i'm staring at the asphalt wondering what's buried underneath where i am...
- Postal Service, "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight"
"The Restaurant at the End of the District"
THE STORY THUS FAR: I stood on the corner of 18th and P and scanned the tidy intersection for Cafe Luna. I saw the Iraqi Embassy and across the street from that stood an embassy for some other faraway place I'd never want to go to with a little less aplomb on the geo-political radar -- like Malaysia or Symaria or someplace -- but no restaurants anywhere.
When last I'd come to our nation's capital via Chinatown bus, there'd been a warm welcoming party of two to greet me. This time, as I'd crossed catycorner into the grid of the District, bi-secting numbered streets and lettered lanes along New York Avenue, I'd been instructed to meet Kate and a couple of her friends at a trendy little basement bar and bistro where they were finishing a bottle of wine.
"It's on 18th and P," Kate had told me over the phone. "18th and P."
And yet, here I stood with nary an eatery in sight.
When I called Kate again with a desperate plea for help, she seemed rather put out. "It's right there!" she said. "Uh, there's a man in black outside. You just go down the stairs." The more she spoke, the more her words seemed to stretch and dip and bend. "It's 18th and P," she slurred, and it suddenly occurred to me that she was drunk.
I heard a murmuring on her end of the line for a moment. "Wha?" Kate said to whomever she was with. Then she almost seemed to whisper "Really?" before her voice came lurching back in my direction. "Clark," she explained. "It's 16th and P. 16th and P."
"Oh," I said calmly. "Well that's a little different, isn't it?"
THE FRENCH CONNECTION: In the opening scene of the third season premiere of Dawson's Creek, our eponymous Mr. Leery is taking the bus back to Capeside after a summer with his mom in Philadelphia. And of course, the girl sitting next to him is drop dead gorgeous, and they have this idealized little chat about life that leads to plenty of drama and existential crisis for our young nebbish hero down the line.
This has never been my experience on the bus. Ever. And it certainly wasn't my experience on this particular excursion along the Eastern Seaboard.
I did sit next to a girl. And she was beautiful in the way that every woman between the ages of 18-30 is beautiful in New York City: Fashionable and sophisticated and cool. So of course, I didn't talk to her. Our only verbal exchange -- besides the usual excuse mes and pardons and infrequent I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to touch thats common with of sitting side by side with a stranger – was when she sneezed and I said "God bless you."
She spoke to her cell phone in English and French with equal skill. And at some point, it occurred to me that it might be worth mentioning that I'd taken four years of French in high school and all I remembered was je ne sais pas ("I don't know") and j'ai faim, zoot alors! ("I'm hungry, dammit!"), but that seemed asinine somehow.
So we sat in silence. She scanned articles with a dictionary and I read the copy of 32 Stories I finally found in a Barnes & Nobles in the village.
And it was my most intimate relationship in almost a year.
FLY ME TO THE MOON: When I finally reached Café Luna – which was prominently displayed at the corner of 16th and P – Kate introduced me to the two girls with which she'd shared five bottles of wine. And of course they were beautiful in the way that every woman from Boerne is beautiful: freakishly so. There's either something in the water down their, or – and I think this far more likely somehow – all of the ugly baby girls are shipped off to Dallas.
"I'm sorry," I told them. "I'm not allowed to fall in love with any more of Kate's friends. It never works out for me."
Their names were Kate and Elizabeth, but I'm not sure which is which because Kate kept calling the other Kate Elizabeth and/or vice versa for the rest of the night.
All three of them were roaring drunk. They were drunk to a cartoon extreme. If you were watching a movie and you saw someone acting like that, it'd seem so hammy and extreme that you'd complain that they couldn't act like a convincing drunk.
I excused myself with one of them and it was speculated that we may have been hooking up in the bathroom. (I think we all know, that type of thing will never happen to me.) I think this was the same one who – upon learning my name was Clark – proceeded to explain to me how much she loved that name and how she wanted to name her son that because her boyfriend's last name was Kent, but he wasn't going to let it happen. (My feelings on this revelation are too complicated to get into right now.)
I was just starting to look over the wine list when they decided they had to get out of there. (Why management hadn't made this decision for them earlier, I'm not sure. They must be really cool in the District.) Katizabeth and Elizakate wanted to go home, but Kate had heard about a party with an open bar on "20th and P" (which – of course – was really 20th and Q) and she was rather insistent that they come with her.
