It couldn’t rightly be called Girl’s Night out, what with Biscuit being on the invite list and all. And so it was that The People Who Sleep with Men took Brooklyn by storm (and stiletto) last night. We started off at Buttermilk where we got glittered and added The Kate’s number to our cell phones. Then the seven of us tottered off to catch the Smith Family show at the Royale bar.

In the red glow of Royale’s harem-like setting, we quickly shifted into Rockabilly mode. We slapped our knees, tapped our feet, yee-hawed and took pictures. Lots of pictures. And that’s when Biscuit and I got engaged. If it somehow ends up that photographing well together does not amount to a good reason to get married, we’ll call it off. But until then, we remain giddy over the prospect of seeing our announcement in the New York Times.

I suppose I would learn my lesson about staying out until 3AM on a school night if it didn’t always turn out to be so darn fun.

Adrian is going to Ibiza.
Benjamin is going to Australia.
C is going to Hilton Head.

And I? I’m just going crazy. Stir crazy.

My ‘maybe in the spring’ plans with Elle to go to Italy are not making it any easier to deal with the fact that I haven’t had a real vacation is a very, very long time. Maybe in the spring? Spring is ages away and I’m already about three stops away from Crazytown on the express train!

I become eligible for parole vacation sometime this fall. At which point, my recent windfall (currently slotted for a savings account) will be plunked down, my suitcase filled up and I’ll be off like a pair of pink flip flops on a white sand beach.

That being decided, I’m not likely to get a lot of work done today. Daydreaming tends to take up most of my brain power.

There are dozens of photographs of us from that summer — looking like giddy lovers in a rowboat in Sevilla, fighting over a drippy candle on a night tour of Salamanca, prancing like fools in a fountain at the palace in Córdoba.

We argued playfully in that spicy foreign tongue – flirtation’s flimsy guise.
“¡Que no!”
“¡Que si, mujer!”
“Cuídate, guapeton. ¡Te doy!”

He left gifts for me in my shoulder bag, wrapped in sheets of Madrid’s daily newspaper – a local artist’s CD, pressed poppies, a lizard. The lizard turned out to be a stowaway from Altamira, but I gave Sean credit. And he gave me a piggy back ride when my sandals hurt. Who climbs a mountain in heels, mujer?

In a packed bull arena one scalding night in late June, Ricky Martin stopped mid-song and called out to us from the stage. In a sea of pulsing bodies, tall, conspicuously-American Sean wouldn’t dance.

“Why aren’t you dancing? Everyone else is Dancing.”
“Me falta el ritmo.” I lack rhythm.
“I feel sorry for your compañera. But we’ll give you another chance. I’m going to try this again, and perhaps she can help you find your rhythm?”

The crowd cheered and the song (and Ricky’s gyrating hips) began again. I moved up closer, and from behind, placed one hand on his left hip, the other on his chest. “Así, cuñado.”

Cuñado. Translated literally, it means brother-in-law, but it functions as a term of endearment — a fond, yet sterile one. But to no one’s surprise that night, the electricity between my hand and his chest contradicted my language as well as our chummy kinship.

The following afternoon, we moved quietly through our weekly art seminar in the Prado, the two of us eventually ducking out of another long lecture on Velázquez to one of the cooler, less crowded exhibits on the floor below. We stood shoulder to shoulder in front of Goya’s Black Paintings making small talk.

“You’re invited to cena on Saturday.” My host mother was in love with Sean and he was a regular dinner guest.

He turned, touched my elbow and I remember electric shocks ran down my fingers.

“Mandona,” he said (mandona, the bossy one) “Me encantas.”
You enchant me.
“Igual.”
Ditto. I answered without looking at him.

He shouldered my bag as he always did, and we left through the museum’s rear entrance, disappearing into the botanical gardens. We stayed for the better part of the afternoon.

There are no pictures of what happened next.

On the way home from last night’s Tribal activities in Brooklyn, I stopped at Gristede’s for something frozen. I was melting.

While nothing screams, SINGLE like a late night Hagen Daas purchase, I don’t usually mind. I do single like Michael Jackson does crazy — with gusto. So I flounced down the aisle in my sweater set and summer skirt (having a new appreciation for my calves, which Krissa has deemed nice and curvy), snagged some cookie-dough ice cream, and headed toward the register.

That’s when I saw him.

My last thought, after he looked up and smiled at me and just before I lost all cognitive abilities was, “Holy shit, I forgot they made them like that.”

Tall, tan, sparkly blue eyes, wavy brown hair and damn if that white t-shirt didn’t fit like a dream. I undizzied myself for the forty-five seconds it took to pay for my ice cream. He’d finished paying, too. Our brief encounter at the automatic door produced nothing more than his “Have a good night” to which I responded…

Absolutely nothing.

He smelled like sunscreen and clean laundry, two scents which shall now register on my list of aphrodisiacs (right up there with regular Trident and warm vanilla). I smiled, which may have seemed coy (one can only hope), but the truth was, I was speechless – all butterflies and libido. Seconds later when we’d left the store, he went left and I froggered my way across the street — the two of us headed in separate directions supposed to happen in these kinds of encounters.

As I fumbled with my key in the gate, I thought again, “Holy shit, I forgot they made them like that.”

It was a fucking fantastic reminder that they do.