I once dated a man that couldn’t say my name.

Strike that. He could say my name, but either he was simply too lazy to or he’d over greatly estimated the charm of his accent. And sure, what girl wouldn’t buckle at the knees every time her Irish lover called her sweetly…

“Hey, Hedder…”

Hedder? Sounds like a dirty job on a porn set, if you ask me. David’s stubborn bastardization of my name was not the only point of contention in our six month relationship. He wore really bad sweaters. I didn’t like sleeping at his apartment. And then there was his pint-fueled temper and my emotional distance.

Yeh just got too many of dem walls up, Hedder.

After a few (or seven) pints, my otherwise charming fellow tended to lose not only his charm but his sense of decorum. One night at a bar in Cambridge, I distinctly remember a bouncer stepping between us asking if I needed some help. David had drawn himself to full height, blind drunk and raging about one thing or another (probably all those walls I’d foolishly left up around him) and I was pinned against the bar, silently crying.

Not one of my fonder memories. But yesterday afternoon when a friend lightly suggested that I “write about… hangovers and love” the first thought that popped into my head was of dating David. The worst of the hangovers in those days wasn’t just about cheap vodka. They were laced with cried-out eyes and a runny nose. Mornings spent with my head buried under the pillows, cell phone turned off and the house phone manned by mina bird roommates.

She’s not here right now, may I take a message?

I have some really nice hangover/love memories, too – mornings after spent sipping Gatorade and reading the Sunday Times, diner food and dirty talk or lazy hours of oversleeping and playing the alphabet back scratching game.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of those first.

Walking up Second Avenue just now, a gust of wind caught my skirt and up it billowed. In a flash, I threw a hand to my backside only to find it in contact with flesh. I looked around at the crowded sidewalks and I knew that I’d just graced a few dozen people with my bare tush.

My first inclination was to be mortified. But really, a bit of ass is nothing to be embarrassed about — especially in New York where you’re treated to much, much more on a regular basis. So, instead I decided to be deliriously entertained by the whole event and just stood there on the sidewalk laughing.

In the end, I think my petite burlesque made much less of a scene than my laughing fit. But because public displays of mania are also something you get used to in the City, I was not at all surprised when no one seemed to pay me a bit of mind.

God, I love this town.

“This is a tradition in Argentina,” she said. Marina’s voice was light, like a whisper, and heavily accented. She leaned in, sweetly kissed both of my cheeks and then tugged gently at my earlobes. “How many years are you?”

I smiled. “Twenty-seven.”

“One, two, three…” she counted as she pulled at my ears, alternating right to left. Tug, tug. “four, five…” She reached twenty-seven, stood back, smiled again and said, “You have a happy day.” Then she went back to work.

I stood still for a moment, hands over my ears, smiling, maybe even blushing. It should have been weird, I suppose, having a coworker I don’t know well touch me like that. After all, ears aren’t one of those frequently-manhandled body parts. They’re intimate. Which is what that moment was — unexpectedly intimate and sweet.

If it hasn’t been made abundantly clear over the few years I’ve been writing here, I tend to be narrowly focused. Molehills are my mountains. I take small moments, hold them up to the light like film negatives, over-study the details and pick at their significance. I’m obsessed with meaning. And I realize that perhaps the little things mean too much to me. The tenderness of a simple birthday wish, for example — why is it compelling? Because it was so real.

People sometimes talk about life in terms of milestones – graduations, birthdays, marriage, babies. When you’re seventeen, you’re waiting for eighteen. College is much less about learning than it is about simply graduating. And when you’re dating, you’re waiting to meet The Right One and settle down. So much waiting. I guess somewhere along the line, I decided that I can’t be an “I’ll be happy when…” person. I’ve learned that I’m not a bigger-picture person. Even if I want to be.

I can’t stomach the idea of looking down the road, trying to divine how it’s all supposed to turn out – trying to figure out the next chapter of my life book. I can’t see that chapter. I can’t touch it and I can’t count on it. I can, though, collect these vignettes and dwell on things like rows of strawberries and extra long hugs and earlobes tugs. I have to. Otherwise, I feel like I might always be waiting for the Next Big Thing to happen. And always being more than a little bit afraid that it won’t.

There’s frosting in my cell phone and baby brownies from the Fat Witch Bakery on my desk.

Oh yeah, baby. It’s my birthday. Even my mom remembered this year, which totally makes up for standing in line at the DMV all morning.

Gettin’ old tastes like cocoa and that’s okay by me.

“Belgian waffle with strawberries, two pieces of bacon and orange juice, please.” I order without picking up the menu.

“And coffee, yes?” The waiter smiles. I nod.

He probably wonders, as I do, why we bother to go through this ordering process. It’s always the same. Same table in the corner by the window, same order. Same hefty supply of Equal and one refill of coffee so I can sit and people watch while the syrup soaks the bits of waffle I’m too stuffed to finish.