"Come on, ya'll," she kept saying. "Come on!"
This would have worked on me. Hell, I'm sure it's worked on me a dozen times at least. But not only did they refuse, they refused with a strength of conviction I doubt I could muster sober. We stepped out onto P and they left. Katizabeth walked toward a taxi and the next thing I knew, the taxi was pulling away quickly. I didn't see her inside, but she was gone. As for Elizakate, she just simply ceased to exist on the material plane.
Leaving Kate and I to make our little jaunt across the alphanumeric system on our own.
THE LONG WAY HOME: We navigated Dupont Circle with surprising ease considering I was new to town and Kate was drunk as a lemur, if not more so. There was some confusion as to the address, as Kate kept switching numbers for letters (and never the same numbers or letters), but eventually surrendered the post-it note with the address so I could get us to the Childe Harold only so we could find that her friend was gone, and that – while the bar certainly wasn't closed, it wasn't exactly open either.
So, after a doomed trip to Krispy Kreme (which closes quite promptly at Midnight), we made our way back to Kate's un-gaudy apartment complex on 21st Street between E and F. It couldn't have taken more than twenty minutes, but it seemed like hours. Kate was all over the sidewalk weaving one way than the other, and muttering about how she was the obnoxious drunk person she'd always dreaded seeing on the street.
I'm always worried I'm becoming everything I hate. I could relate, Kate.
Later, between several bouts of violent vomiting back home, she kept apologizing to me. I didn't understand why. I'd seen & done far worse. She hadn't puked on me. It wasn't like she'd then proceeded to phone in threats and pleas to my loved ones. And she didn't steal any of my underwear in a drunken haze. Although I will say that when I was getting dressed the next morning and discovered that I didn't have any other socks besides the ones I'd worn into town, I briefly suspected Kate's drunken thievery to be the cause.
I have since returned home, and sure enough, two pair lay right there. On the bed. Right where I left them.
THE GEORGETOWN RATS: I'd done my research before I'd left the Garden State. It used to be that I couldn't come to a different town without making my way to the local comic book stores. These out-of-town experiences often account for the acquisition of key issues of my comic book collection. Like when I finally found Black Panther #26 during a mock trial trip to Murpheesboro, Tennessee, or when I first came to the tiny hamlet of Columbia, Missouri, in the summer of 1998 and discovered Deadpool #3-5 and finally had the complete works of Joe Kelly (thus far).
So when Kate asked me what I wanted to do on Saturday, I said, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe walk around. You know, up Wisconsin Avenue. Maybe down by Dumbarton. You know. Whatever."
On the way up, we stopped off at H & M so Kate could get her sister a gift for her 21st birthday and I could look for a purple polo shirt. I'm trying to skew my personal fashion concept for 2005 toward a green and purple color scheme. I never found one, but Kate found a tasteful lime green top.
One of the employees had my dream hair. It was this beautiful black afro and I wanted to ask him how he got it to grow out and puff up so much, but I didn't know how. I always figured this is the type of thing I'm just supposed to know, but I don't because I didn't have any black friends growing up.
And while Kate was waiting on line, someone stopped me to ask if I could help her find something nice for a friend, at which point, I explained to her that I didn't work there. This happens to me all the time, usually when I'm coming off of one of my jobs where I have to wear a uniform – like Target or the Ocho – and I go to Walgreens to buy something sweet and someone associates my attire with the service industry. In this case, I was wearing my usual grubby street clothes. No reason in the world to suspect I was an employee. And yet, there must have just been something about me that said, "Hey, I'm here to help."
Looking back on it now, she was kind of cute. I should have told her that I didn't work there, but I was willing to give it a shot.
WHISPER IN A QUIET ROOM: After lunch at a burger place called Five Guys -- which Kate kind of described as Booches if Booches wasn't fucking delicious -- we went to the comic book store and I spent about twenty minutes poking around the largest and widest ranging collection of trade paperbacks I've ever seen.
"Do you have the Queen and Country Scriptbook?" I asked the shopkeep on our way out. He told me that he'd had it before but he was pretty sure they'd sold them all and I told him that I really liked his store.
"That was really good," Kate told me once we were back on the street. "That was a nice little exchange. He knew what you were talking about and everything."
"Yeah," I said. "My life really got a lot easier once I realized that whispering 'excuse me' doesn't help anyone."
