Vow of Silence

Aaaaand, we’re back.



Late Saturday night found me utterly felled by a case of strep throat-- in the course of a half hour I went from having a lovely evening to having an iron-melting fever and awful chills. I had already been lamenting that I hadn’t written anything on here in far too long, a silence driven by the fact that I was preparing for a trip to give two colloquia this week. I had figured that another few passes through airport bars would provide a moment or two for reflection, beer at inappropriate hours and subsequent blog writing, but instead my week has been a continued silence of both the written and verbal variety.

It’s an odd thing that, if one lives alone, speaking to other living beings is a completely avoidable experience. At least this is true if one is sick and stays home-- in the past few days, I’ve spoken briefly to my friend Saranie (who angelically brought me soup, twice), eeked out a few descriptive words to my doctor (who responded by calling in a prescription for penicillin), and that’s it. Oh, and I did manage to croak an irritated “HEY LADY THE LINE IS BACK HERE” while waiting to be checked in at the doctor’s office, but the effort of verbalizing my pissy mood left me in a cold sweat.

The rest of my interactions have been completely virtual-- emails to my would-be hosts to cancel my talks, texts back and forth to a few friends, the occasional languid scroll through mostly boring Facebook updates. In a way I imagine it’s a little like being my cats-- I’m in the apartment all day, mostly sleeping, not saying anything. As I’ve often suspected, it’s not a bad life, and the cats seem to be under the impression that I’ve finally come to my senses and embraced their way of being. Strangely, I haven’t even really missed talking to people, although I suspect that’s somewhere in the symptoms of being sick, given that I also haven’t missed coffee all week, either. Like the herbal tea I’ve been downing instead, my laptop-as-window-onto-the-world is substitute enough (however insipid) to keep the part of my brain that’s actually functioning happy. Mostly. For now.

Free Poems, Take One

There are some creative millionaires in my neighborhood. I live in a charming c. 1920 building with 18 units, which was once the maids' quarters of 19th and Aloha. I just cannot get over the gorgeous gardens and Craftsman/Victorian style of the houses that surround my tiny castle.

I frequently walk home from my favorite pub down the length of Aloha St. Massive poplars with their giant leaves provide pleasing shade in the summertime. The sidewalks are cracked by the roots of the trees, and inscribed with names of children who have most likely grown up. ("King Darren" is a favorite).

If you're at Aloha and walk one block West of 15th, you'll find a large blue house with fences and terribly perfect shrubbery. Like many of these humble abodes, I've never seen a soul enjoying the expansive verandah. But there is something to make a note of: every month, the Master of the house locates a poem, copies it dozens of times on brightly colored paper, and places them inside a covered wooden box attached to the front gate. The poems further shielded from the elements by a ziploc bag inside the box.

Each month since I've lived in my current location--34, exactly--I've stopped by the box and picked up a poem. Initially it reminded me of a house in my neighborhood in Jacksonville, Riverside, which had a big white sheet of paper to write on. I wrote Rumi poetry on it and even once left a CD there that I particularly loved that week, and that was mentioned in a story in the Florida Times-Union. hehe.

Anyway, it's a mixed bag. Last winter I particularly loved a poem about whales...I'll find it and post for you. But here is this month's:

The Poem for April 2011

The Double-Play

In his sea lit
distance, the pitcher winding
like a clock about to chime comes down with

the ball, hit
sharply under the artificial
banks of arc-lights, bounds like a vanishing string

over the green
to the shortstop magically
scoops to his right whirling above his invisible

shadows
in the dust redirects
its flight to the running poised second baseman

pirouettes
leaping, above the slide, to throw
from mid-air, across the colored tightened interval

to the leaning-
out first baseman ends the dance
drawing it disappearing into his long brown glove

stretches. What
is too swift for deception
is final, lost, among the loosened figures

jogging off the field
(the pitcher walks), casual
in the space where the poem has happened.

