarely. Actually I don’t know that I care why it is, I only care that it is.
She told me tonight that she is who she is now because of the way our 20s shook out. My poor behavior led her to the other side of the country, led her to her husband and to her career. It all also led me to where I am, which during any other week I would tell you is a great place.
I still get a tightness in my chest when I think of certain ways I acted 15 years ago. She tells me it had to be that way for things to now be this way.
Her husband is a wonderful man. There are few men out there who would put up with a wife’s college boyfriend, let alone invite him into their home and become his friend. I am proud to say that the husband is my friend. When I see the two of them together and see their happiness now, and know that my behavior sent her to the place where they met, I realize she is right, it had to be that way for it to be this way.
I am so glad it is this way.
A couple of times over the past two weeks I’ve mentioned the woman with whom I’m smitten. Henceforth, I shall refer to her as WWWIS.
I have hesitated to say much about her, because I really seem to like her but I’m afraid that if I put it out there I’ll jinx it. Also because I haven’t really gotten to the point of putting everything “out there.”
But for the love of all things good, I have to write about what could be the perfect dating day.
We slept in a bit (yes, we’re to the point of sleeping in together). Once we got vertical, we went out to brunch and along the way grabbed the Times. WWWIS has never done the Sunday puzzle, so we started it together, while eating at a neighborhood joint.
After filling ourselves with great Sunday brunch food, we went to the park, where we worked on the puzzle a little more.
Then we walked and walked around town before grabbing a movie. We watched Borat together and laughed our asses off. We were hungry, and went to another neighborhood eatery, had pizza and filled in a few more squares.
Finally, we had to go our separate ways for the day.
Look, I know this may seem a little dull on paper. It wasn’t dull to live through. It was just delightful.
And what am I supposed to think when one of the puzzle clues called for a 4-letter word for “Totally Nuts”
Gaga!
Yes, I think I am.
I sort of want to write about this woman with whom I’m completely smitten, but I’m not quite there yet… there being that place where I can write everything about myself here where everyone can read it.
And because I’m not there, I know I have at times been a little boring.
Just wait until you read this one. It’s about parking cars!
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There was a scene in the opening montage of a 70s cop drama that showed a dozen or so cruisers pulling out of the police station lot, in perfect unison.
Here at my workplace the parking lot here is divided into two levels. The bottom is covered, and those 12 spots go to the highest level bosses here. The rest of us park up top, in the open. Normally, that’s fine, maybe even better, because our spots are actually closer to the door.
But, on a night like this, being outside sucks.
Our city is being pelted by little ice balls. So far there are several inches on the ground, and on our cars. It’s just crappy.
At 6:30, when the daysiders left, they all had a good 15 minutes of scraping before they could actually pull out of the lot. From the windows, it sort of looked like the string section of a symphony, as they all moved their scrapers back and forth, back and forth.
We weren’t just watching for fun, though. We were waiting for the all clear, and shortly after 7pm, we got it.
There are about 15 of us who work here in the evening. And while there are fewer than 15 official spots under the cover in our lot, we are a resourceful bunch. We also look out for each other.
One by one, like the open of that TV show, we pulled out of the upper lot and filled into the lower area. The lines dividing the spaces are unimportant. What matters is that we make room for as many cars as possible. Since we had only been at work for a few hours so far, we didn’t have as much scraping to do, so we spent a few minutes clearing the icy crap, and then our cars got to spend the rest of the evening in executive luxury.
It’s a bonding experience.
Cosmo is more like himself today. The doctor prescribed a heavy duty NSAID and maybe it’s working. Tomorrow he goes to his regular vet for a more detailed examination, and then he’s going to stay with MB for a bit. He’s happy and not at all uncomfortable.
Who takes a 5-year-old to the animal ER? Actually, that’s not a fair question because I know that sometimes you have no choice in child care. But, to take the little boy into the consult with the vet seems cruel. Everyone in the waiting room heard him scream and yell that he didn’t want Lucky to die. I’m not a fan of glossing over life for kids, but is it so bad to tell the little boy that Lucky has to go to a farm?
MB and her partner are having, or getting a baby. They’re adopting from overseas and are far along in the process. I had been expecting them to ask me for a sample. All of that practice for nothing.
Some college students around here are in hot water for hiring a hooker, a hooker who is HIV positive. Lots of things to touch on here, but my first question is why college kids need to hire a hooker. Is there any period of life when sex is more available than in college?
And this gets me to my final topic which came up over the weekend. When I’m President of the World, one of my first decrees will be that every school have barrels of condoms by every door. The students will learn sex-ed, and be told that they probably aren’t ready to have sex, and they really should wait. But we all know better, and on their way out the door they should be able to fill their pockets with rubbers, with no embarrassment. Teens have sex, and that will never stop. Teen pregnancy and STD’s can be prevented though. And while we’re at it, get the girls to line up for the HPV vaccine. It’s not going to make them have sex, it’s not going to tell them it’s ok to have sex, but it’s going to protect the ones who were going to have sex anyway from a tough price to pay, cancer. I have many female friends who have a little extra angst when they get their annual pap’s, all because of an easily transmitted virus they got in their younger days. Imagine how much easier they might sleep if they’d had a vaccine.
Cosmo is sick… and we don’t know why. It started yesterday with an odd limp. This morning when he woke up, he had trouble walking. It was like he was drunk.
I called my ex-wife, MB, and we took him to the doggie emergency room.