IN A FUTURE AGE: "Make two wishes," the psychic said. "One of them you're gonna tell me. The other one you'll keep to yourself."
Kate needed a while to think, and I found this suspect. We all know what we want most in life, we just don't always want other people to know we want them. I told her I could hide in the bathroom if she wanted some privacy, but she insisted it wasn't necessary -- especially when the psychic explained that the toilet was clogged up.
I found the psychic suspect as well.
Kate and I had seen the sign for $5 palm readings and decided to give it a try. When we made it up to the third floor apartment where this particular clairvoyant took residence, we were told that her sister was the one who did the $5 readings, and she wasn't there right then. Her own readings were $10.
I briefly wondered whether the sister psychic didn't know we were coming or just didn't care.
Kate made a wish and the psychic proceeded to give her vague snapshots of her psyche. "Something bad happened to you two years ago. A terrible heartbreak," she announced. "You have a good heart. People take advantage of that." And once she'd summed up Kate's past and present, she marched on into her future.
It was all over rather quickly, then it was my turn.
I wished to find a place of my own to live, but I didn't tell her how much I wanted to live in Hell's Kitchen. And I made the same second, secret wish I've been making for five years, which I know now was foolish. (Why didn't I wish for a Prolwer story?)
The psychic began reading me. Just like when she read Kate, she didn't go into a trance or have her eyes roll into the back of her head or any of the other affectations I've seen taken by those with "The Gift" on TV. She made her pronouncements simply and plainly with an accent straight from Woodhaven Boulevard.
"You've had a lot of heartbreak in your life," she told me. "A lot of bad relationships that haven't worked out. But you're going to be happy. You're going to be successful. You'll neet the love of your life in the next two years."
This bit about meeting the love of my life surprised me, because when I imagine the future of my love life, I never expect it to involve somebody new. I doubt any of you are ever going to set me up with someone you work with. I never think I'm going to be riding the subway, reading an issue of Daredevil and some pretty grad student on her way to NYU is going to look up at me and say, "Fucking Bendis. If he writes one more interrogation scene I think I'll scream," or that one of the interns at the office is going to pass by my cubicle and see my Ben Folds wallpaper and we'll talk about whether "Fear of Pop" is crap or not. And I doubt Alexis Bledel's ever going to write me back and say she loves my screenplay and may have developed similar feelings for the screenwriter.
No. I've always liked to believe that I've already met the love of my life. That one day, one of the girls who's broken my heart -- I don't care which -- will show up at my doorstep and tell me they're sorry they let me go. Or that in my wanderings, I'd bump into some girl I knew in high school, and we'd find out that our years apart had turned us into people who are perfect for each other.
She told me other things, too. She told me I'd live to the age of 80 (or thereabouts). That I'd travel, but it'd be for business, not pleasure (Book tours? Comic conventions? Mergers with other tax companies? Hanging on the back of the garbage truck?)
She said I'd have one child. A boy. I hope he's not like me. I'm sorry.
After our readings, she rushed us out the door. We'd come in with a couple who were planning on shelling out $40 a piece for tarot readings, and she seemed eager to fetch them from the hall where she'd told them to wait. When we got out to the hall, they were gone. She seemed surprised.
Shouldn't she have seen that coming?
SAGA OF THE ALIEN AFRO: Kate and I stop on a street corner so her stomach can settle a little. We're talking about the simple joys of company softball when I see the guy with the big beautiful afro from H & M. So I asked him if there was some trick. Because I've tried to grow my hair out, but there just comes a point when it stops. He looked at me and shook his head. "Naw man," he said in this deep bass line.
I don't know why I bother sometimes.
POSSIBLE COMBUSTIBLE EDISON: When we got back to the apartment, Kate challenged me to a rousing round of gin and I pulled one out at the last minute to beat her. Then we ordered a pizza and rented School of Rock.
I don't watch SNL anymore. I only ever see it when I'm around Kate on a Saturday night. So what were the odds it'd be the same episode I saw the last time I was with Kate on a Saturday night?
It's like a little slice of college really.
That night, I tossed and turned on Kate's new couch, not because I was uncomfortable -- she really thought I'd be more comfortable on the floor for some reason -- but because I was having weird dreams where the D.C. cops were blowing their CSI budget to prove I smoked a cigarette in Kate's bathroom despite my vehement denial and presumable innocence.
