magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

i found a job posting last night for breakfast and lunch servers in the restaurant of a trendy, little soho hotel. it said that food service experience was a plus, but unlike most new york service industry jobs it wasn't something they required. my experience is 10+ years ago, and all the restaurants have changed hands multiple times. so maybe this would be a way to get my foot in the door. maybe it would allow me to eventually step into a bartending shift. of course i know that the only reason i'm looking for food service jobs at all is because of the stef. it's for the same reason that i spent the fall of the year before last drinking and smoking. it's the desire to do something that i know she's doing. even if i'm not doing it with her, it makes me feel a little closer to her. but i digress.

i figured that i should look presentable when i went into to apply for this job. that i should put on a nice shirt, wear my black sweater. i should shave, which was the tricky bit, not having a razor, and not knowing where in the neighborhood to buy one. i called chris. 'you know where i could get a razor around here? a pharmacy? a quick-e-mart?'

'i've got a bunch of extra razors, if you want to come and shave here.' i went over to chris's. i shaved. i got my references in order.

in soho i found out that the restaurant manager wasn't around today. she had asked some flunky to collect resumes. 'i don't really have a food service resume,' i told him, 'my resume is geared more towards graphic design and architecture.'

'you could just fill out an application,' he said, 'i don't actually have a food service resume either.' but the application asked all the wrong things and i had to leave a note explaining where i was coming from and why i thought i'd be good at the job along the margin of it. with other experience and references on the back. it's all stuff that would have come across better in speaking with the manager. she would have seen my clean cut look. my svelte, dressing in black, waiterly appearance.

i spent the next hour or so wandering around soho and the village. half heartedly looking for somewhere to get a bagel, a cup of coffee. i realized i was in er!n's neighborhood and gave her a call. she was home. she said 'i'm working, but come over. i'll draw. we'll talk while i work.' we drank tea and i kept thinking about leaving to find food but never did.

she invited me to come along to a lecture at cooper union. we stopped at a vegetarian restaurant on the way and i got a sandwich and cup of soup. i drank the soup as we walked. the sandwich sat in a bag at my feet for the two and a half hour lecture.

it was interesting though. cooper has an interdisciplinary theory class, which hosts these weekly lectures. the kids in the class need to do additional readings, write papers. the rest of the cooper community is allowed to attend the lectures for their own edification. tonight's speaker talked about art and writing as magic, as communication with the spirits. he's an anthropologist and writer. he spent time with indian shamans in the amazon river basin. he performed a shamanistic healing ritual in columbia a few years back. he realized that to make it work he had to believe in spirits. but he didn't believe in spirits. he did, however, believe in people who believed in spirits. the spirits that he invoked were spirits of spirits. and he wondered if this was any different than the audience that we envision when we keep diaries. or when we make art.

afterward, i ate my sandwich. i headed back down to soho to see where chris works. he was the only one still in the office at 10.30. procrastinating from finishing the last job he had to get done. we hung out and talked. i checked my email.

flash back to last night. sitting at paolo's, i wrote up a personals ad that i had been mulling over for a few days. i waffled over posting it. jeanette talked me into it over aim. 'just do it .. you can always say no thanks !!'

... I'm really not looking for a new relationship right now. I'm on the rebound and know that I'd be a terrible boyfriend.

But what if I said that up front, I thought. That I'm really just looking for someone to snuggle with at night. It's cold here in New York, and I hadn't had any intention of spending this winter anywhere this cold. What if I said: I just want someone to cuddle up with. That's all I'm really after right now. That's about all that I can commit to. It might grow into something more or it might end in disaster. Or it might fizzle out as the days get longer and warmer.

I'm tall and skinny and shy and creative. We could meet for coffee and see if there was any mutual attraction. If we had a handful of common interests. To see if we might want to be something warm for a while, or longer, in each other's life.

i included two photos of my self that i had taken with my phone. one looking really sad. one half in a mirror, the hint of a shy smile. no one seems to include photos in their craigslist personals ads. i don't know why not, unless they are worried about someone stealing it and claiming it's them. or photoshopping their head onto someone else's body. but still, it seems like it cuts to the chase much quicker. people will be more likely to respond if they think you're cute. and if they're not attracted at all, they won't be wasting their time.

i walked to the subway in the snow. it was pretty, still falling, and having not yet turned into brown-grey slush. but no amount of pretty is really going to make up for the shock of the cold.

flash forward back to tonight. roughly twenty-four hours after the fact, there are three responses in my inbox. i didn't know what to expect in posting the ad, but figured there were probably people out there that feel the same way that i do: cold, and lonely, but not in the right mind to offer all of themselves in a new relationship. people who found me cute, who find my slightly grainy, slightly off-colour pictures intriguing. i probably would have received more than those three responses but for the sheer volume of personals posted to craigslist new york. twenty-four hours later and i was already buried so many clicks of the 'next 100 postings' button down that no one was likely to find me anymore.

so the three responses. one was from an 18 your old nyu student. i would have dismissed the response because of the age difference had she not mentioned soup. and urban planning, but mostly soup. also in my inbox was next week's soup peddler offerings. and it was sad again. 'go get some soup' he said to me last week, and here was a girl suggesting that we meet for just that.

the second was from a 28 year old, living nearby in brooklyn. she attached a photo. told me a little about herself.

the third was less forthcoming. mentioned tea and cheap merlot. but that, and the fact that she found my post intriguing enough to respond to, are really all that i know about her.

i did respond to all three though. offering back again about as much information as they gave. in a way it's already becoming more complicated than what the first impulse to post was hoping for. there's already the looming potential of hurt feelings. mine, hers, i don't know. when lindsey and i tried this it ended badly because we were already more emotionally committed than we were even willing to admit to, let alone give in to. of course we had had three months of harmless flirting to build on.

chris and i finally headed out around 3.30. his work done, and the seeds sown for my potential future undoing. we went out looking for somewhere to eat. veg-city is supposed to be 24 hours. but after the walk in the cold, from soho all the the way up to 14th street, we found it, and everything else, closed. 'this is new york, i had said to him 45 minutes earlier. of course we'll be able to find something to eat in the middle of the night.' but maybe in the winter the city shuts down at night.

getting on the subway i found myself missing austin's 24 hours hot spots. magnolia. kerbey lane. katz's new york deli.