Robert Wallace
1932-1999

(And they always add an explanation, herewith:)

"The son of parents who ran a small factory that turned out cherry and walnut furniture of their design, Robert Wallace developed an early appreciation for the well-made object. It had something to do with the painstaking care and the love of the materials and subject that led Robert to notoriety as a poet and teacher. His book Writing Poems reveals the poetic craft from within the poem's creation to its meaning."

Clearly, these are people who want to educate as well as entertain the neighborhood!

So I was surprised to find another "spring" poem at another, less-traveled intersection recently. I can't recall where it was for the life of me. But some investigating needs to be done into this new find. I find it not a little bit pervy! And why not, I suppose, when the squirrels and birds are out to play? But...just look:

Spring

Your breath against my cheek and ear
a most caress from deep within you
past the ramparts that appear
before me as I try again to think this through
to make the case for it how better now
to let this closure come
the long embrace encompassing
my eyelids set the moment done
and done for now and made anew
a history that I can taste
if you allow again allow me in
to see you through and through
you brush my lips with yours
you find my fingertips

C. 2011 Guy Holliday all rights reserved

www.ghcapitolhill.blogspot.com

A Snippet of Trivial Text Holds the Promise of Unimagined Pleasure

I promise not to make a habit of reposting things from other blogs, but it warms my heart to know that somewhere, someone felt enough like I do to go through the trouble of plastering a college campus with these posters:

from PassiveAggressiveNotes.com

Thanks to Elyse Barrere for sending this to me!

Take Me Home Tonight

Turning the last lights off in the bar, I gather my things and wait ten minutes, until it's 3 a.m. on the dot. Then I can call Sammy. His is the only phone number in this world that I currently have memorized. But he's not my brother or my early-morning booty call. He's my cabbie.

Only this time, when I call, instead of his familiar accent speaking, "Hello, my dear," I hear a robot instead. I'm told that his phone no longer accepts outside calls. Ah. I forgot that he was going on vacation. I also forgot that our relationship was really a business transaction.

Sammy took me home three-four nights a week for about six months. It was great. He was almost always available, knew where I lived, left the meter off and promised to rescue me free of charge if I was ever in trouble. He taught me a lot about the business of driving a cab. He shared his with a day shift person, and began driving at exactly 3 a.m.

I didn't always have a dedicated driver, but after some weird experiences with random drivers--like the old man with a foot fetish who caressed my feet! TWICE!--I decided to make Sammy my steady.

I bring this all up because when I linked to Texts from Last Night in a previous post, I skimmed the recent ones. Someone wrote something to the effect of: "Just hit on my cab driver. I think my 'desperate for a man' phase has segued into a FML phase."

It made me wonder about cabbie behavior all over. Obviously, everyone is an individual. If Text from Last Night lady had written, "Just hit on my creepy cab driver," then, OK. But her language makes a blanket class statement.

Is it more inappropriate to have a crush on your cabbie than to be crushing on your boss, teacher, mailman, doctor or hey--let's get real!--any of the hundreds of handsome-but-alcoholic-or-otherwise-fucked-up dudes in any major city? Is the power dynamic between a provider and purchaser of this particular service more charged than another? Is crushing on your cabbie really the point of no return?

A SURVEY

As I said, Seattle is a grab-bag. Of all the drivers I've had, I'd say it's 50/50 on the friendliness scale, with only one or two people ever seriously creeping me out. Many were married with children, working on a degree during the day, educating me about American history or lecturing me on the importance of watching Al-Jazeera for a balanced global viewpoint. So I certainly didn't think any of them were less productive or intelligent than me just because they were driving cabs. Honestly, they listen to BBC World News all day while I listen to Katy Perry!

Then there are other locales. When Lu and I were in a cab in Hollywood, separated from the driver by bulletproof glass, the dude was not having any conversation whatsoever. I remember NYC cabbies being fairly friendly. A driver in Portland took advantage of my inebriation once, by taking the scenic route over the wrong bridge and back. And a fiendish cabbie in Prague wrote something in my notebook that I don't think I ever want to have translated. (If you're out late in Prague, just walk home, however far. It's safer.)