It's like a dollop of post-graduate paranoia really.
REGRETS, I'VE HAD A FEW: On Sunday morning, we returned to Cafe Luna for brunch. While I was waiting for a French BLT without bacon (still trying to wrap my brain around that one) Kate asked me what I'd do if I could take one thing back that I'd done. I thought about it for a moment, then I said, "I'd have gone to NYU instead of Mizzou," which I guess is tantamount to saying, "I'd make it so that I never met you," but I really didn't think about it that way. It just seemed like the only change I could have made that would have mattered.
I've had a second chance or two. For good or ill, things always seem to turn out the same.
I tried to come up with a couple of different answers, until Kate finally admitted that she was just trying to make conversation.
I don't know. If I could change things, I might.
MELANCHOLY AND THE INFINITE BUS TRIP: Somewhere between the bookstore/restaurant where we got cheesecake and cherry pie (and cappuccino to reach the $6.50 per person order minimum) and the return to the apartment to pack my things, I started dreading going back.
It didn't matter. It never does.
Somewhere along Pennsylvania Avenue, we ran into a crowd of people being held back by the police. I couldn't understand it. I asked Kate what everyone was staring at a moment before I passed a grove of trees and saw the White House in the distance.
"It's weird to live somewhere where people want to come," Kate said.
I couldn't put it better.
The ride home was uneventful... unless you count the odd outbursts from the guy six rows in front of me, and I don't.
We pulled into Times Square two hours late. On the way up to Port Authority -- where I'd discover that I hadn't just missed the return of Family Guy, but the last bus to Teaneck for good measure -- I stopped at the White Castle on 8th Avenue.
It wasn't very busy. Two guys were ordering at the counter while a man stood by the soda machine, talking on his cell phone. "Yeah, nigger," he was saying. "Yeah." He got off the phone when I was in the middle of order, shouting, "He cut me. He cut me."
I did the only thing I could do. I apologized. He just laughed and patted me on the back. "Just playin'."
I made a big cartoon sigh of relief. "Whew," I said. "I was thinking, Uh-oh. Trouble."
And then I had the most disturbing thought I've had in the months since I've moved here:
It's good to be home.
- Postal Service, "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight"
"The Restaurant at the End of the District"
THE STORY THUS FAR: I stood on the corner of 18th and P and scanned the tidy intersection for Cafe Luna. I saw the Iraqi Embassy and across the street from that stood an embassy for some other faraway place I'd never want to go to with a little less aplomb on the geo-political radar -- like Malaysia or Symaria or someplace -- but no restaurants anywhere.
When last I'd come to our nation's capital via Chinatown bus, there'd been a warm welcoming party of two to greet me. This time, as I'd crossed catycorner into the grid of the District, bi-secting numbered streets and lettered lanes along New York Avenue, I'd been instructed to meet Kate and a couple of her friends at a trendy little basement bar and bistro where they were finishing a bottle of wine.
"It's on 18th and P," Kate had told me over the phone. "18th and P."
And yet, here I stood with nary an eatery in sight.
When I called Kate again with a desperate plea for help, she seemed rather put out. "It's right there!" she said. "Uh, there's a man in black outside. You just go down the stairs." The more she spoke, the more her words seemed to stretch and dip and bend. "It's 18th and P," she slurred, and it suddenly occurred to me that she was drunk.
I heard a murmuring on her end of the line for a moment. "Wha?" Kate said to whomever she was with. Then she almost seemed to whisper "Really?" before her voice came lurching back in my direction. "Clark," she explained. "It's 16th and P. 16th and P."
"Oh," I said calmly. "Well that's a little different, isn't it?"
THE FRENCH CONNECTION: In the opening scene of the third season premiere of Dawson's Creek, our eponymous Mr. Leery is taking the bus back to Capeside after a summer with his mom in Philadelphia. And of course, the girl sitting next to him is drop dead gorgeous, and they have this idealized little chat about life that leads to plenty of drama and existential crisis for our young nebbish hero down the line.
This has never been my experience on the bus. Ever. And it certainly wasn't my experience on this particular excursion along the Eastern Seaboard.
I did sit next to a girl. And she was beautiful in the way that every woman between the ages of 18-30 is beautiful in New York City: Fashionable and sophisticated and cool. So of course, I didn't talk to her. Our only verbal exchange -- besides the usual excuse mes and pardons and infrequent I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to touch thats common with of sitting side by side with a stranger – was when she sneezed and I said "God bless you."