It’s three o’clock in the afternoon and I’m having breakfast at the diner across the street from my apartment. I’m eating by myself, like I always do on the weekends. Usually this is my Sunday morning occupation, but today, I know I won’t leave the house at all unless it’s to sit, spacey-eyed and watch butter pool in waffle squares.

The waiter, whose name I should know by now (I will remember to ask next week), brings me my waffle and then leaves me alone to think. Everything is gorgeous. The strawberries are not piled on, but arranged in rows of shiny red, two layers deep. Even the butter pats are carefully placed in a semicircle around the syrup pitcher. That’s diner waiter speak for, I secretly love you. The overly generous tip I always leave says, I secretly love you back.

Today I’m feeling alone. It’s not the same thing as lonely, which can sometimes just happen to me. Lonely sends me scrambling for my cell phone. Reach out and touch someone. Alone, on the other hand, is on purpose. I relish feeling alone. I eat all by myself and nap so much that I out-nap even the cat. I am a rock, I am an island.

I spent yesterday feeling too connected, too concerned and too human. I suppose that this is how I recover. I disconnect, wrap a band-aid around my glowing ET finger and refrain from too much human contact.

My exchange with the waiter doesn’t count — I think, in part, because of its simplicity. We know exactly what we expect from one another and as long as there are fresh strawberries in the kitchen and a few extra bucks in my wallet, no one will be disappointed.

It might sound as though there’s a metaphor or two in there, but right now, I’m really only talking about breakfast.

I still love you.

That’s what Ben tells me when I haven’t written in a few days. It’s his way of prodding, gently. It comes from a few months back when in the middle having a minor taking-myself-too-seriously crisis, Ben interrupted our late evening conversation to say, “I still love you.” Just like that. No expectations, no requirements, whatever whiney-ass mood you’re in, I still love you.

This morning’s “I still love you” came with a picture, its file name an extension of the message:

thismuch.jpg

And there was Ben, younger and… hairier (sorry, B), standing atop a mountain, arms out-stretched. Thiiiiiis much, said the reach of his arms. I replied “you’re cute” and finished getting ready for my day. At first, it got me smiling. And then, it got me thinking.

“To the moon and back!” Was what my father would say when asked, “How much do you love me, daddy? How much?”

To the moon and back!

And here’s where I get sentimental.

Last weekend, while it was freeing in a way, was also very difficult for me. See, I’ve always understood that when two people share anything – whether it be a sandwich, an entire childhood, a kiss – it’s never going to mean exactly the same thing to both people. And when you’re talking about a shared relationship – a whole collection of varied experiences – the discrepancy between what each person takes away from it can be huge. And I had always assumed that I had assigned much more meaning to my relationship with J than he had. More than I should have. More than a reasonable amount of perspective should have warranted.

Turns out, I was wrong. But the damage was done and what years of feeling foolish does to you… well, it’s not easily undone. But it is what it is and I’m sure everyone involved has learned something from it. Look at me being so pragmatic. Talk to that feeling in my stomach though, and it’s much less cut and dried.

What do I mean to you? It’s not something we’re cool about asking each other. It’s something we’re supposed to read between the lines, figure out through the context of conversations, emails and facial expressions.

You make my life better.
I think you’re funny.
We are temporary.

An unreturned phone call and sideways glances may read, You’re replaceable. While a tender pat on the head from the same person can say, To the moon and back.

Body language, rarely as accommodating as a mood ring, doesn’t always tell you what you need to know. And because, once we leave childhood, we no longer allow ourselves the naiveté to ask, How much do you love me? so much of it is left to guessing and intuition and sometimes even hope.

And sadly, in interpreting our worth to the people we care about most, far too much gets lost in the translation.

“I can say this now because I’m drunk…”

J is sitting across the table from me, balanced on a rickety barstool, a pint of IPA sloshing over onto his hand. He had three glasses of water at the last bar. I know he’s not drunk, but I smile and nod him on. Who am I to stop a guy from getting something off his chest?

“You know I love Tricia. It…”

“…goes without saying.” I finish his sentence. Tricia is, without question, the best thing that has happened to him. It does go without saying.

“Exactly. See? That’s what I want to say. You know me.” J looks over his shoulder at his girlfriend and smiles. “I love her. And I’m in love with her. But you and I connected in ways she and I never will.”

I don’t know what expression my face is wearing. My eyebrows are raised though. That much I can tell. J reaches for my arm.

“You shaped the way I see… well, almost everything. Movies. Art. People. You know that, right? Remember that time you said…”

J starts recounting a story from three years ago. Something I said about a red Ferrari and I’m shocked by the level of detail in his memory of it.

“That’s how I knew you just got me.”

