Happy Hello, Weenie

The little kids running around in their costumes look so cute I just want to eat them up.

Preferably roasted at 450 with rosemary and garlic and some new potatoes on the side.

Daylight Frittering Time, The Chauffeur, and An Unexpected Gift

Since we're not saving daylight, does that mean we are frittering?

Yesterday I chauffeured my breasts to the Upper West Side for a playdate with Baby Boy. Not that it was planned -- I was kind of at a loose end because I couldn't track down Hawkins for our planned brunch, couldn't scare up EmKay for a plan B, so on a whim I rang the little Italian to see if he wanted to get brunch and catch a flick. Lots of good films out there these days that we both want to see, you know.

Turns out he was having a Lazy Sunday Afternoon -- one of those lie around in your pj's and watch videos kind of days (okay, so he got more done between 7 am and 2 o'clock than most people get accomplished in a 12-hour day, he earned the lazy time).

As soon as I took off my coat, he announced he had a present for me. Ummmm. Can someone explain to this guy that we aren't dating anymore -- I broke up with you! You're not supposed to buy me presents! Turns out, he found an amazing necklace with a hand of Fatima charm that is perfect-perfect-perfect for me. I'm touched and charmed. Actually, what I am is tickled to death. I haven't had a man buy me a present for no reason in god-knows-how-long. I mean, it's just not the kind of girl I am. For some reason, men don't seem inspired to give me shit. I think I've mentioned it before. How does one become a woman that guys want to buy shit for?

No sooner do I flop down to watch the movie with him than he's on the Girls. Horny little tit-monkey that he is.

We did a little wrestlemania, then I walked him down to his meeting and got on a train to the Lower East Side to grab a Cuban sandwich and a beer at EmKay's bar. By this time, it was 7 o'clock and I *still* hadn't eaten anything, so I was stahaharving.

EmKay asked what I had been up to during the afternoon -- I mentioned that I had been hanging out with the Italian.

"Ohhhh," he said with a knowing leer, "so that explains the glow."

I can't help it, I've always given off a post-coital glow that is as obvious as a 5-year-old's drawing of the sun. It's probably more like the stink lines on a cartoon character, but there you have it. You can always tell when I've been up to somthing no good -- or rather, up to something really, really good because I get this happy buddha quality about me. When I used to leave the married guy's office after a particularly good romp, I used to get smiles and leers and second looks all the way home.

I'm just a horny bastard.

PS - I'm back into my skinny jeans after 3 years.

A Wee Miracle, My Not-So-Little Secret, and Crash-Readiness

I LOVE when I have little enlightenment moments. Sometimes they'll occur when I'm having a conversation with someone and I have to wonder, what does the other person see on my face as it's happening? Do I get that starey still look like C-3PO when they turn him off? Or do I get that meditative middle-distance gaze? Or that hyper-attentive listening like an animal thing?

Anyway, today I bounced into work because a miracle occurred last night while I was sitting at home. I was watching TV and noodling around on my guitar, just sort of zoning out, when all of a sudden I focused on what was happening with my hands. I started paying attention and realized that I was playing something I had never heard before and making it up as I went along. Holy capo, Batman, I said to myself! Well, what it turned out I was meant to be writing was NOT a lover's lament about being the Other Woman.

When I opened myself up to what I am supposed to be writing, it turns out to be... a lullaby?

Well, I'm just gonna go with it. See where it takes me. Exciting.

So this morning I ping the Hot Retoucher (from this point forward, HR) with an email, heedless of my "new rule" that we shouldn't contact each other through our work email or through my "name" email because god forbid anyone here at the office should think we're friends. (Side note, if anyone ever asks, I'm gonna say we've been at it like knives since a week after I started. That should shut them up). I'm excited. There's not only the realization that this actually does live in me -- but the more important realization that for the first time in my adult life, I am allowing myself to be... an artist. Just acknowledging.

I have to thank Baby Boy for this. Okay, so the sex was a disaster, but he's the first person who ever introduced me to someone with "oh, she gets it, she's an artist too." (Too bad about the bad sex. How does bad sex happen? He's actually a hyperactive little hottie and we were attracted to each other but somehow couldn't make the parts fit together right...)

