sunday

Yesterday at Bluestockings was one of those great, busy days where there are a million people buzzing around high on books and caffeine and that certain Sunday afternoon feeling, and everyone is in a good mood. Then it was off to eat dinner uptown with my favorite cousins and back down to meet someone for a drink, who it turned out didn't generally like to drink. He changed his mind about that after the first round, but in between there was the pizza place where the guy stood next to our table shaping the dough for a new vegan pie with his hands, hanging just a couple inches from the floor, and telling us stories. That was the best part of the night. That, and the lights still on in the bookstore at 1am and Jeffrey there to commiserate. Other than that it was mostly me sitting and staring at the tin ceiling and stabbing at the lime and ice at the bottom of my glass.

On the way from one thing to another, I totally had a missed connection, Village Voice style (or maybe more Craig's List, these days). Except that it was someone I already knew instead of someone I sensed I was destined to meet. Waiting for the uptown V train at 2nd avenue late Sunday afternoon, a girl waiting for the F. From a good distance away, she already looked a lot like a girl who I went to summer camp with and was good friends with and totally loved. So I kept staring. And looking away. And staring again. She definitely saw me and nothing registered, probably not least because last time I saw her I had super short spiky hair. Her train pulled in and she got on, and right then I decided that it definitely was her. But by the time I ran to get onto that train (which I could've taken in the first place) the door closed and she was gone. And then I remembered that the V wasn't even running. So I had a nice cinematic missed connection AND I was late for dinner.

The last time we talked was about 6 years ago. I was in Seattle and she was in Portland and we were trying to figure out a way to meet up but didn't, and that was it. She was living in Berkeley and then ended up at school in Boston and I looked up her email address there a couple years ago but did nothing with it, and now it's too late because even though I'm sure it was her yesterday, Google turns up no useful contact info.

Other Google snooping revealed awhile ago that another friend who I had a mysterious, fucked up and still pretty unsettling falling out with when we were 17 is most definitely living in Brooklyn. One day in the land of sleep deprivation and caffeine overload (otherwise known as work) I wrote him an email that I don't ever plan to send. It's still waiting in my email draft box though, with the placeholder subject line "an email to send to D if I'm feeling adventurous." But it's not adventure, just curiosity. I need to keep reminding myself that that is just not enough.