/END SURVEY

I guess my point is, I really enjoyed my ten minutes per night with Sammy. He told me how he makes his special couscous during the holiday season. He was funny. One night, I was waiting for Sammy and another guy kept circling the block, trying to cajole me into his cab. I said, "No, thanks, I called someone." He was like, "But I'm here!" and being very persistent. I told Sammy and he said, "Oh, 640! he is no good! Do you see this? [pointing to his knuckle] That is that guy's teeth!!"

Once he asked if I could bring him a soda, and I liked that he felt he could ask me for something. I sometimes brought him candy. He put up with my obnoxious dates when I shouldn't have. I told him the only Arabic phrase I remember from Oma: phonetically it's Intee albee or "You are my heart." He said he'd try to teach me a new one now and then. And then he told me that he works only a few months at a time, saving for 45-day visits to Morocco. I came home drunk one night and read about Morocco for an hour. I looked at pictures and tried to feel a warm breeze on the edge of the ocean.

I don't know if I'll remember his number in the summertime, or if he'll even be back. For now I met another nice guy. Mohammed is my man. But maybe Sammy will come back, and he'll pick me up on a random call or a corner after I'm out dancing. Maybe he would ask to see me in the daytime. Maybe I don't think that's so strange.

Downward Spiral Pose

Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles, found on a Google Image Search.

My friend Danielle is a YA (Young Adult) librarian here in Seattle, and she has to read hundreds of books every year to keep on top of everything. I rarely pick up YA novels, but in my recent bookstore-on-the-verge sweep, I bought a book called Fat Vampire, by Adam Rex. (Yet another handsome author my age, who lives in Tucson with his wife, who makes me reconsider genre writing...)

It was a mostly hilarious skewering of all kinds of nerd and teen culture--Comic-Con, superheroes, goths, nerds/jocks, vampires, hackers, drama geeks. In it, a foreign exchange student, Sejal, arrives from India. She becomes the vampire's crush. But she has another problem: "The Google."

Here are two ways Rex describes the fictional disease in different chapters.

"I-I feel I should tell you I've sometimes had panic attacks. Not for a long time now, but...I do not want to freak you out."

"'Cause of...the Google?"

Sejal nodded at her feet. Panic attacks when reminded that she could not just close her eyes and vanish from the real world with its fleshy claustrophobia. Panic at the thought that she'd failed to log on and check her status for two hours, a day, four months. She pictured the complicated yoga of it--hands at her temples like blinders, bent at the waist to gaze at her own navel. Downward spiral pose."

_______

"I'm trying to be a better person," Sejal said. "A stronger person."

"You're good. You're strong."

"I'm not," Sejal insisted. "I have the Google. Did you know that?"

"Oh," said Ophelia, stepping back. "That internet disease?"

"It's not contagious."

"Sorry."

"It makes you forget what's important. I lost track of myself for a while. I forgot who I was. You can do terrible things when you don't know who you are, na?"

Ophelia shifted from one foot to the other. She shrugged slightly.

"I became a ghost, and I only cared about other ghosts. I was not available to people at school, on the street...I wasn't there. But move your mouse like on a Ouija board and you could speak with me. You could conjure me up. I lost every one of my real friends, but I had a box full of trolls and demons, like Pandora."

_________

I did that too when I was about 15. My friends used to give me a real hard time for not going out with them and starting to drink and date boys. I have stacks of journals from that time recalling my online conversations with people from across the country on IRC. I even had a couple of "boyfriends" in Seattle, of all places. :) At that time, I think I fell into online anonymity as an escape and a barrier to my adolescence. I was afraid of drinking and drugs. I thought all the girl-talk chatter surrounding me was dull and the older boys dangerous. I would rather spend an hour downloading Smashing Pumpkins images on our 14.4 connection.

