Stoops

It's a little early for a Sunday for me to be awake but sleep isn't necessarily anything I'm overly interested in at the moment (I'll probably sleep this afternoon)(Happy Fathers Day, Dads, keep shining) so I figured I'd stop in to gab for a bit. It's funny...last Sunday I spent a majority of the day after Greg left feeling confused about what I felt like doing with my time - writing, reading, watching television, wandering around the City (my neighborhood, anyway) and by the time it got to be about 9 o'clock at night, the realization struck me that I WAS BORED. What!!? I never get bored. I mean, some work tasks are boring and sometimes I'm in the company of people who slightly cause me to want to gouge my eyes out, but that's entirely different than the restlessness I experienced last Sunday. Ideally today won't find me in the same boat. Johnny and Nilla are heading to Connecticut today, I believe, for a Fathers Day thing with her Dad, which leaves me in the quiet company of myself and my apartment, which is, I think, something I need after last night. But I'll get to that.

Speaking of Nilla...I have become increasingly obsessed with one of the affiliates of Lit Crawl called Liars' League which I've now shared with Nilla who will be possibly auditioning in the next week or so after a few emails between Andrew, the Director at Liars' League, and Nilla. I'm so elated to be able to connect people and things and help friends find muses. So the next Liars' League performance is July 11th and I'd love nothing more than if she were able to act out a story at that one. We'll see. And I read a brilliant story acted out at the last event on their website called The Horse Latitudes which still kind of has me reeling. And I shared it with Greg. Of course I did.

Speaking of Greg...I will in a moment, anyway. In other Lit Crawl related endeavors, we received an email at one of our Lit Crawl email addresses inquiring about teaming up with a small organization based in the UK which celebrates short form fiction on the shortest day of the year as well as the shortest night of the year, a concept which fascinates me. The organization is small yet they work with varying top name larger organizations so, as networking for Lit Crawl goes, this was a fairly prestigious inquiry. The organization apologized for reaching out so hastily but they're small, they said, and finding International partnering potential has been taking time...yet, they wondered if we might host an event in NYC June 20th (next Wednesday) to honor the short form and the shortest night of the year. Suzanne and I both became really rather giddy at the prospect, and even though Suzanne is in San Francisco for a couple of weeks and will have to miss it, she prompted Dacel and I to lead the charge on hosting an event. Dacel did a majority of the legwork (Suzanne allotted her to it, not only to give her some fair responsibility but also because Dacel is a librarian and school has just ended so she'd have appropriately timed "free" time to pull this off.) We're hosting a Book Swap Happy Hour at Scratcher Bar - everyone brings a book of short stories (in honor of International Short Story Day) and we have drinks and mingle and swap our books. Lit Crawl has given me so many incredible experiences, and they just keep compounding. I love it.

So speaking of Greg. Friday there were maybe more emails between us than had transpired the entire week leading to Friday. Well, no, because Thursday we did email often also. But Friday there were many bits of correspondence, and to be truthful, despite what a friend texted me (sorry, Niki! Never again, promise) I did slightly compromise my schedule for him Friday, only because...well, I have no purpose to have done so other than my want to see him. My wanting to see him is quickly creating this insane sense of urgency, but at the same time, it's a sense of urgency that I feel I haven't felt in so tremendously long that I'm finally coming back into myself, really feeling like myself. Without a sense of urgency for anything, we just become flatlined. And I think the past two years have more or less found me flatlined. This isn't to say it should be a boy bringing me back to life or that I can justify my mere existence by his (because I spent the last decade less two years doing that with Craig) but with this profound desire to be in his presence come so many other beautiful notions: the want to write pages and pages, not just here, but elsewhere, the ability to smile and walk with a proud stride while I listen to music through the streets of New York, the sensation of loving subway rides, intersections, notions in and of themselves.

Okay well anyway. Greg sent me an email mid-afternoon that read, "FYI, I may have drinks with my friends Matt, Phil and Libby tonight (all of whom were at Lit Crawl). Unconfirmed as of now, but if plans pan out, want to drink and be merry (where "merry" to Greg at the moment is a neurotic, overwhelmed, WTF with all this stuff coming up kind of merry)?" Insert: he sent me a bullet point list of computer work engineer stuff he is required to complete before leaving next Thursday for Buenos Aires (more also on that at some point.) I'm getting it, maybe slowly, why I rarely hear from him during the work week...um, yes, while he's at work, he works. A lot. Maybe it's overkill. But he loves it. So good.

Anyway, I had been texting with Dacel through the day, and she was lunching with her coworkers (their "end of year party" consists of lobster tail and sirloin tips and rich nonsense like that - she works at a private school, a well-to-do one) and she was telling me that usually they all would go get drunk after the lunch, so she wasn't sure if she could meet me for our usual Happy Hour. But by around 3, she texted me that no one from her staff wanted to do the after-party party, so would I still wish to meet her out? I agreed, literally just prior to receipt of Greg's invite.