We’re both quiet for a minute. There’s chaos going on around us in the bar. I feel beer spill down into my sandals but I barely flinch. I’m sort of… blank. I hadn’t expected any of this (I’d for a birthday party, not a confessional) and I won’t even begin processing it until the next day on the train when I slide my sunglasses down and cry a little because I don’t know what else to do. Mostly because of what he says next.

“I was never good at showing you how much I loved you.”

On the train, I’ll replay that sentence and I’ll be overwhelmed, in pain, almost and slightly angry. My train ticket will say July 10 — coincidentally the three-year anniversary of the blog I started to make some sense of our bizarre relationship. Three years will have gone by with me believing I chased him, tried to make him love me and assigned some huge meaning to a relationship that never had a chance of making it. Three years of feeling unappreciated and unloved. Unseen and unheard.

But then I’ll understand finally, somewhere in the middle of Connecticut, that he’d been hearing and seeing all along. I’ll understand that three years after a silly conversation about a red Ferrari, the memory of that night will mean a great deal to him. And I won’t have even thought about it in a very long time.

I had a very busy, very intense weekend. I went to Boston for J’s 30th birthday. Gone less than twenty hours, I left Penn Station yesterday evening, stopping by Benjamin’s for dinner and some downtime. When this morning, I had still yet to blog, I sent him an “I’m too busy, will you do it for me?” email. I was kidding. But he took me at my word. And what he sent back was not only pretty damn accurate, but proof that even when I’m rambly, he’s listening.

My version will come a bit later when things calm down. But for now, Benjamin’s interpretation. Enjoy!

You Can Go Home Again, Or, What I Learned On Amtrak

J always liked women with blonde hair. Big, fluffy, 80s blonde hair. So I did what I could. I got it highlighted. And it stayed that way some three years after we broke up.

Something changed in the salon Saturday morning.

“Can you remove the highlights?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m so glad you said so,” Rene, my colorist, said in a thick French accent. “How attached are you to the ends?”

Five inches and $375 later, I’m on Amtrak Northeast Regional #74 heading to Boston. My hair is brown. And I am smiling. Out the window, the Connecticut shoreline is whizzing past. In the seat in front of me, two little Australian boys are asking about New York. “We didn’t see any firemen, mummy. Why weren’t there any firemen?”

J picks me up at South Station. He puzzles a moment. “Something’s different,” he says.

“Everything,” I answer.

Later that night, celebrating J’s 30th in a stretch Hummer, J’s girlfriend, Trish, turns to me and says, “Jonathan’s so glad you came. And so am I.”

J corners me in a bar later. He’s a little drunk.

“I love Trish,” he says. “But no one will ever get me like you did.”

I am astonished as he recounts moments I thought lost forever. At least to him.

I stay sober. The driver doesn’t know Southie, and I want to get us home. Trishe’s 6′ 7″ brother in law hoists a bottle of Jaeger Meister, pouring it down his throat. I ask, “Can I hold that a minute?” When he realizes he isn’t getting it back, he slurs, “I think Heather is cheating on me.”

Riding the rails southward Sunday afternoon, I text Ben. “Dinner plans?” He quickly responds. “In Banana. Buying slacks. 6:30.”

I buzz his apartment at exactly 6:30. He buzzes me in, and I climb the agonizing five flights. The door is open for me. Inside, Ben is reclining, Corona in hand, in front of the AC. He stands slowly, bone tired from his triathlon, and gives me a hug.

“Something’s different,” he says.

“Everything,” I answer.

I’ve never been one to own a lot of purses (more of a shoe girl, myself). One perfect black handbag and I’m a happy girl. But a year or so ago, I was introduced to this site, and quickly scooped up this little pink silk number.

Summer, winter – it’s become my seasonless favorite. Jeans, sundresses – it goes with everything and it gets complimented everywhere I go. In fact, sometimes I carry it to draw attention away from less desirable aspects of my appearance. Bad haircut? A few extra pounds? Take the pink bag and no one will notice!

I had been waiting in girlish anticipation for some new somethingorother from Nepacena to complement this summer’s new colors (and frankly, buying things is a temporary happiness fix) when shazam! The heavens opened!

And the email said, let there be new bags. And behold, I saw the bags and they were good. So I bought two. Amen

On Saturday, I baked.

And on Tuesday, I came home from work to a kitchen that looked as though baking was still in progress. Flour dust, chocolate-trimmed utensils, a hastily twist-tied bag of walnuts. Oven slightly ajar. Baking had been the fun part, but even that required effort. Getting up early while it’s still cool enough to use the oven. Sifting. Stirring. Napping while it does its cooking thing. After all that, shouldn’t cleaning up really be someone else’s gig? But three days later, that someone had yet to get to it.

Home after a long day yesterday, I eyed the mess on the counter, dropped my work bag to the floor and sighed. Not moving from the hallway, I hung my dry-cleaning on a hook, pushed up the sleeves of my cardigan and, spinning on my heel, went right back out of the apartment.