So anyway, I guess HR decided that avoiding each other was as ridiculous as I though it was because he actually came right over to my desk to ask what was going on.

So we chat for a bit. It's kind of hard to do in a place as grim as this (oh, there is news on that front, too... I thought I wrote my own death warrant yesterday but it actually turned out to be something good... more on that another time)

Somehow the conversation gets around to monogamy. And he says, "Well, you don't believe in monogamy." Hmm. I'm not sure about that. I know I believe marriage is a bunch of crap. But monogamy? I'm not sure anymore. The most serious relationship I had (with EmKay) was devoted and faithful and passionate for five years. But -- when I'm not in a relationship, monogamy as a concept doesn't even exist in my life. And for some reason, society expects people who are NOT in monogamous relationships to be celibate.

Isn't that a load of crap? Because I'm not in a relationship with anyone, I am supposed to forego my natural and very healthy urges and shake hands at the door? I don't think so.

But as for monogamy -- that's my little secret. And I think it has been the real reason why I won't get involved with anyone. I talk the cynic... but the cynic hides the most hopeless romantic. Not that I wish some handsome stranger will come along and sweep me off my feet... but secretly, I want to be THAT GIRL again for someone. I don't want to be someone's dirty little secret -- I want to be someone's Sunday-morning girl. I don't ever want to be the styrofoam peanuts that fills in the empty spaces of someone else's life, I don't want to make it tolerable for someone to go home and sleep next to THE PERSON HE PICKED for another week. I want to be the girl who gets picked.

So that's part of my dirty little secret.

I also realized that all these years, I've talked about EmKay by telling people how lucky I was.

"I'm one of the lucky ones," I said (probably with insufferable smugness), "I've had the Great Love of My Life." If capital letters could be spoken, I was doing it. "A lot of people aren't so lucky -- they end up settling for someone who can just give security and babies." Frankly, I'm surprised that I haven't been slapped, hard, and frequently.

The FLAW in my thinking is this: I believed that you only get ONE. I believed for all these years that I walked up to the buffet, filled my plate, sat down and ate, and that was all I got. I'm sorry, no more shrimp or lobster for you, miss, you've already been through the line once.

Oh, honey. (I just want to call myself honey and pat myself on the knee.)

Oh, honey, didn't you know this is an all you can EAT buffet?

Notes from Randomalia

I've grown weary of my own mewling, so here's a little lighthearted stuff for you:

1) How many men sent their wives off to the theater alone last Thursday, the night the Mets blew it?

2) Don't people realize that synthetic waterproof fabrics hold odors? That stink on the subway is YOU, Mr. Helly Hansen/NorthFace/Columbia! Wash your damn coat.

3) I'm very, very sorry to see the following 1970's fashion trends have returned in full hipster force: Gay-porno-star moustaches, bushy sideburns, and most woefully, a hairstyle I can only call "The Garfunkel."

4) I would love to see one of those tatted-out, full-sleeve hipsters get beat up by a Hell's Angel. Just on principal.

5) When I look at myself in store windows as I walk down the street, it's not because I think I look hot. I am just afraid that my skirt might have somehow gotten tucked into my underpants.

6) One day last week the L train was so crowded I had to let FIVE trains go by before I could fit onto one. I tell ya, the ghetto must have been completely empty that morning.

7) I haven't actually met my new neighbor but I've suspected for a while that he is gay because of the loud dance music he plays at 8:00 in the morning. At first I felt bad about stereotyping like that and told myself "Maybe he's some heterosexual who happens to like dance music -- this IS an Italian neighborhood after all." This morning when I left, he was blasting and wailing along to Cher. "Do you be-leheeve in lahf after luhv?" I don't feel bad for the stereotyping anymore.

8) Walleyed people have a moral obligation to tell you which eye to look at when you are talking to them.

9) How do drag queens dress up on Halloween? Do they wear business suits and khakis?