She spoke to her cell phone in English and French with equal skill. And at some point, it occurred to me that it might be worth mentioning that I'd taken four years of French in high school and all I remembered was je ne sais pas ("I don't know") and j'ai faim, zoot alors! ("I'm hungry, dammit!"), but that seemed asinine somehow.
So we sat in silence. She scanned articles with a dictionary and I read the copy of 32 Stories I finally found in a Barnes & Nobles in the village.
And it was my most intimate relationship in almost a year.
FLY ME TO THE MOON: When I finally reached Café Luna – which was prominently displayed at the corner of 16th and P – Kate introduced me to the two girls with which she'd shared five bottles of wine. And of course they were beautiful in the way that every woman from Boerne is beautiful: freakishly so. There's either something in the water down their, or – and I think this far more likely somehow – all of the ugly baby girls are shipped off to Dallas.
"I'm sorry," I told them. "I'm not allowed to fall in love with any more of Kate's friends. It never works out for me."
Their names were Kate and Elizabeth, but I'm not sure which is which because Kate kept calling the other Kate Elizabeth and/or vice versa for the rest of the night.
All three of them were roaring drunk. They were drunk to a cartoon extreme. If you were watching a movie and you saw someone acting like that, it'd seem so hammy and extreme that you'd complain that they couldn't act like a convincing drunk.
I excused myself with one of them and it was speculated that we may have been hooking up in the bathroom. (I think we all know, that type of thing will never happen to me.) I think this was the same one who – upon learning my name was Clark – proceeded to explain to me how much she loved that name and how she wanted to name her son that because her boyfriend's last name was Kent, but he wasn't going to let it happen. (My feelings on this revelation are too complicated to get into right now.)
I was just starting to look over the wine list when they decided they had to get out of there. (Why management hadn't made this decision for them earlier, I'm not sure. They must be really cool in the District.) Katizabeth and Elizakate wanted to go home, but Kate had heard about a party with an open bar on "20th and P" (which – of course – was really 20th and Q) and she was rather insistent that they come with her.
"Come on, ya'll," she kept saying. "Come on!"
This would have worked on me. Hell, I'm sure it's worked on me a dozen times at least. But not only did they refuse, they refused with a strength of conviction I doubt I could muster sober. We stepped out onto P and they left. Katizabeth walked toward a taxi and the next thing I knew, the taxi was pulling away quickly. I didn't see her inside, but she was gone. As for Elizakate, she just simply ceased to exist on the material plane.
Leaving Kate and I to make our little jaunt across the alphanumeric system on our own.
THE LONG WAY HOME: We navigated Dupont Circle with surprising ease considering I was new to town and Kate was drunk as a lemur, if not more so. There was some confusion as to the address, as Kate kept switching numbers for letters (and never the same numbers or letters), but eventually surrendered the post-it note with the address so I could get us to the Childe Harold only so we could find that her friend was gone, and that – while the bar certainly wasn't closed, it wasn't exactly open either.
So, after a doomed trip to Krispy Kreme (which closes quite promptly at Midnight), we made our way back to Kate's un-gaudy apartment complex on 21st Street between E and F. It couldn't have taken more than twenty minutes, but it seemed like hours. Kate was all over the sidewalk weaving one way than the other, and muttering about how she was the obnoxious drunk person she'd always dreaded seeing on the street.
I'm always worried I'm becoming everything I hate. I could relate, Kate.
Later, between several bouts of violent vomiting back home, she kept apologizing to me. I didn't understand why. I'd seen & done far worse. She hadn't puked on me. It wasn't like she'd then proceeded to phone in threats and pleas to my loved ones. And she didn't steal any of my underwear in a drunken haze. Although I will say that when I was getting dressed the next morning and discovered that I didn't have any other socks besides the ones I'd worn into town, I briefly suspected Kate's drunken thievery to be the cause.
I have since returned home, and sure enough, two pair lay right there. On the bed. Right where I left them.
THE GEORGETOWN RATS: I'd done my research before I'd left the Garden State. It used to be that I couldn't come to a different town without making my way to the local comic book stores. These out-of-town experiences often account for the acquisition of key issues of my comic book collection. Like when I finally found Black Panther #26 during a mock trial trip to Murpheesboro, Tennessee, or when I first came to the tiny hamlet of Columbia, Missouri, in the summer of 1998 and discovered Deadpool #3-5 and finally had the complete works of Joe Kelly (thus far).