How’s that for not dealing?

I did manage to grab a bag of laundry on the way out, so it wasn’t a total loss. And at the Laundromat, I did manage to meet a nice man named Dennis who lent me quarters and later bought me a drink at the sushi joint next door. So really? Kitchen be damned.

Until this morning anyway. My love for aesthetics and my fear of ants got me up at 6:30 and into a pair of yellow rubber gloves. All that early-morning-preparedness also got me into a skirt and some previously-absent undies. I am well pleased.

“Do not test me this way!”

I don’t know who I was talking to – the Universe? God? My keys? Where the fuck were they anyway? Not on the hook (because, why would I have put them where they belong?), or in the couch cushions or even the freezer (yeah, I found them there once. Long explanation involving Popsicle emergency).

I wasn’t late. I was early. But I needed to be early and being thwarted by my keys was really the last thing I was ready to deal with. There was dry-cleaning to drop off and shoes to pick up and reports to prepare and… and no keys! Out of options, I tucked my laptop under my comforter and headed out, prepared to leave Sir Hal in charge of guarding my life’s possessions only to find that…

the keys were in the door.

Fucking brilliant.

I shrugged, locked the door, dropped off my laundry and headed for the subway. A block from home, I realized that though keys were in hand, not all was right. Things were off. Things were… breezy. Probably due to the fact that I wasn’t wearing any underwear.

Also fucking brilliant.

Understand this is much less hot than it is frustrating. I’d thrown on a long skirt right out of the shower (it was hanging conveniently on the bathroom door) and had entirely simply skipped the skivvies.

Guess, I’ll be spending my lunch hour running to VS and not running at the gym as previously planned.

Are we sure today is not Monday?

I’ll explain the title later. Maybe.

I remember a scene from Wings where Helen is in the kitchen chopping away at something on a cutting board. She’s sniffling and brushing tears back with the cuff of her sleeve. Joe comes in and asks the obvious:

“Are you crying?”
“No.” She sniffles. “It’s the onions.”
“Helen, those are potatoes.”
“Then, I’m crying.”

I thought about that scene at least a dozen times this week. I found myself sitting at work with my palms pressed tightly to my eyes, fingers curled up over my forehead, buried into my hair, willing myself not to cry. What would I blame it on? White Out fumes? Allergies?

The kicker is that nothing particularly bad had happened that should make me cry. For whatever reason, I was just feeling…tender about life. Easily ruffled. Vulnerable. I felt like running away and hiding out under the covers while I waited for the world to get easier and kinder. But since that’s not exactly how things work, I toughed it out.

Sort of.

I smoked a few cigarettes, wrote a few (dozen) whiney emails and went to bed early every night. I drank Riesling from the bottle and cried at CNN. I paid bills and cleaned the bathtub and did those other things that I do to feel some sense of accomplishment. I watched mindless film and ate steak-cut French fries. I reacted badly to many, many things.

Emails, jokes, criticism.

By the end of my tender week, I had to apologize to him for being snarky. Over cubicle walls, I had to thank her for being my friend even when I’m crazy. Her reply brought a small lump to my throat.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked. “I love you.”

I thanked her, took a deep breath and went back to my work. It seems that when tender strikes, it’s all onions on a cutting board. Everything turns into a reason to come apart — one flimsy excuse after another to cry, because maybe I just needed to.

Those are potatoes.
Then, I’m crying.

Dear Ben,

I beat you to blogging. No, it’s not a real post, but I’m a girl who hates to lose a bet.

So, consider this a placeholder until all hell has been reigned back in and I can wax poetic about how much it sucks that my bathtub is backed up and how I probably won’t have water in my apartment for the next two days and if not be able to shower freely twice a day doesn’t make a girl persnickety, I don’t know what does.

But still. I won. And that feels nice.

Love,

Heather

PS. We are such nerds.

Amanda was only two and a half. Pint-sized and fierce, she commanded attention and a vocabulary more advanced than any kindergartener.

We sat in her bedroom under a painted ceiling of blue sky and clouds, footless Barbie dolls and old He-Man figures on the floor between us. My mother had left the grown-ups (I’d abandoned them hours before) and joined the playdate. Maybe she asked too many questions. Maybe she talked when she should have been dressing Barbie for the beach. Maybe Amanda was simply tired. It’s really hard to say.

Amanda put her dolls down, walked to the toy cupboard and pulled out an old Fisher Price cash register — decades old. I remembered her older brother, Jared, playing with the same toy when we were kids. I’d been jealous then. But Amanda wasn’t going to play store, like we did. She had other motives. Setting the register down in the middle of Barbie Mania, Amanda stared down my mother and said,

“When I ring this bell, you will go away and never come back.”

Ring! went the bell. My mother looked like she’d been slapped.

“What? Why?”