Being in that caught-between generation is a funny thing. I've been online for half of my life, but not since I was five or six, like the Milennials. Unlike them, I suspect, I have a greater ability to shapeshift between identities. I can, and have, done Internet cleanses to wipe the majority of "myself" off the online grid. Then when it's time to network--for jobs, apartments, parties, partners--I get back on. I never want to be as trapped as I was before, like Sejal. Brooding teenagers have time to be ghostlike. Not me.

50 Ways to Leave Your Everyone

As an academic, particularly one that doesn’t have a permanent job yet, one of the only constants in my life is that most things are not actually constant at all. The main way this fact manifests itself is that I move fairly frequently-- every few years-- and have little control over where my next move will take me. There is a big part of me that likes this aspect of my work-- I don’t have time for claustrophobia to set in, and I’m forced to constantly adapt to uncertainty. Of course these are not always good things-- they cost me proximity to my friends, and most recently cost me a relationship. Ironically, that my major life displacements occur on a few-year timescale now, and do so somewhat dependably, seems like a kind of stability to me. At the very least, the fact that I know they’re coming makes them easier to ride out.

Until I was around 10 years old, life was passably stable. At the very least, I didn’t yet realize how my father’s death had spidered through the support beams of my life, structural damage that left no possible outcome but disintegration at the bone level. In the summer of 1990, my mother and I left to spend a vacation in LA-- which I now refer to as our “staycation”, on account of it lasting four and a half years. I have come to realize that the decision to stay, presented to me at the time as though it were a refusable option, a toy idea, was in fact cast long before our bags were packed. My mother was on the run from life in New York, and chose Malibu, CA as her safe house. In the subsequent years I became aware of how we’d bled dollar signs across the country and down the West Coast, but at the time it seemed only like the night-long exhalation of a leaking air mattress: you close your eyes on a soft surface, only to awake and find yourself on the floor.

Over the next decade, abrupt change became the constant-- I was never in a school for more than two years, and we moved between apartments like debtor pawns being chased by landlord rooks. I learned to adapt-- a skill I now think of as an asset, but one acquired under the duress of necessity. If you live in a hall of mirrors, distortions become normal, and so the perpetual unearthing of any taproots I put down became part of the everyday landscape. Even in the years since emerging from the carnival and seeing that time with a better sense of context, I still tend to explain it away as though it were a plate of bitter-but-character-building vegetables. This past weekend, I talked it over with a friend-- the only person I know whose life has been more nomadic than mine-- and he made a comment that has been ringing in my ears since:

“Some things that should hurt, don’t hurt anymore.”

It’s true-- I can leave people like they were paper dolls fluttering away in my rearview mirror, and though I suspect it should be harder, I’m not sure I wish it was. One of the things I so treasure about my friendship with Rachel is its uncanny ability to survive my tendency to fly out the window-- there are very few other people I can say that about. Maybe this is one of the reasons the topic of our writing together so appeals to me-- for me it’s not just about the ability to find real connection in spite of an increasingly digital world, it’s about finding real connection, period.

Clogging About Exhibitionists

Thank you, predictive text! Of course, more people clog than blog these days!



15th Ave., Seattle

The frequent failure of T9 makes for a lot of comedy on the Internet--see When Parents Text and Texts from Last Night--and a lot of confusion IRL. Not that texting isn't hazardous enough even when you do spell correctly, as I learned by starting a fight this week via text. I should've called instead. Plain and simple! I'm embarrassed by those times when, open as I want to be, I hide behind the built-in barriers of technology.

But this post is really about those who aren't hiding at all. Here are the texts between Lucianne and I on Thursday night:

RS: im being a big hippie this week. last nite i was out w my coworker while he was picking up boys. i made a sad lonely gay boy hold my hand. it was intense! i am like amma the hugging saint!

