Wednesday/Thursday

Yes: I am tired.

Yes: This week has me wound like a top. Does that analogy work? Was that an analogy?

No: It doesn't matter.

What DOES matter is that I don't want you all wound up so I'll merely share the highlights. It would take exactly the same amount of time that has passed to tell you everything that's happened in that time anyway, and frankly I don't have that to spare.

I'm awake because my eyes are crossed from searching for assets for this project that I'm not really working on. I didn't mind it so much, but it distracted me from doing my nails (they are belly dancer purple with blingy POW stars placed halfway on each fingernail randomly) and consequently they are not dry yet. If I've learned anything in 24 years of fingernail painting it is that you can't go to sleep til they are dry or you wake up with hair strand imprints in them.

And so I'm here. Because I love you. And because I'm slightly stressed. And because my nails aren't dry.

Now, let's see. Highlights.

My weekend suffered a blow to my ego and the most insane hangover ever. Living on New Couch Island for an entire day while friends visited to console me. One of the dearest hearts brought an entire spread of food that I'm still trying to finish. And I realized for good and for real this time that the whole point of loving a person is how the both of you can come as you are. You don't have to dazzle anyone. You don't have to be in a good mood. You can even take a nap while someone silently checks email at the other end of your couch and when you wake up the takeout guy is there and you can both snack and have a quiet talk and watch Married With Children on mute.

These are the little things that comprise love.

Plus other stuff. But we all know this already. I'm just warming up.

Monday night was uneventful.

Tuesday in between work and more work I had drinks with my Very First Boyfriend Ever. I haven't seen him in 15 years or so and it was more than a little surreal. He's become quite a success and is married to a lovely woman and has lovely children and a lovely house but as much as we've both changed I was amazed at how much we're both still the same. I couldn't have been reminded more thoroughly of the pieces of myself that are timeless.

We barely had enough time to catch up but one thing we did get to talk about was family. I realized that he's the only person I know who has met everyone that had a hand in raising me. The only one who wasn't intimidated by the weirdness of my clan and didn't make me feel self conscious about it either. It was comforting to be able to just tell him everything that's happened, everyone who has passed away, everyone who is still the same and everyone who's just not there anymore. I didn't have to explain anything. It was simple. It was perfect.

And then more work. But then after more work there was a movie at the Vic with that man I used to think I was going to marry until last year. Redemption came, and it was very well dressed and smelled good good good. Like fresh baked bread good. Like Egyptian Musk good. Like Sai Flora good. Like The Boy You Have Wanted to Hug For Six Months good.

We watched Ziggy Stardust and I got the chance to drape my legs on top of his and wrap myself around his arm. It was so nice that I fell asleep for the last 20 minutes. Like a wee baby I slept. They could have closed that big old haunted theater around the both of us for all I cared.

I won a poster cause we stuffed the raffle box and walking out I felt like I did when I was a little kid on long car trips and when we got there I had to get my bearings and go into my auntie's house or the museum or whatever. Stupid Haight Street and screaming kids and my precious moment was done.

We smoked a hookah. He unraveled about fifteen feet of emotional personal space requirements in a dark little restaurant where the last of my dreams got dashed. It didn't hurt so much as it was like getting out of a hot bath tub with no end to the day's coldness in sight. Like that, but for my heart.

And once home I slept like a wee baby again. I dreamed we were pitching a local ice cream company and for some reason my boss had to tell me this before I had the chance to get out of bed. But he brought ice cream cones and we ate them while we talked. I kept trying not to fall back asleep so that I could listen and take notes and finish my cone and didn't quite make it. I fell back asleep in my dream and then abruptly woke up in real life.

Okay then. Awake it is.

Today simply wasn't long enough to get everything done. It's my fault I insisted on having a lunch break with my friend from Brooklyn who tells stories like they are happening right there. He also designs and develops websites and makes music. He is a lot of talent in a single body and doesn't believe in saying he can't do something and he doesn't believe in not being able to do something. We have that in common. We eat lunch together very certain we can handle whatever emergencies come up on our telephone emails. Because it's true.

I believed in lunch and then I believed in about thirty meetings back to back followed by emergency telephone calls. But I also believed in leaving at 6 PM to meet a friend from my old job for a quick drink before going to Mel's Diner to eat real life ice cream and look at the sketchbook of a boy I have long admired. Flipping through it was like dream analysis, which I'm only slightly better at for other people than I am for myself.

But I didn't read into it. I picked at my food and looked at every single page. He told me to take any page I liked. I told him that would mean flipping through at least one more time to make my pick and he agreed. I would like to take him to see the fish at the museum in the park by my house and maybe look at his sketches in that underwater tunnel with the skylights 7 stories above shining down on his drawings.

So maybe I will.

Or maybe me and my comic book fingernails will take a breather from all of this socialization. I am a lone wolf by habit and trade. Some silence might do me good.

I'll try that out tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

I think now I can finally sleep. The blingy stars are dry and my eyelids are heavy and I'd like maybe to dream about the last few days tonight so that I can get a proper perspective on them. But this has helped a bit, so thank you.

Night.