on our first date...

On our first date my hands were shaking so badly that when he handed me the small, paper wine-list I couldn’t make out any of the words. My hands were shaking so badly I could see only a tangled mess of text. And as we exchanged hellos and met eyes and did-those-things-you-do-on-first-dates-when-you've-met-before-but-only-a-little-and-not-like-this, I tried to hold the list still. I failed. I tried to turn  just enough away from him to breathe and calm my shaking hands. I failed.

Instead I turned to the bartender and said, Something dry and white, please.

And then let them shake.

the subway note

Every once and again, on a single day, the stars align and men look at me.

Which is to say, I can feel men looking at me. In that half-flattering, half-alarming sort of way. Alarming because it is unusual and the looks are flagrant in a way that men so rarely are.

I’m not saying that men don’t look at me on other days. They probably do. Men in New York look at everyone. I’m just saying that on a single day, about once a month, a disproportionate number of men look at me—or rather they look at me in a way that I am aware of them looking. It is a rate increase such that I begin to wonder if my skirt is see-through.

It never happens on the days I feel prettiest, which makes it that much more discordant and strange. Usually I am makeup-less and exhausted and fighting the sort of zit that threatens to consume. I’ve actually found it’s often near that (cough, cough) so-very-special-time-of-the-month (which let’s not tell the men about, alright?). And I’ve found on such days it’s best not to look in the mirror. Because on this day—this strange and particular day of the month--I never look as good as the accumulation of glances makes me think I look.

And every girl, every woman should surely get to feel so beautiful, once a month.

I’m not trying to be ridiculous in committing this, what’s-sure-to-be-relatively-inane-and-most-definitely-vain piece of half-fiction to paper. But it’s early and my mind is addled by the reintroduction of geometry and quadratic equations and roots and factors and holy hell, I wasn’t any good at any of that stuff to begin with.

So if you’re already turned off, stop reading here; it won’t get any better.

It happened the other day. I walked into the train station and immediately became aware that something was amiss; too many following eyes. I checked my fly, my panty-line, my teeth, the front of my shirt to make sure no buttons had come undone and then concluded I must just be in the middle of my own near-monthly phenomenon.

And then I got on the subway, found a seat, and did my best to both ignore and bask in the rarity of those-multiplied-sidelong-stares.

About half-way through my ride uptown, a young man (youngish, my age, maybe a little younger, a few years older?) un-hunched himself from his laptop and looked right up. At me.

And didn’t stop looking.

Which quickly made me nervous. Because I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel his eyes. And the glances I’ve spoken of are not usually sustained things.Which made this an outlier.

(And so early in the day).

Not long after, he put his computer in his bag and went to stand by one of the train’s doors.

And then it happened. And I knew it was going to happen--in that way that you know something’s going to happen and nine times out of ten you’re wrong, but damn if this isn’t going to be the one time you’re right.

He walked right up to me and his lips started moving. Words I couldn’t make out. Such was the comfort of a set of headphones. But he kept talking, and I hesitantly paused the music.

Can I borrow a pen? he asked.

Oh god. I knew where this is going. (Please, please don’t let this go where I think it might be going).

Oh, okay, sure. Dig, dig, search. Hand it over.

He took my pen, wandered back from whence he came, only to return a moment later.

And a piece of paper?

Umm, sure.

I looked to my left, the man next to me had one of those legal notepads. Easy access. For a moment I thought he’d offer it up. Instead I had to dig and search and with little skill tear a piece from my Wexford composition book.

I imagine as my parents read this, they’ll know exactly why I cringed as the whole thing happened.

I am person who lives in fear of restaurants that make your birthday a public event. Please, please, I think, do not sing. I do not want the large sombrero placed on my head. I do not way everyone to turn around and laugh and clap at my expense. (I embarrass more easily than anyone has any right to).  I fear public proposals and jumbo-trons and sky-writing and all the stuff between.