LW: haha! you ARE amma. i like the mential image of a mopey gay boy holding hands w you. just got off plane now waiting for bart to take me home. dude behind me had the fucking plague and coughed near my hair, yuck

RS: :) i'm at a punk show w my friend collette. her bf from the 80s band. older dudes smoking pot. AND a 24/7 couple: girl w her ass hanging out of a skirt, collared to her dude by a huge again WOO THURSDAY NITE!

RS: sorry, huge chain

LW: woo thursday! the new friday! ps there are drunk spanish girls arguing really loudly in heavily accented english about gays w children on the train

RS: omg! couple have their tongues down each others throats. clogging about exhibitionists

LW: maybe one of them is choking and it's a rescue mission. now guy on cell phone is complaining incredibly loudly about the foreign girls (who he thinks are german). hot mess express!

RS: haha

RS: oh shit. im about to get a ride home on a motorcycle

Some Are Struck And Some Sustained

I am facing down the world’s worst Caprese salad-- a misery of wilted lettuce, wan tomatoes, Italian dressing and dried flakes of basil. Less than 24 hours on the heels of the glorious one I had at the Capital Grille last night, eating it seems like trying to relive one’s dream date with George Clooney by picking up a guy at the bus station. This being an airport bar, I’m not exactly sure what I expected. My waitress is a beam of black-haired sunshine, gap-toothed and grinning as she chats with me about my travels. She mishears my destination of “Berkeley” as “Brooklyn”, and then becomes the second person in as many days to tell me I don’t sound like I’m from New York. Good thing I’m moving back-- my patina must be wearing off. The horror, the horror.

Rachel’s mention the other day of “single-serving friends”, that clever morsel from the opening sequence of Fight Club, keyed off of something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. It’s funny to me that while so much of the world has become increasingly disposable-- the idea of clothing lasting indefinitely seems long gone, for example-- we still place a premium on lasting relationships and denigrate those that are short-term. Don’t get me wrong, there are few things in this world more precious than a friend who knows you so well you never have to explain yourself. But at the same time, most of the other more transitory personal interactions we once had have been traded in for virtual ones-- we’d rather update our Facebook status than talk to the person next to us on the bus. There seems to be a general sentiment that a relationship that is not lasting, or god forbid ENDS, was not worthwhile. We even call romantic relationships that don’t end in the supposedly permanent union of marriage “failed” relationships. To me, there are a couple of things wrong with this point of view. First of all, it ignores the fact that all of our interactions, whether ended by someone getting off the train, by irreconcilable differences, or by death-- are transitory. It also equates the length of a relationship to its quality-- a mirage as any unhappily married couple can tell you.

Sitting in this airport bar, I am watching the room full of singly-occupied two-tops play out these brief connections. In front of me, a fresh-faced blonde dines alone. Moments ago, the table next to her was occupied by a father and his teenage son. The son was too young to be on her radar, but he watched her chitchat with the waiter, envious wheels turning in his head as though “fat latino guy who works at the airport” might be a valid career choice if it let him make time with pretty girls. The father and son, now gone, are replaced by her tomboy counterpart of otherwise similar age and blondeness, a talkative girl just in from Afghanistan. Today, transportation snafus have made getting drunk in the airport bar the best possible option for her. The two women light up a conversation, and they are what I love about bars, airport bars in particular (otherwise temples to terrible food and worse decor). My waitress appears with a second beer-- holding both my new and nearly empty glasses, I glug down the last sip and pass her the empty. “Trade ya.”

She grins ear-to-ear. “Trade ya!”