I emailed to Greg that I would be meeting Dacel, but to keep me informed of his merriment status. And the thing is this: I never, rarely, if ever bail on a girlfriend. I can't stand it when it's done to me, although admittedly, I brush it under the rug if it does happen because I am a Turn The Other Cheek kind of girl, but I just don't like to do it to others. So I left work right around 5 (Wip, as I passed his desk on my way out: "Where are YOU going")(because even on Fridays, we should all be staying until 7, ugh) and traveled to Union Square where I literally clambered off the train (so fucking tired) and waded through the maze of people to The Ninth Ward, a great bar on 2nd Avenue. The place was already swarmed with Friday Happy Hour crowds but I found Dacel, and she had secured us a small space with stools so at least we had real estate.

I love Dacel so much. I cannot even indicate how inspirational she is to me...she's clever, fresh, fashionable, funny, brilliant. I cherish her new friendship so very much. Anyway, one of the first things I mentioned to her was that Greg had invited me out for potential drinks later with his friends. Emphasize (because I haven't yet) with his friends. That's progress, is it not?? He's introducing me to people who have a stationed position in his life?? Grand. Of course, Dacel being the super supportive friend and confidante that she is encouraged me to "head out to meet him whenever." The only reason I actually felt comfortable doing so? Ditching a friend...? is that her cousin and cousin's close friend met us out, also. So I wasn't leaving her alone. She had camaraderie.

So here is what went down. Our texts:

G: "Woodland, at Flatbush and 6th, in Arena-district, about 8.30."
K: "Brooklyn!!??"
G "Yes, I'll be there in 40."
K: "I'll be there probably in an hour or so. If I can find my way back across the river."
G: "Row your boat splendidly!"
K: " I plan on swimming."

By this time, Dacel and I and our company had transitioned to a less-invasive bar, somewhere with far fewer trust fund 23 year olds, a place more our speed. And sunlight was streaming into the bar and we were doing shots and I actually somehow managed a happy hug out of Dacel who is famous for wanting no affection from friends whatsoever, so help her God. Upon receiving the above referenced texts, I just...I kept showing them to Dacel, and she was like, "Kristin, go. You want this!" And so I went.

I will say this: feeling over tired, having drinks (mixed with shots), finding my way miraculously to the 4/5 train, traveling back to Brooklyn after having left it hours prior, finding out via text that Greg and co. had changed venues from Woodland to Flatbush Farm, weaving through the crowd at FF inside, stepping out into the back garden and seeing Greg at a table in the distance, watching him turn to me and smile and wave me over...life cannot compete with that entire sequence.

Beautifully, conversation flowed at the table where I sat with Greg, Libby, Matt and Phil. And at some point Libby and I went into the bar to get a round, and she was just enormously engaging to talk to, and I kept thinking, Of course Greg keeps good company. Of course he does.

And we were sitting there, and at some point early on Greg turned to me and said, Thank you for coming tonight. It felt...it was nice.

I will say that it was slightly surreal to be around the corner from my job site with friends that have no association whatsoever with that junk pile. After Flatbush Farm, Libby and Matt headed home and Greg, Phil and I made a visit to Woodland (return for them, first time for me that evening) and we ordered drinks ("I think I've only ever seen you drink wine," Greg said to me as I half-contemplated the cocktail menu...yes, true statement, I really don't drink anything else) and fried cheese and olives. Phil is great...I can completely see why Greg values him. He's a stand up person. And smart enough to actually complete conversations.

So then after all of this, we bid Phil farewell and Greg and I walked down Flatbush. I couldn't contain myself: I know he has such little interest in it (not little interest in me, or in what I do, but in the building itself) but I begged would he walk the perimeter of the Arena with me? He obliged sweetly, and we walked Dean, walked 6th, walked Atlantic...and he asked questions, engaging ones about construction, and I answered to the best of my ability. Then he was like, So why don't we head to my place? We wound up walking to Brooklyn Heights then, from the Arena, and good god, who knows how long that took but it didn't matter...time with Greg has no quantitative factor on it, not now. It did before when I was confused as to how I could tolerate someone for so many hours without leaping from the window. I get it now.

We made it to his apartment and decided, because it was stupidly amazing outside, to rest a while on the stoop. I wanted to take the entire span of New York City and draw it inside of me, pull it in so that I would be spilling with beautiful things. Instead, I was dumb, sitting there in my Converse All-Stars and dopey glasses (I didn't KNOW we'd be hanging out that night when I got ready in the morning, so I dressed like a vagabond!) and he was asking me about weights of traffic lights and stone slabs and at some point, I don't know when, he put his arm around my shoulder, and that was it, for me. I melted right into that stone slab stoop we were debating.

The rest of the night is obviously filled with things I refuse to discuss in this place, but I will say that he likes to touch each vertebrae of my spine, and he sleeps mostly silently, which is important to me (hard to say why because it's not really in our control) but on occasion, he'll make some sort of grunt, and I'm awake for it, awaiting it.