magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

I woke up in the middle of the night itching. My left arm. The back of my right shoulder. My chin. After the initial half-awake shock of discomfort I realized that they felt like mosquito bites. I turned the light on. And sure enough, there was a big mosquito flying around.

Where does a mosquito come from this time of year?

---

The Archive has been all decorated for Halloween. One wall has kindergarten-esque writing assignments posted on it. That landscape oriented paper with the big lines. 'What I like about Halloween'. Just like the 'What I am good at' assignment that we did in the house in Amherst eight years ago. The morning guy was writing his. 'I do not like Halloween,' it said, 'because I am diabetic.'

Standing on the subway platform a few minutes later I started thinking about Halloweens past.

Halloween '03, in Austin, Stef made a little paper cut-out of herself, 'little Stephany', and put her in the pocket of my orange t-shirt. We were still very much in love, and settling into our new life together. Halloween '02, in Providence, Stef sat in on my Degree Project proposal crit. We had been broken up for three and a half months and had just begun talking again a few days prior. She would decide later that day that her current fling was not going to become anything more, and a day and a half later we would be back together. Halloween '01, in Rome, Stef and I talk on the phone for the last time before I end up in the hospital for emergency surgery. I always felt that my hospital stay was the beginning of things going badly, and that conversation on Halloween was really the last sweet, loving, uncorrupted conversation that we had during my time away.

So yeah. Halloween.

---

After work, or more accurately, at five o'clock, when some of us still had a fair amount of work left to do, a bunch of people headed out to a bar and from there were going to see Team America, which they kept repeating was 'sold out. You can't go.' That wasn't specifically directed at me, but this was the first that I had heard about anyone going to a movie after work. I suppose that's what I get for having lunch at my desk.

At six, John, Jen, Mike, Chloe, and I headed out to meet them all at the bar before those with tickets left to see their movie. Some bar in the East Village, the name of which escapes me.

While people were leaving, but while I still had most of a glass of beer, Marie called. I told her that I'd meet her at VP2 in about half an hour. Half an hour later, when I was just about done with another beer that John and Jen talked me into, Marie called again. 'I'm sorry. I'm an asshole,' I said. 'I'll be on my way out in just a little bit.'

'That's okay. I've already been here for a while. I'm just going to get take-out and head home.'

'I'm really sorry.'

Jen and I had another round after John left to meet up with a girl he used to date in Florida, and later kicked out of his apartment at three in morning when she and a friend were visiting, and who now live in New York and wants to clear the air. And then headed off our separate ways.

---

At home, reading Marisa's MySpace blog:

. i really .

. need a routine . i don't have one . i think it is time .

. [some non-sequiturs] .

. nobody reads this shit .

My response:

I read this shit from time to time. I've been drinking. I have more to say on the subject, but this might be the most appropriate place.

And:

Two Things

First. [A bunch of unrelated questions about something else.]

Second. I posted a response to an entry on your blog. I left out the second half of what I was thinking. After the 'I've been drinking' line. I'd probably have thought it even if I hadn't been drinking. But maybe not said it. It went something like, 'I'd might like to be part of your routine. I enjoyed hanging out with you. And while it's been true that I've been swallowed in this project at work for the last three weeks, it's also a convenient excuse to mask my insecurities in getting to know someone new.' Actually, it probably wouldn't have been something exactly like that. It think it was more impulsively thought than that, and less verbose.