On the plane, a slim commuter craft with aisles barely shoulder width, I find myself seated next to Sandy, a firefighter from New York. Sandy is rotund and mustachioed, and there’s little room for the Holy Spirit between us as I wedge into the window seat. He’s been down in DC lobbying for aftercare for 9/11 responders, having lost thirty friends that day. I try to think if I have thirty friends to lose. Sandy tells me the effects of 9/11 are still rippling today-- that even the wives of firefighters who didn’t die tried to sue the city, after efforts to coordinate surviving firefighters to help the newly widowed led to healing of the Marvin Gaye variety. Having mistaken the buckle of my messenger bag for a stethoscope, a confusing conversation on how yes, I am a doctor, but not the useful kind, ensues. In the short hop between DC and New York I hear about Sandy’s family (his daughter is about to become assistant fire chief in Nassau County), his wife (who he stayed true to despite the yowlings of a merry widow in need of consolation), and his girlfriend from when he was twenty (who apparently looked just like me-- “Irish eyes!!!” he booms). Near the end of the flight he gooses my kneecap, which freaks me out, but then we bounce back to terra firma and the end of my single serving of Sandy.

Of the many people I have met traveling, few I ever see again-- and of the former loves, there are few I’m still in touch with. But does that make them only cast-off characters, my time spent with them a failure or waste? To my way of thinking, no-- like notes played in a song, some are struck and some sustained.

The Thuggin' Chef

What up What up What up!

That's what "The Thuggin' Chef" (AKA Darian) said to me on the bus a couple of years ago, and that's how he begins his Youtube-based cooking show.

This post is meant to bookend Lu's tale of her auspicious meeting with CJ Storey. The People You Meet on Public Transit could be (and probably is) a blog all its own. I once picked up a great zine in Portland called The Constant Rider. Fascinating stuff. So, I haven't had a car since moving to Seattle in 2004. Over the years I've taken various Metro routes through town, depending on where I work, on a regular basis. But by far, my routes to and from Ballard on the 15, 17 and 43 have introduced me to the most memorable single-serving friends.

Between those neighborhoods, it takes a transfer anyway you look at it, and about an hour each way. Reading, knitting, and getting into a full-length DJ mix is what it's all about. Unless you sit next to The Thuggin' Chef.

This man talked a mile a minute about his passion for cooking and Japanese culture (more specifically, his estranged Japanese wife and the time they spent together in her homeland). He was so all over the place that I wondered if he was who he said he was, or if he was just talking.

He's the real deal, ya'll.

He hasn't updated his Web site or Youtube channel since 2008, but there's some damn delicious-looking grub in the episodes that are up. I gotta track this guy down and see what's up. His enthusiasm is balls-out.

Here's my favorite of his menus: Paprika fried chicken, baked macaroni & cheese topped with parmesan and spinach, and cabbage & corn with crispy pancetta. NOM! Enjoy.

Storey Time

CJ likes my shoes, but not in the sorry icebreaker way most men do ("Nice shoes... wanna fuck?"). No, today I'm rocking a pair of high-top Toms, and he wants to know if they come in his size. Though he's dressed in navy twill, a work uniform of some kind-- he's got his style in mind for the stage. CJ is CJ Storey, a San Francisco- based hiphop artist. "I like to dress solid, but then have some crazy shoes-- so I'm always looking at what people have on. If Kanye's rocking some boat shoes, I be on that."

CJ and I met on BART, where I am studiously trying to avoid closing myself off behind headphones or the uninterruptable communion with the screen of my phone. Have you ever noticed that if you're reading a book, people still feel free to break in, ask a question, sometimes about the book, sometimes not..? Not so if one is focused on the phone-- perhaps it's that this is too private, or perhaps the general thought is that it can't possibly offer anything interesting enough to intrude on. So instead of indulging my Pavlovian urge to fiddle with my phone, I have brought a comic book (an invitation to interruption if ever there was one), but it's my shoes that interest CJ as we ride the screeching train into San Francisco.