So when Kate asked me what I wanted to do on Saturday, I said, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe walk around. You know, up Wisconsin Avenue. Maybe down by Dumbarton. You know. Whatever."
On the way up, we stopped off at H & M so Kate could get her sister a gift for her 21st birthday and I could look for a purple polo shirt. I'm trying to skew my personal fashion concept for 2005 toward a green and purple color scheme. I never found one, but Kate found a tasteful lime green top.
One of the employees had my dream hair. It was this beautiful black afro and I wanted to ask him how he got it to grow out and puff up so much, but I didn't know how. I always figured this is the type of thing I'm just supposed to know, but I don't because I didn't have any black friends growing up.
And while Kate was waiting on line, someone stopped me to ask if I could help her find something nice for a friend, at which point, I explained to her that I didn't work there. This happens to me all the time, usually when I'm coming off of one of my jobs where I have to wear a uniform – like Target or the Ocho – and I go to Walgreens to buy something sweet and someone associates my attire with the service industry. In this case, I was wearing my usual grubby street clothes. No reason in the world to suspect I was an employee. And yet, there must have just been something about me that said, "Hey, I'm here to help."
Looking back on it now, she was kind of cute. I should have told her that I didn't work there, but I was willing to give it a shot.
WHISPER IN A QUIET ROOM: After lunch at a burger place called Five Guys -- which Kate kind of described as Booches if Booches wasn't fucking delicious -- we went to the comic book store and I spent about twenty minutes poking around the largest and widest ranging collection of trade paperbacks I've ever seen.
"Do you have the Queen and Country Scriptbook?" I asked the shopkeep on our way out. He told me that he'd had it before but he was pretty sure they'd sold them all and I told him that I really liked his store.
"That was really good," Kate told me once we were back on the street. "That was a nice little exchange. He knew what you were talking about and everything."
"Yeah," I said. "My life really got a lot easier once I realized that whispering 'excuse me' doesn't help anyone."
IN A FUTURE AGE: "Make two wishes," the psychic said. "One of them you're gonna tell me. The other one you'll keep to yourself."
Kate needed a while to think, and I found this suspect. We all know what we want most in life, we just don't always want other people to know we want them. I told her I could hide in the bathroom if she wanted some privacy, but she insisted it wasn't necessary -- especially when the psychic explained that the toilet was clogged up.
I found the psychic suspect as well.
Kate and I had seen the sign for $5 palm readings and decided to give it a try. When we made it up to the third floor apartment where this particular clairvoyant took residence, we were told that her sister was the one who did the $5 readings, and she wasn't there right then. Her own readings were $10.
I briefly wondered whether the sister psychic didn't know we were coming or just didn't care.
Kate made a wish and the psychic proceeded to give her vague snapshots of her psyche. "Something bad happened to you two years ago. A terrible heartbreak," she announced. "You have a good heart. People take advantage of that." And once she'd summed up Kate's past and present, she marched on into her future.
It was all over rather quickly, then it was my turn.
I wished to find a place of my own to live, but I didn't tell her how much I wanted to live in Hell's Kitchen. And I made the same second, secret wish I've been making for five years, which I know now was foolish. (Why didn't I wish for a Prolwer story?)
The psychic began reading me. Just like when she read Kate, she didn't go into a trance or have her eyes roll into the back of her head or any of the other affectations I've seen taken by those with "The Gift" on TV. She made her pronouncements simply and plainly with an accent straight from Woodhaven Boulevard.
"You've had a lot of heartbreak in your life," she told me. "A lot of bad relationships that haven't worked out. But you're going to be happy. You're going to be successful. You'll neet the love of your life in the next two years."
This bit about meeting the love of my life surprised me, because when I imagine the future of my love life, I never expect it to involve somebody new. I doubt any of you are ever going to set me up with someone you work with. I never think I'm going to be riding the subway, reading an issue of Daredevil and some pretty grad student on her way to NYU is going to look up at me and say, "Fucking Bendis. If he writes one more interrogation scene I think I'll scream," or that one of the interns at the office is going to pass by my cubicle and see my Ben Folds wallpaper and we'll talk about whether "Fear of Pop" is crap or not. And I doubt Alexis Bledel's ever going to write me back and say she loves my screenplay and may have developed similar feelings for the screenwriter.