Amanda raised a small finger to her rosy lips. “Shhh,” she said. “Do not speak to me.”

And thus went the banishing. My mother frowned, left and we could hear her tell Sandy and the others in the living room about her exile. They laughed. I looked at Amanda and asked if I could stay.

“Of course. I did not ring the bell for you.”

Some days, I feel like pulling out my cash register. Banishing anyone who doesn’t play by the rules that I’ve outlined in my head. Maybe they ask too many questions. Maybe they talked when they should have been listening. Maybe I am simply tired.

When I ring this bell…

Once, I kissed a man and he sighed. He sighed like someone who had been thirsty for a very long time and I’d just given him water from my canteen. Siiiiiiigh. I decided right then I’d kiss him a hundred times just to hear that sound.

Once, I kissed a man and learned to hate the sound of my refrigerator. I cried all the way back to Connecticut, mourning, because I knew that kiss was burned into me. Tattooed. Cigarette on flesh. And I knew that we were destined to fail. I kissed him a hundred times after.

Then we failed.

Once, I kissed a stranger. Sangria and beer laced with Jack Daniels. Hostel common room. Belt buckles and a foreign name like I was praying.

Once, I kissed him in the third row of a movie theater, and then decided I would rather watch the movie. I kissed her passing Jell-o shots. I kissed him and didn’t feel a thing except saliva and dry skin and the need to go home right now. I kissed him while the credits to Clueless rolled. I felt adored.

I wasn’t.

Once, I kissed – I was kissed – in front of a map of the world. Here, I said, is where I lived. Here, he said, is where I’m from. Spain. Lebanon. I had to sit down on the bed, dizzy and overwhelmed. He had the most gorgeous hands I’ve ever seen. We failed, too.

Thank God.

“You are not a golden god!”

I cringe watching Ben hover on the roof above us. He puts his hands to his hips and my brain starts chanting, please come down, please come down. You are not a golden god! Had I put acid in the guacamole? I think not. I shoot a quick glance at his mother; she can’t even watch him up there. This I understand. Beer plus climbing on roofs has never equaled anything good. And I’m thoroughly relieved when finally, lights arranged, he comes back down. I won’t have to hyper-worry again until Langhorne perches on the ledge a few hours later during Truth or Dare. I go back to my guacamole and conversation.

That’s when the patio begins to swim in front of me.

First Tanya’s red beads blur and I feel my stomach drop. Sweat runs down my cleavage and my mouth goes dry. I excuse myself. Trip to the drug store, ginger ale, cold compresses. The rest of the evening is sort of a blur of non-party activity on my part. Somewhere between woosy trips to the air conditioned haven of Ben’s bedroom, Goldner makes his diagnosis.

I have caught Molly Ringwald’s cooties.

This makes perfect sense. Earlier in the evening while dining at Blue Smoke, we made restaurant friends with a wee one. She toddled around the tables and eventually stopped to give G an extra gooey high five. I do believe she actually licked her hand first. Cute little imp. Goldner, who is genuinely smitten with anything small and/or furry, was completely oblivious as to who exactly the little imp was. Until her red-headed mother came to collect her. Small talk was made and the little one fitted with a white bonnet and toddled out of the restaurant.

Goldner held up his hand. “I have Molly Ringwald cooties!”

That, he did. And apparently, he’s passed them on. By 1AM, Tanya and I are big-spoon little-spooned on Ben’s bed. She, hammered and me, cootied. We make quite the pair. By the time the fellas wake us up sometime around 3, I’m feeling like I could really give that Parker Posey a run for her money.

I am such a party girl.

Speaking of party, join me tonight at Pianos. 8-10 pm. I will be awake. There will be music. You will love it.

For the second time tonight, I have stripped down to my skivvies, hung my jeans on the back of the bathroom door and climbed into bed. This time, I intend to stay put.

I’d spent the day in and out of sleep, doing penance for a night of hard drinking (and pasta making – but that’s a story for another time) and still wasn’t feeling up for a night on the town. It seemed to be epidemic; first Ben then Rachel stole off toward home for an early night in. Sometime before 11, I left Stephanie & co. and made my way uptown toward home, following the siren song of bed and Netflix.

But it was not meant to be.

Around midnight, my phone rang. Five minutes later I was dressed again and meeting my old boss, Susan on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. I hadn’t seen her since I left Boston, so the reunion was definitely worth getting my ass out of bed and down to a local pub for one last round.

We asked the standard questions — how are you, how’s work, who are you dating – and then Susan told me a story:

Back when we were working together at the Monkey Firm in Boston, I wrote this post about Sue and her tricky relationship with her then-boyfriend David. It wasn’t until much later that she, and then he read the post. By this time, he was already gone and they both wondered whether it was really as simple as it had sounded in writing. So, shortly after, Susan grew tired of wondering, flew to England and proposed. In the end, it wasn’t as simple as all that for the two of them, but she said she was so glad she took the chance to find out. I can’t help but marvel at the balls that must have taken. But then again, Susan’s bravery has always been one of the things I liked best about her. That, and she tells the best dirty stories.