So the fact that this boy was doing this totally lovely and bold thing was all well and good, but for the fact that the whole of the subway car was watching it unfold. And smiling.

And I was struck by the sudden need to protect this boy (who needed absolutely not protection—what’s wrong with me?) but also to hide.

As he got off at 34^th he handed me my pen, along with the note he’d written, leaving me to two more stops with a subway full of sympathetic and smiling eyes.

And my own supreme discomfort.

It was a lovely note. Saying he’d probably never see me again, but wouldn’t be nice if he did.

And so I should…wait for it…not call him, but look him up on Facebook.

There was something so dissonant about just how bold he was and then how he couldn’t leave his phone number, but rather a name and a non-virtual entreaty to a very virtual request: a Facebook friend request. Oh, this age of technology and its many eccentricities.

I’m not on Facebook.

And can’t imagine getting back on it anytime soon.

But I am in a debt to that boy for how courageous he was. I am in a debt to the mysterious monthly phenomenon. It is a buoying thing, a buoyancy-making-thing. It makes confidence and courage  easier to come by. And the more often those things are grabbed by my wily, little fists, the more often the monthly phenomenon seems… apt—the more often life is richer and more exciting and, dare I say, fun.

blogging. and the love letter it is.

i live alone now.

in a tiny studio apartment. in a small neighborhood a little bit south of that place called manhattan. and i love it. i love everything about it.

i love walking east on fourth place just at the moment the subway is crossing ahead in the distance, above ground. the slow, soft rumble of it--its gentle movement--makes me feel as though i'm living life in miniature--like i'm a small piece on an oversized train set.

and sometimes it feels really good to feel so small.

i've finally gotten good at cooking dinner. it's almost always quinoa. or pasta. and almost always consumed between the hours of 11 at night and two in the morning. this feels unique to new york. and unique to living alone. and unique to not having a partner. unique to this particular, passing moment.

and this moment will pass.

i am grateful for the lonely. and grateful for the quiet evenings. i am grateful for how the air cools after the sun sets. for the soft summer rains and the smell of water on earth and pavement.

for how fleeting the wet is. for how fleeting the summer is. for how quickly time is moving.

and yet.

all of these many things terrify me, too.

how quickly time is moving! and how quickly this moment is passing, even as i use what little breath i have to curse the damn. thing. for. standing. still. for. so. damn. long.

sometimes i think, the reason i started this blog, all those many years ago, was i wanted to write a love letter.

to pause the movement of what was moving too fast.

i constantly look at things now and remind myself to look again. new york has this way of hardening a person, of making defense the default position. so, often i must  ask myself to look again. to look again through new eyes. softer eyes. to look again and with great compassion.

i began writing this blog as a love letter to the life i wanted to lead. to the person i wanted to become. as a way of looking at myself, just as i was--in that moment, that paused moment--a second time and with great compassion.

somewhere along the way i forgot this. somewhere along the way i forgot that this was meant to be a-love-letter-to-life-as-is. somewhere in that land where the anthroplogie aesthetic met kate spade saturday i developed a tremendous and nagging suspicion that this blog was somehow not good enough. or glittery enough. or marketable enough. no commercial niche to speak of. and blogging is such a different world than it was just a few years ago. and so i began to wonder if in this land of what to wear and what to buy and how to look while doing those things--i began to wonder if this blog still had a place? if it still had value? i want to be very clear, i do not admonish or fault anyone who has figured out the commercial element of blogging--it is an art form unto itself. and as a single woman living in new york city who knows just how hard it is to make a living--let alone make a living doing what one loves--i fault absolutely no one for figuring out a way into the world of business. i both admire and wonder at the talent of it, truly.

and then there is the question of how this blog-as-a-love-letter affects love--or rather, the search for a shared-sort-of-love.