A Little BackStory

So, someone who before that drinky Friday night basically didn't exist for you except as "the hot retoucher" extends the hand of friendship. You aren't sure where it comes from, but okay, you say to yourself, I'll play along.

But being your mother's daughter, you're a little suspicious (You maybe are a little too fond of exclaiming "Estoy sospechosa!" when things seem a little too easy). But with your dharma vows to try to remain open to all of your experience, and a generous plop of your father's gregarious nature larded through you -- you are, in fact, a USDA Grade Triple-A Prime, Luger's-quality cote de beouf of Aiko larded with Marty -- you shake that hand of friendship.

Things get warm and personal. Maybe a little too warm and personal (you do tend to have, as Anne Lamott might say, some teeny, tiny boundary issues).

You've been spending a lot of time working out your shit, slowly, often painfully. You have had a strange and terrible and wonderful summer, and as luck would have it, the strangeness and terribleness and wonderfulness seem to have worked a miracle and maybe pried open your heart a bit. As luck would also have it, you happen to have a spot open for a new friend. You believe that maybe this opening of your heart and the opening for a friend are perhaps no coincidence.

So, you reach out, and you take the hand of friendship that is offered to you, because maybe, just maybe, you have been having a really hard time with the politics of the place where you work, and no one has really made any effort to be particularly friendly to you.

You, a gregarious person who thrives on building partnerships and friendly relationships in order to be successful at business, you find that some days at 6:00 you barely make it to the corner of Trinity and Rector before you find yourself weeping with loneliness. You don't tell anyone, even your best friend, how you sit in the park some days across from the Hole In the Ground after work and cry and cry in despair at the idea that you made the most expensive mistake of your life.

You didn't notice till later that it is an office populated by loners, everyone huddled like strays over their bowls ready to snap at anyone who comes too close. In fact, no one ever asks the bland polite questions that co-workers ask each other, like "How was your weekend?" "How are you this morning?" No one asks where you come from or where you worked before. It's as if someone smote the ground with a magic wand and up you sprung, wholly formed and without any warning to anyone else.

You look into your boss's eyes and you see a cipher. He frequently mouths management words like "teamwork" but what you are really seeing is just another scared person who feels desperate to protect his own position. But that's for another entry. We're talking about the hand of friendship here.

And don't forget the person offering the hand of friendship is in the middle of an ocean of shit all his own. But for our purposes, this isn't his story. And since you can't know anyone else's experience, we're just gonna let this one be all about you. But maybe, just maybe, he looked into your eyes and saw that maybe here was another gentle soul to whom he felt safe offering the hand of friendship, because maybe he needed one, too. Maybe (and this is pure speculation and making shit up now!) he had been feeling a little lonely at the place, too. Maybe he looked into your eyes and saw that friendship with you is actually a pretty safe place. Who knows? Like we've said, now we are making shit up.

"Oh, fuck it," you say. Because there's something gentle in his eyes that you like. Here is someone in this workplace who actually seems interested in you, the person. Not you, the co-worker. In fact, you, the person, seem to delight him, so you just decide to go with it.

You are thrilled that you might, just might, be able to stomach the job if you know you have a friend there. Just one friend at the workplace doesn't seem to be too much to ask. In fact, after a few minutes of conversation, you realize that if you had met this person outside of work, you would have chosen him to be your friend.

The rest of your life is nothing but your friends. If someone were to ask you, in your life outside of work "Do you ever get lonely?" you would be honestly puzzled. Loneliness seems an anathema to you. It's pretty hard to feel lonely when you know that you are walking the earth loved.

But wait, you should have been more careful.

Because what you didn't see, as you were reaching out delightedly to take the hand of friendship, was the fist that was forming behind his back. And before you can even blink, you find yourself hard on your ass on the floor, touching the bloody lip in wonder and your tongue throbbing from where you bit it when you sat down so hard.

And what you hear, in your mind is a voice that sounds remarkably like your mother's:

"I told you so."

So, what you do is what you've done your whole, entire life. You wipe the blood from your lip, blink back the tears, roll down the shutters over your eyes and your soul, and make sure you are dusted off. You pick the gravel out of your palms and back away slowly, because you have learned.