Denizens of the Bay will know that the tunnel between Oakland and SF is deafening, and so he crosses from the facing seat to sit next to me and continue telling me about his music. I say that I've always thought music would be a really hard career, but CJ says not so-- now with social networking at everyone's fingertips, the process is more democratic, and anyone can have the reach that only record companies used to. A friend of his signed with Warner last year, and now is surrounded always by the record company's people. CJ would rather choose his own people to have around. He's handsome and self-possessed, and the more he talks the more I want him to ask for my number. As my stop rattles in, the closest I get is CJ offering up that I should check him out on Facebook. So it goes.

See CJ Storey's video here:


And download his Valentine's Day mixtape, The Love Massacre, here: http://hulkshare.com/bjuxdlxcco81

The Human Situation

Thursday is my "wellness" day. The only scheduled activity (and usually the only weekly trip outside of my neighborhood, Capitol Hill) is a visit to my therapist in beautiful Green Lake. Whatever happens after that, happens. Whatever makes me feel "well."

So, yesterday, I had plans to celebrate my friend Charisse's birthday at a soul night. Entering my post-therapy introspective fog, I began to doubt that, if I went home, I'd leave the house again for a party. It would be so easy to read Dlisted all night.

To maintain until the evening, I wandered. And I came in contact with a great many people. Let me say that I haven't had a working iPod in a couple of years. I usually wait for my tech-savvy boyfriends to give me their hand-me-downs. I do sometimes plug my headphones into my phone, and listen to Movin' 92.5, KUBE and KEXP as I walk to work. But mostly, I'm frightfully open to interaction. My good friends know me to be approachable by the looniest of loony toons. I've learned to quickly parse the talkative from the emotional vampires and space invaders. Sometimes I think the world sees me as a great empathizer/gullible innocent. And I keep that in mind when I'm sizing people up...that who you are, and who you seem to be, are both anybody's guess.

Since Thursday is such a strange day for human interaction, I simply wanted to list all the people I spoke with yesterday. In order, they are:

Cabbie, therapist, folks in elevator, Tammy the bartender at Green Lake Bar & Grill, Matt the busboy, Jill (a take-out customer), bookstore cashier, Lu on the phone, Kinko's worker, 4 employees at Pagliacci, girl sitting next to me, manager of Red Light vintage clothing, bus driver, Online coffee barista, guy commenting on my book The Hidden Power of Dreams (he dreamt a bolt of lightning came from his hand!), my co-workers, Carl (a regular at my bar), Charisse, door guy at Havana, 3 employees at Poquitos, Irish-Catholic Chris who is giving up brown booze and crème brûlée for Lent, a mild-mannered-looking businessman who told me he was "quite hammered," 21-year-old Francisco who tried and failed to get Charisse's number, numerous men and women on the dancefloor, cabbie home.

I also texted, emailed and exchanged FB posts with numerous other people. And this is a day that I typically don't feel much like talking at all.



We don't need people to be alone. We are together, on our own. -Superpitcher

Probably the most significant of the random interactions was between Jill and I. She was a cute woman in her '40s who was grabbing food to-go for her sick father. She commented on my nails, said red was "too bold" of a color for her. She said I shouldn't wear a ring on my left ring finger, because men will think I'm married. I said, "Aw I'm not worried about getting married." And she said, "Well, who doesn't need a hot date?"

Then I showed her my ring, which is a vintage Siam niello ring with Nang-Fa, the Fairy of Happiness on it. She's in ornamental Thai dress, dancing and sprinkling "fairy dust." Jill teared up and told me about some of her troubles. I had a super-strong urge to give her my ring. I think in the past I wouldn't have hesitated...but I really like this ring...and I need some power medallions too! When Jill had to leave, though, I ran with another impulse to give her a hug. She gripped me and I felt her body seize up like she was about to cry. It went on for a full minute, which is kind of intense when you're hugging a stranger in a crowded bar.

I used to take these interactions at full face value. Now a more cynical voice in my inner mind wonders, "Would she have been the same with whoever was sitting here? Is she just a needy, crazy person who spills the beans to anybody?" I suppose that either way, I'm usually willing to be that person. As long as I'm not listening to Lil' Wayne on my phone.