if ever i think of throwing in the towel altogether, it's mostly because of men. because dating is hard enough. and dating in new york city is nearly impossible (and not in the good, rewarding, wow-i'm-so-glad-to-have-this-experience-sort-of-way, but more in the this-is-an-as-of-yet-undiscovered-circle-of-hell). and to blog as a single woman about actual experiences when we're all just trying to figure it out, both separately and, when we get so lucky, together...well, it may just be... too. hard.

because i worry about the men i go on dates with. i worry about last names and the power of google and the sheer volume of information. i worry about the internet or a blog supplanting real conversation. i worry how oblique and out-of-context information can be misconstrued and misunderstood and falsely placed atop real experience. i worry that my melancholic writer's voice will somehow sound more loudly than the stutter of my laugh as we sit at the bar.

i dated a guy for four months and never once told him my last name. eventually he stopped asking. he knew why and he respected why and we made a small go of not-it,but something. and for a time it was really good.

sometimes i think if i could just hit the blogging-pause-button. figure out the man thing. get a grasp on the next five years. get married. have a baby. write a book. or some such. and then pick it back up again. assuming of course that (1) the aforementioned things will happen, and frankly i should be so, so (so very, very) lucky and (2) that blogging will still be around after i've lived my way into those major milestones (and the chances of that are...rare. no? perhaps just not blogging as we now know it).

i won't stop. but i will beg your patience if i go quiet for longer stretches of time. i'll beg your patience if my writing seems tedious and staid. if there aren't enough photos. if there are too many words. because, believe it or not, i am trying to figure out the next five years right now, day by day. and sometimes that means there is not the time nor the desire nor the energy to blog.

but if all of this is a love letter, a second look, than i ask for your kind eyes, your great compassion. i beg your understanding if a quiet does come. because sometimes silence is it's own sort of delight. sometimes silence is a love letter unto itself.

the passing cloud

you know what i liked?

that every time we went out there'd come a moment--towards the beginning of the date, but not too early into it--when he'd sort of catch his breath, cock his head, look at me sideways and say, you know, you really are quite beautiful--as though he didn't know until right then--right at that moment.

and it happened every time.

every. single. time.

i was made new through his eyes each and every time.

it was as though he had no memory for what i looked like. or, as though, that thing--that illusive and disastrous and terribly important thing that is beauty--was secondary to everything else.

he'd say it not as a compliment, but as a discovery. not as a-means-to-an-end, just an observation.

and i so liked waiting for that discovery--watching for that discovery. a quiet and quick moment that mostly belonged to him. little more than a passing cloud, gone as quickly as it came.

i so liked knowing that that wasn't the thing that kept him coming back.

the fun of all the others

a few years ago i worked with a girl (one of the best i've ever known) who was engaged to a man she was mad about.

he was not the first to have asked for her hand in marriage, but he was the last.

they now have a beautiful baby boy.

there was a particular day at work when we were filling in the long and lazy afternoon with mostly useless chatter and she turned to me and said, if i had met the right guy, right off the bat, i would have missed the fun of all the others. 

i was navigating a particular sort of heartache at the time and didn't give it too much thought. i mean, when you've met the guy that you think could be the guy, who cares about the fun of the others? especially when fun so quickly, so easily, gives way to loss. and even small losses cost something.

but then i got over that guy. it took way too long and was way too hard, but i got over him. and then i fell in love with someone else. and then i had to get over him. and something about this feels really unfair because i gotta tell you, once you've loved someone and they don't--or can't--love you back, i cannot see the value in ever having that experience again.

but that's life. and maybe there is a point. maybe the hapless mess and chaos and unknown is actually ordered by a divine grace that is simply unknown to us. or maybe it really  is just mess and chaos and unknown. because i believe in those things.