It has to be one of the better, This is How You Know I love You stories I’ve heard in a long time. And I think I like it so much because of its imperfect ending.

One of my girl dates on Tuesday night was singer/songwriter Elisa Korenne. This coming Friday, Elisa will be throwing a CD release party for her new album, Favorite.

Read a review of her album here. Have a listen here. Then join me Friday night here:

Pianos
158 Ludlow St. @ Stanton
8-10pm Friday, June 24

How about it?

Hormones
The moon
Those really hot California winds that make people go extra crazy in that one episode of 90210

That’s just the beginning of my list of possible explanations for the current rash of wacky dreams I’m experiencing. As you can see, I’m really grasping.

Too many foreign films
New sheets

I haven’t been eating any strange foods before bed so I’m having a hard time understanding why, suddenly, all the kissing dreams?

Oh yeah. I’m having kissing dreams. Not hot, steamy sex dreams. Kissing dreams. The ones that, when you wake up, make you want to get back to sleep and finish the deal. Or at least get someone’s clothes off.

Last night, I dreamed that I was kissing Todd, aka Indie Rock Boy from days of blogging yore. And because Todd’s the kind of guy not to take that thing too seriously (i.e. worry I’m pining to have his babies) I dropped him an email to let him know he was… on my mind.

H: Dude, I had a kissing dream about you last night. Awesome.
IRB: Solid. Was it hot?
H: Yeah, it was pretty hot. But you know, chaste. All involved parties were clothed.
IRB: Chaste? That doesn’t sound like my style at all.
H: Please. You know chaste. We made out like, SEVERAL times in cabs and everyone still went home to their own beds. Wicked chaste.
IRB: Such a gentleman. Those were some fun days. It was so worth it to be immortalized in your daily fishy chronicles.
H: Daily fishy chronicles. You mean, it wouldn’t have been worth it otherwise?? You bastard.

Todd and I had a relationship based on… well, making out. We worked together for a spell, which outlawed anything more than email flirting and lunch at the river. But as soon as he took a better job at a firm up the street, it was game on. Frankly, I’m surprised we weren’t blacklisted from Boston taxis. It’s true what they say. All good things must come to an end. But I guess what’s why we have blogs. So guys like Todd will always feel like an extra in a short-lived tv sitcom.

IRB: That’s the stuff that Legends are made of. The ENIGMA that is or was IRB. *Sniff* I’m a Tshirt slogan.

Indie Rock Boy: he’ll make you miss your stop.

My sister has always been self-conscious about her stomach.

I’ve always thought she was gorgeous and pish-poshed away her hyper-criticisms of photos (Do you see my gut?!). I thought she was crazy, but at the same time, I understood. If it were possible to suck in my hips, I’d have done so. All the time. Because, although genetic products of the same parents, the two of us were clearly built by opposing craftsmen. Pear and apple. My weight settles into my hips and tush and she’s got a tummy she’s often trying to hide. At the beach, I hid behind a sarong. And she refused to wear a bikini, lest the world see her less than perfect tummy.

She was just as modest around the house.

The evening that J and I ended for the first time (there were at least a half a dozen times after), I tossed my cell phone onto the living room futon, sat down on the floor and cried. My sister looked stunned. I had never been an outwardly emotional pear and in twenty-something years, I bet she’d only seen me cry a handful of times. Immediately, she went into crisis mode.

She offered ice cream. I declined and cried some more.

“Alright,” she said. “You asked for it.”

Up went the blue tank top she was wearing. She grabbed either side of her stomach, squeezed them together, pursing them into what resembled a toothless mouth. The mouth began talking.

“It’s okay, Heather” the Stomach Mouth said. It had a voice like Fezzik, deep and dopey. “Come on, don’t cry. Boys are dumb.”

It doesn’t matter what it said after that. I stopped crying. Granted, I exactly didn’t laugh right away, just stared in disbelief as the Stomach Mouth kept right on talking, trying to cheer me up. Then I laughed, and let it talk me into taking a walk for frozen yogurt.

I knew right at that moment that my sister loved me. I mean, she was my sister – of course she loved me. But I got a sense that this was more than the obligatory love that runs through familial veins. She loved me, she liked me and she was willing to abandon her own comfort to show it.

That’s the part about love that’s always been hard for me – stepping outside of my own security, to take a chance at humiliation to show I care. But I’m learning as I get older that it’s not about me. It’s about dropping defenses (or lifting up tank tops, as the case may be), exposing previously hidden faults and letting people hear me say, “this is how you know I love you.”