No. I've always liked to believe that I've already met the love of my life. That one day, one of the girls who's broken my heart -- I don't care which -- will show up at my doorstep and tell me they're sorry they let me go. Or that in my wanderings, I'd bump into some girl I knew in high school, and we'd find out that our years apart had turned us into people who are perfect for each other.
She told me other things, too. She told me I'd live to the age of 80 (or thereabouts). That I'd travel, but it'd be for business, not pleasure (Book tours? Comic conventions? Mergers with other tax companies? Hanging on the back of the garbage truck?)
She said I'd have one child. A boy. I hope he's not like me. I'm sorry.
After our readings, she rushed us out the door. We'd come in with a couple who were planning on shelling out $40 a piece for tarot readings, and she seemed eager to fetch them from the hall where she'd told them to wait. When we got out to the hall, they were gone. She seemed surprised.
Shouldn't she have seen that coming?
SAGA OF THE ALIEN AFRO: Kate and I stop on a street corner so her stomach can settle a little. We're talking about the simple joys of company softball when I see the guy with the big beautiful afro from H & M. So I asked him if there was some trick. Because I've tried to grow my hair out, but there just comes a point when it stops. He looked at me and shook his head. "Naw man," he said in this deep bass line.
I don't know why I bother sometimes.
POSSIBLE COMBUSTIBLE EDISON: When we got back to the apartment, Kate challenged me to a rousing round of gin and I pulled one out at the last minute to beat her. Then we ordered a pizza and rented School of Rock.
I don't watch SNL anymore. I only ever see it when I'm around Kate on a Saturday night. So what were the odds it'd be the same episode I saw the last time I was with Kate on a Saturday night?
It's like a little slice of college really.
That night, I tossed and turned on Kate's new couch, not because I was uncomfortable -- she really thought I'd be more comfortable on the floor for some reason -- but because I was having weird dreams where the D.C. cops were blowing their CSI budget to prove I smoked a cigarette in Kate's bathroom despite my vehement denial and presumable innocence.
It's like a dollop of post-graduate paranoia really.
REGRETS, I'VE HAD A FEW: On Sunday morning, we returned to Cafe Luna for brunch. While I was waiting for a French BLT without bacon (still trying to wrap my brain around that one) Kate asked me what I'd do if I could take one thing back that I'd done. I thought about it for a moment, then I said, "I'd have gone to NYU instead of Mizzou," which I guess is tantamount to saying, "I'd make it so that I never met you," but I really didn't think about it that way. It just seemed like the only change I could have made that would have mattered.
I've had a second chance or two. For good or ill, things always seem to turn out the same.
I tried to come up with a couple of different answers, until Kate finally admitted that she was just trying to make conversation.
I don't know. If I could change things, I might.
MELANCHOLY AND THE INFINITE BUS TRIP: Somewhere between the bookstore/restaurant where we got cheesecake and cherry pie (and cappuccino to reach the $6.50 per person order minimum) and the return to the apartment to pack my things, I started dreading going back.
It didn't matter. It never does.
Somewhere along Pennsylvania Avenue, we ran into a crowd of people being held back by the police. I couldn't understand it. I asked Kate what everyone was staring at a moment before I passed a grove of trees and saw the White House in the distance.
"It's weird to live somewhere where people want to come," Kate said.
I couldn't put it better.
The ride home was uneventful... unless you count the odd outbursts from the guy six rows in front of me, and I don't.
We pulled into Times Square two hours late. On the way up to Port Authority -- where I'd discover that I hadn't just missed the return of Family Guy, but the last bus to Teaneck for good measure -- I stopped at the White Castle on 8th Avenue.
It wasn't very busy. Two guys were ordering at the counter while a man stood by the soda machine, talking on his cell phone. "Yeah, nigger," he was saying. "Yeah." He got off the phone when I was in the middle of order, shouting, "He cut me. He cut me."
I did the only thing I could do. I apologized. He just laughed and patted me on the back. "Just playin'."
I made a big cartoon sigh of relief. "Whew," I said. "I was thinking, Uh-oh. Trouble."
And then I had the most disturbing thought I've had in the months since I've moved here:
It's good to be home.
Comments