It was 8:00 on a beautiful late summer morning. I was sitting on a dining room bench. Uni was playing by my feet.
“I’m in the city. Meet me now.”
I got ready to leave and DJ asked where I was heading.
“Out.”
Less than an hour later I am sitting in the only open cafe on Spring Street with a small cup of black coffee in front of me. I am the only one there. Moments later I look up to see he had arrived. He’s wearing black skinny jeans, a white linen button up shirt, skinny tie, and black converse sneakers. He is fumbling around with his earbuds. I get up and we hug. We walk towards Broadway with no real direction. He suggests a place for breakfast. I was surprised with how nice he is behaving. I order yogurt with granola and fruit. He orders french toast with fruit and a coffee. I notice he eats the fruit first, and puts extra milk and sugar in his coffee. As I looked over at him, we smiled at each other.
We ended up at the Museum of Natural History. I held his hand as we looked over shrunken heads, precious gemstones, and dinosaurs. We didn’t talk very much but I enjoyed his company. We laid on a patch of grass in Central Park. I watched the clouds go by through the silhouette of trees above our heads. There was an earthquake that day but neither of us felt it.
It was getting late and he asked me to join him to dinner. We had Indian food in Hell’s Kitchen. He ordered chicken tikka masala; the first of many.
My cellphone battery drained and he offered to charge it in his apartment a few blocks away. I should have said no. It was a five story walk-up. We drank white wine and he sang to me. After one song, I kissed him.
I regrettably said some emotionally spontaneous things. He was very intense very quickly. He was beautiful but we were poison to each other.
He still calls me crazy bird.
This was my favorite memory with him.
80s Video Dating
I was with G and Ash in One Last Shag in the middle of a summer evening. We loved $4 Happy Hour margaritas. A skinny jew-fro wearing a muscle tee and dirty jeans enters our conversation. He was being cheeky to gain my attention. We asked him if he had ever had sex with a boy. He said yes. We asked him if he would ever have sex with the two of us. He said yes to me, but no to G because he seemed too desperate. G stormed off. I should have followed him out but I stayed.
We wandered into another bar in hopes of karaoke but it never happened. His friend Gary— or was it Greg— showed up and asked for girl advice. He wanted to take the bartender home. I told them I thought she seemed like a cunt. They thought I was sassy but I’m sure it was because I drank whiskey and didn’t let them pay for my drinks. We sat outside on cheap plastic lawn chairs and smoked hand rolled American Spirits. They kept rambling about some nonsense I didn’t care about, so I kissed Bob to wake myself up. It wasn’t completely unpleasant.
I brought up the idea of going into Manhattan to walk around Times Square in the middle of the morning. We never ended up going.
We drank 40 ounce bottles of malt liquor on the roof of his jam space in the Navy Yard. He kept calling me a weirdo. With my stomach full of booze, I don’t remember getting home that night. I was wearing combat boots and a black slip dress.
Another night I invited him over when everyone had already gone to bed. G stuck his dildo onto my bedroom wall. Bob touched it unaware that it wasn’t mine. He brought over some really cheap unnamed domestic beer. I made him wear my clothes. He said he was a writer. I recommended him to take my copy of Super Sad True Love Story. I asked him to read to me. He couldn’t get through a paragraph without struggling with some words. His stupidity bothered me. I started to kiss him so I wouldn’t have to keep listening. We fell asleep fully clothed. I left for work in the morning. He was still wearing my faux fur vest.
He smelled like dirt. He looked like a hipster version Bob Dylan. I didn’t care to see him again. He kept saying I was strange. I just want my book back.