For a solid week that winter, I survived on nothing but gin and cigarettes. I’d never been a smoker and gin wasn’t even my liquor of choice, but what the hell? I wasn’t sleeping and food certainly held no temptation. I had to do something.

I carted home the bottle of Sapphire I’d expensed for a work function earlier in the day, stopping at the corner store to buy tonic and limes. I dragged my bounty out to the sun porch, where I sat, wrapped in a thick winter quilt, drinking hastily mixed cocktails and chain smoking.

I’d bought my first pack of cigarettes in the liquor store that afternoon. My shocked coworker offered her lighter as we stepped outside, peeling off the mittens of our right hands. Three cigarettes were gone and my fingers numb when we finally went back to work.

I was upset, in the way that only someone you care about can make you. Mindless and furious. I couldn’t eat, only smoke until my hands shook and my fingers smelled permanently toxic.

Today at lunch, per usual, Justine pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one up and set the pack with the rest of her belongings on the grass. Then she picked it back up.

“You want one?”
“Actually, yes I do.”
“I figured if I offered, this would be the time you’d want one.”

I lit my cigarette with hers. Angry cigarettes, the only kind I ever smoke (aside from the occasional drunk cigarette) have usually been Camel Lights. Nothing about a menthol cigarette tastes angry. And Justine smokes Newport Lights. I filled my mouth with cool, minty smoke, leaned back on the wet grass and exhaled.

“I hate to see you upset,” she said and patted my shoulder.
“Eh.” I took another slow drag. “I think I’m just tired now.”

We smoked and watched children chase each other in circles on the lawn at Bryant Park, while the sun popped in and out of the light gray cloud cover.

I had just one and then went back to work.

I have never been one for picking up strangers — in bars or anywhere else. But lately, it seems I can’t walk away from a night out without the phone number or business card of some new interest. Last week it was Elisa and Ingrid at Ben’s roof deck party. Last night, Penny at a charity function at Cipriani. Laughs were had, cards exchanged and plans made to get together “very soon.”

That’s right. I’m pickin’ up chicks. It’s Girl Dating, and right now, it’s giving the real thing a run for its money.

Girl Dating is everything I grew up thinking dating dating would be (you know, minus the heavy petting. Rarrr!). It’s breezy! It’s fun! It’s compliments and coincidences. I loooove your skirt, and Get out! I used to go there when I was a kid!

It’s laughing and eating and talking – about real life, the things that matter. Small talk gets abandoned even before brunch plans are made, and promises of, I’ll call you next week for drinks are meant and kept.

There’s even flirting. Women do that with each other, you know. It’s all for a different purpose, of course, but we still display our charms like peacock feathers, meant for enticing the other to like us even more.

As if that’s even necessary.

These are smart, strong, gorgeous women. They have ambition, common sense and unbelievable flair. Were I meeting men of this caliber, I’d be head over heels, humming wedding marches and plucking the petals off of daisies in the classic, he loves me, he loves me not fashion.

So, where are the men that match these women in status, intelligence and looks? Oddly enough, I do not care. The big white wall calendar behind my desk is filled with hastily scratched notes: Drinks with Stephanie. Brunch with Penny. Elisa CD Release.

Who has time for real dating, when I’m spending my evenings in complete social comfort with people I already know I like? Don’t misunderstand me. I love men. LOVE them. They’re just so… complicated. And I will get back to that racket one of these days. Because if not… well… I mean, I can just see my future unfolding before me.

I’ll end up a spinster, dying alone with my cat… and more girlfriends than The Fonz.

Heeeeeey!

Lately, my father spends his days watching a nest of newly hatched osprey. He writes his children emails about fuzzy-headed chicks straining their scrawny, pencil necks, craning for food, their mouths open wide – almost too wide to in relation to the size of their tiny heads. He worries that the neighbors will think he’s a pervert. But the binoculars are for the chicks – the feathery kind.

My father has always loved birds. When we were young, he spent hours in the aviary he’d built onto the garage, rotating eggs in the incubator, making mash for young cockatiels and quail. And that he’s taken an interest in these young ospreys relieves me. It has been a very long time since he’s expressed an interest in anything.

Over the last couple of years, I have felt my father become a much different person. The divorce altered him, hip replacement surgery nearly defeated him, and there were times he’d call only to choke a sob into my voicemail and hang up. I worried.

I worry. Present tense.

When I was younger, it was a physical handicap that set my father apart from everyone else’s. No longer the breadwinner after spinal arthritis ended his career as a forest fire fighter, he played Mr. Mom to the five Hunter children. Laundry duties, carpool and dinner on the table at six. It’s complicated what that will do to a man – the way changing his role so completely can change the way he sees himself. And while his self-image suffered considerably from fate and circumstance, he still says that those years of fathering were the only thing he’s ever really done right.

Were it the only thing, it would be enough.