MB and I were married for 5 years, we’ve been divorced for the same amount of time. For the first year or so after we split up, we didn’t speak, There was a lot of hurt and anger. Our joint custody of Cosmo is one of the reasons we reestablished our friendship. Then we remembered that we do actually like each other.
It’s sort of like a brotherly/sisterly affection now. I have zero romantic feelings towards her and I have no doubt that she lacks that same feeling towards me, but it is still a lot of fun hanging out .
Back when we were married, we had just finished a phone conversation while I was at work. A coworker walked up to me and said she knew I’d been talking to my wife. She knew, because she said she never saw me smile or laugh as much as I did when I was talking to MB.
That remains true today. As we sat in the ER, waiting for a couple of hours, we cracked each other up.
We talked about the hard issue too, of what to do with a 9-year-old bullmastiff who might have a serious problem. That wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t terrible. It was comforting dealing with it together.
At the end of it all, there was no official diagnosis on Cosmo. It could be something simple like a neck injury or something not so simple like a brain tumor. Or it could be anything in between.
Quite a range.
Right now he’s sleeping on his bed and he seems comfortable.
Cosmo and I were walking down the street tonight and passed a younger couple.
As they approached the front steps of her apartment building, she turned and faced him, several feet from the door. She squared her shoulders, kept her hands in her pocket and said:
“That was nice, we should hang out again some time.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “No, really.”
“Yeah, it was fun… mmm… ok.”
Then she jutted her chin out to the left, opened her arms and lightly hugged the guy.
First date, last date.
Right after my divorce was final, every one of my parents’ friends declared they had found the perfect woman for me. I’d never been on a blind date in my life and it sounded like fun. So many of my parents’ friends had known me for decades, they surely knew what they were doing.
The most interesting of the offers was Woman X. She had been described to me as gorgeous, smart, funny and successful.
Holy crap. That’s the perfect woman. What on earth could go wrong?!
I picked up her up at her office and we went to a quiet restaurant in the city. Perhaps the quiet atmosphere was contagious, because she didn’t talk much. And that’s ok. There is nothing wrong with quiet. I asked a lot of questions, got a lot of one or two word answers, but I figured she was just shy.
As the silence continued we both drank more. And as I drank more through the silence, I guess I started talking more.
I was only aware of my alleged conversation domination when she brought it up over desert. Slurringly she declared, “you sure do talk a lot.”
“I’m sorry. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
“Yeah… yeah there is.” She was beginning to sound like the angry drunk at a saloon in a western, right before he tries unsuccessfully to pull a gun on our hero.
“Great… what is it?”
“Let’s talk about masturbation!”
Just a note about me. I am very WASPy. We don’t talk about those things.
I don’t think I answered, but if I did it sounded like the noise Scooby-Do would make when he was surprised.
“You’re a guy. How often do you do it?”
That time I did answer. “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
“Well let me ask you this,” she challenged. “Do you ever do it in your car on the way home from work?”
This was a question I could answer quickly and truthfully. “No. No, I never have.”
“Really? It’s a great way to let off steam. Of course, it’s embarrassing when the truckers drive by.”
I drank more wine. Much more. I don’t remember any more of the dinner conversation. How could I? A woman I’d known for 2 hours wanted to know my masturbation habits and told me hers. What else could there be to remember?
Oh… this. I do remember this. We shared a taxi that dropped her off first.
I gave her a light hug.
“That was nice, we should hang out again some time.”
Yesterday I heaped praise upon my friend who writes the blog Lemon Gloria. She doesn’t know that because I haven’t actually told anyone about this blog.
Still, she wrote about me in her Wednesday entry and told her readers (she has readers) that I am a “very good writer.”
It made my heart sink.
First of all, I never really react well to praise. I am convinced that I will only let the person down the next time.
Now I’m afraid to write her even the simplest email.
What if it doesn’t measure up?
Let’s say I want to give her a heads up that I’m going to be in her city. If I don’t state it elegantly, then I’m eating alone.
Next time she asks me to tell her about my day, I’ll have to pen a new Ulysses.
Second, what does it mean to be a “very good writer?”
I use proper grammar and punctuation (most of the time, I have problems with too many commas). I think I do a good job of picking the write words and conveying emotion.
But I really don’t have a good imagination. Let’s just pretend for a moment that my technical skills were as good as Capote’s. Is that even half of the art?
He still thought up Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Other Voices, Other Rooms and Music For Chameleons.
My best attempts at fiction apparently aren’t all that clever.
A few years ago I started to work on a novel. It was about a super-cool, smart, heroic television producer who saved his big city from the reign of crime.
The one similarity with me was the television producer part. “Fictional-producer” was the most popular man in town, the women followed him home. Lots of women followed him home. He always let them in.
At the same time, “nonfictional-producer,” me, was dating a woman who went a little crazy. One day while I was at work, she decided to read everything on my computer. No email, Excel spreadsheet, Quicken account or Word document escaped her scrutiny.
The Quicken data should have been enough, but it seems the tales of my hero producer are what sent her over the edge.
She was outraged that I had been running around on her and waking up next to strange models morning after morning. Somehow, the part where I captured a serial killer didn’t set off any truth alarms.
When I told her it was my attempt at writing a book, she laughed, and threw wine in my face. Then she laughed some more.
There was no way I could have made up all that stuff.
I’ve never been sure whether that was a compliment or not.
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