(but i believe in grace too).

now i think of my dear friend's words when i kiss men for the first time.

because, thing is, i can remember every first kiss.

every first kiss, every in-between kiss, every should-we-really-be-doing-this kiss?

there was the kiss that took place just inside the front of my apartment building this past january. it wasn't terribly good and didn't last terribly long and i wasn't terribly keen on the guy. days later he had said that it wasn't his best attempt and i was baffled, guys think that way? i just  figured people kiss in all sorts of ways and either you fit or you don't. never thought of kissing as a thing of practice and false starts and poor attempts.

there was that one kiss when i was nineteen, sitting with my back against a row of tall, dark lockers. i had made an art form of fantasizing about a particular boy in school for so long. i always imagined our first kiss would be a sort of delicious collision: a little bit messy and a little bit dangerous--all-together something really good. but that day as he emerged from a classroom--old sweats and socks--he stopped in front of me and  leant down, pressed his lips against my forehead. it was simple. and soft. as gentle a thing as can be. and in the space between what i had so long wanted and what i actually got, was something all together better.

with the last man i dated we were standing inside of a liquor store at the end of our first date and knowing there would probably be more dates to follow, i had but one thought: this cannot happen here. our first kiss cannot be inside of this place from which we are buying a handle of whiskey (at my request). it didn't. it was just inside the door to his small west village studio apartment. he spent five minutes just below my left ear before he ever got to my mouth...                                                 (and that's all i'll say about that).

there have been so many kisses.

the i'll-do-this-once-and-check-it-off-my-bucketlist kiss.

the middle-of-the-day-is-this-really-about-to-happen? kiss.

the knee-deep-before-you've-even-begun kiss.

the we-can't-let-anyone-see-this kiss. the the-whole-of-my-face-will-be-raw-tomorrow-but-it's-so-worth-it kiss.

the i-don't-like-the-feel-of-your-tounge-in-my-mouth-so-get-out kiss.

the i've-just-met-you-and-walking-in-here-tonight-i-told-the-girl-at-the-front-desk-that-i-didn't-know-what-you-looked-like-and-now-here-we-are-sucking-face-(or some such)-and-i'm-a-little-bit-embarassed-but-not-enough-because-holy-shit-i-sort-of-like-you-and-it's-fun-to-feel-sixteen-again kiss.

the i-don't-know-your-name-but-i'll-figure-it-out-after kiss.

the five-am-post-karaoke kiss.

there were the kisses that never were. the kisses that hung in the air, silent what-ifs.

the last kisses that i didn't know--couldn't know--were such.

the this-is-just-a-kiss kiss. which is always so much more than just-a-kiss. always so much more than just-an-anything.

there were the kisses that took a little while to figure out. the kisses i laughed through and groaned during and pulled away from, before. trying. again. there have been unexpected kisses, and climbing-from-bed-in-the-morning kisses--those that mostly land on the bony and angular parts of the body. there have been the come-back-to-bed kisses. the middle-of -the-night-are-you-still-there kisses.

there was that one second-first-kiss that was eight years in the making.

there have been gateway kisses and goodbye kisses. kisses that feel like breathing, like water: easy and sweet. of-course kisses and  kisses laced with white wine and courage. and then there's the first kiss that feels like you're falling into the person--like you've kissed them a thousand times before and it's second nature and you think maybe, just maybe it's true. maybe the future does indeed have an ancient heart.**

and there are still more kisses to look forward to. more fun. more chaos. more mess. more that will make very little sense. until it does. until sense sweeps in. and the last first kiss is had. the this-is-home kiss.

this-is-home.

nothing more and nothing less than that.

which is pretty much everything.

**the future has an ancient heart--words by Carlo Levi, as explained perfectly by Cheryl Strayed

also, for what it's worth, no one has ever talked about kissing/kisses better than Jeffrey McDaniel when he wrote the poem The Archipelago of Kisses (which inspired much of this post--art is about borrowing and stealing from your betters, no?) and ended it with these perfect words:

"But one kiss levitates above all the others. The intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss./ The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss. Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the earth/ like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next t your bones."

photo by the ridiculously talented Emma Hartvig (who i'm honored to call a friend)