That he’s taken to signing emails to his children, Love, SmeagleDad says a lot about his state of mind. It says a lot about the way he chooses to address the mental illness that now separates him from others – and even from his former self. And were that sort of levity constant, I might worry less. But it is not. Geography has kept him out of sight for the better part of the last eight years, and selfishness (mine) makes me wish that sometimes, it would keep him a little more out of mind. Only because knowing that I cannot do anything to combat his depression, much less truly understand the newer evidences of paranoid schizophrenia, is heartbreaking.

As a child, I went fishing with my father a number of times. We’d sit, a cooler of grape soda and ding-dongs between us, on the seats of his beat up tin lizzy, or on the bank of a stream too cold for swimming, and wait quietly for red and white bobbers to jerk below the water. I remember it being very still and peaceful.

I like to imagine that he still finds that sometimes. I hope that in those quiet moments, with a pair binoculars pressed to his face, keeping watch over that nest of babies, he finds the parts of him that he’s been so afraid he lost in all the chaos.

Armed with plastic forks, wet wipes and our appetites, the four of us launched into a three hour tour of epicurean heaven. We tasted everything. Well, everything but the pig snoots.

“The snoot is pretty intense,” Ron said before we’d even begun. I looked at Goldner and then at Rachel. There weren’t any objections to skipping the snoot.

I met Ben’s friend, Ron Lieber at the release of 2 Do Before I Die, an inspiring collection of essays about, in simplest terms, making the most out of life. While chatting at the party on Ben’s roof deck on Wednesday night, we got on the subject of the Big Apple Barbecue. Ron, who is something of a barbecue expert, was going to be speaking on one of the event’s panels (going head-to-head with the infamously temperamental food editor from Vogue, no less) and would I like to be his guest?

Would I!

Sunday afternoon, I rounded up my two partners in BBQ love and we headed down to Madison Square Park. Ron’s panel was sold out, so the three of us stood outside waiting, trying to ignore the smoky siren song. I practically needed a leash for Goldner. And when Ron emerged from 11 Madison Park, it was game on.

Spare ribs, pork shoulder, beef brisket and sausage, baby back ribs and beans, beans, beans. And when there shouldn’t have been space for anymore, there was strawberry rhubarb cobbler.

Drool.

When I got home, I made myself hike the stairs up to my apartment (penance, you see), where I promptly collapsed into a food coma. Eight hours later, I haven’t really budged. Or eaten. I imagine it’ll be a while before I feel at all hungry again. Unless you’re talking about strawberry rhubarb cobbler, because I seem to have some appetite left for some more of that.

Mmmmmcobbler.

When summer time comes to New York, the city reminds me an awful lot of the Texas State Fair. Bunches of rural folk in matching t-shirts, shuffling around, gaping and saying things like, “Sure is big, huh Ma?” Minus Big Tex and turkey legs, it’s roughly the same experience.

I’m sure I’ve just offended someone with the above, but I don’t care. I’m from rural Texas; I know of which I speak. And if you are from rural anywhere and you’re reading this blog, the above statement probably doesn’t apply to you. Unless you take family vacations in matching t-shirts that proclaim your hometown and/or family name, then you have problems way beyond being offended by my generalizations.

Tourists are equally frustrating as they are fascinating. They take up far too much room on the sidewalk and move far, far too slowly, but I could watch them for hours. And in places like Rockefeller Center, where I met an old coworker for lunch, that is possible. I sit, watch, take in the details, listen to conversations (it’s the glorious stuff that OHINY is made of), and sure, pass a judgment or two.

Baking in the sun today during lunch, my friend and I were surrounded by good material. A family of nine – every single one of them with cornsilk hair and wearing grass green shirts emblazoned with Johnson Family New York 2005! – stood close by snapping tourist photos. You could almost smell the alfalfa.

“You sound terrible, you want some cold medicine?” My friend was sniffly and having just recovered from The Cold myself, I was carrying an arsenal of relief.

“Nah. I’ll take some Zyrtec when I get back to the office,” she said. “Sure, I’ll have web-footed babies, but it works.”

It seems that one of the blonde Johnsons happened to be watching and listening just then, because she scrunched up her face and I distinctly overheard her share with her sibling, “…web footed babies.”

They did not think this was funny. This was made obvious by the I’m-fifteen-and-thus-find-everything-lame look of disgust on her face.

I wanted to throw my gum in her hair! I wanted to yell, Stop judging me! Look what you’re wearing you… you….you who probably hang out at the carwash or the Dairy Queen for fun! What do you know of web-footed babies?!

You’d think that herein would lie the moral of the story and that I would feel really bad for being so judgmental. Nope. Tourists are not people. They want to be made fun of or they would learn to walk single file and not wear socks with their sandals. So I returned to my office, still hating blonde Johnson and hoping that her visit to New York left her with blistered feet and just enough pollutants to have her own web-footed babies one day.

That’ll learn ‘er.