magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

I woke up hungover. Not surprising considering the eight or so bottles of beer and the couple of shots of really bad whisky and the no water whatsoever that I drank last night. I managed to drag myself out of bed around 11:30 for three Excedrin and a shower.

Brunch at Kate's with Chris and surprise guest Julia. 'So what about you?' Julia asked me at one point. 'Have you been seeing anyone?'

'Well, it seemed like I was on a little streak for about two weeks but it's sort of dried up.'

'You were seeing someone for two weeks?'

'No. Actually, um. Two girls in two weeks.'

'Really.'

'There was a girl who was just in town on vacation...'

'Oh yeah, I think I remember you telling me about that.'

'But she's back in Seattle now, presumably, so I didn't see any more of her. Although I am going to be in Seattle in a couple of weeks. I haven't decided whether or not I'm going to try to get in touch with her when I'm out there though.'

'And the other one?'

'Well, it's um...'

'It's a secret?'

'Well, I don't know if it's a secret. It's Lydia.'

'Dave's friend Lydia? I thought she had a boyfriend. Or that she was a lesbian.'

'Well, I think she had a boyfriend, past-tense. And yes, she talked about ex-girlfriends too, so it's just another bit of data to prove the theory that the type of girls who like me also like girls. For whatever reason. I'm not particularly girly. But I'm also not a typically masculine man.'

'She seems nice though.'

'Yeah. I mean, it's not like anything too serious happened. But I spent the night at her place after Dave's party. And we kissed. And I slept in her bed. And in the morning we talked some more. She said she had a nice time. I told her I'd call her. She was out of town when I called and told me that she'd call me back, but hasn't. And I probably should call her again. But I kind of figure that if you say you're going to call someone back and you don't that you're not really all that interested.'

'I'm sure you'll see her again at a party or something sometime soon. If she just recently broke up with someone she might just need some time to process it and be ready to move on.'

'Which is certainly very possible.'

After brunch, we walked from Kate's, at 4th and B, up to the Met, at 86th and 5th. It was a beautiful day for a walk though, despite this week's continual threat of rain, the early afternoon was mostly sunny, not too hot, not too cold, with a nice breeze. We spent less than an hour at the museum, walked back down 5th Ave to 59th, got on an N, and then went out separate ways.

I got dinner at Pukk before heading out to Park Slope for a housewarming at Rob's (temporary) new place.

On the platform at 2nd Ave, the first train to pull up was an A. An attractive girl in a green skirt approached me and asked, 'So, was that actually an A?'

'Yeah. It's running on the F line from West 4th to Jay Street.'

'Oh. I didn't think the A stopped here. I was wondering whether it was a mislabeled train, or...'

'Construction re-routing. Which this morning was quite useful when I was trying to get to this station from home, which is on the A. But now it's not doing me any good.'

Earlier, during our walk, Julia had asked Chris what sort of girl he was interested in meeting. He said that he didn't have any sort of specific type or anything, that he wasn't looking, but that he'd want to meet a complete stranger, not anyone that he was connected to through friends or work or anything. There is something attractive about that notion. But I have a hard enough time starting a conversation with people who I do have a professional or social connection to, let alone a complete stranger. And here was a case in point, the tentative beginnings of a conversation which sputtered out and then became an uncomfortable silence between two people standing on a subway platform to the point where she started fiddling with her phone/PDA and I started reading the book that I had with me until the F came and we were lost to each other in separate ends of the car.

I realised getting off the train in Park Slope that I hadn't written down the street number of Rob's address. I knew that it was on 14th, just off of 4th ave, and thought it was towards 5th, so began walking up the hill from the intersection. On the left was a school (or something) and a theatre. On the right was a parking lot and some small warehouses, and I was half way up the block before there seemed to be any real apartment buildings, so I called him. 'It's towards 3rd,' he said, 'right on the corner.' So I walked back across the intersection and he buzzed me up.

He's living for the summer with his girlfriend Dani and her friend Rachel, who are still in school at NYU, and Rachel's friend Julia from high school. In other words, most of the party was drunk college-aged kids, and I felt a little bit like the creepy old man who didn't really belong. Although I know, I look a lot younger than I am, and could probably still pass as college-aged myself, and often, because I can be painfully shy, feel as if I don't belong when I'm at parties. In any case, I spent the first hour or so that I was there with a smaller group of people who I actually know, sitting in Rob and Dani's bedroom. Where there's a window that looks out over the intersection of 14th and 4th.

'I wish I had better eyesight. There's a girl in that group of people standing on the corner over there,' (who may have come from a show at the theatre), 'who on a very off-chance could be this girl Lydia who I kind of hooked up with a few weeks ago. It's probably not, and I'm just seeing her in someone about the same size who stands about the same way because I was talking about her earlier today. Then again, she does live in the neighbourhood, so she wouldn't be totally out of context.'

And it almost looked as if she was looking back up into the window and saying, 'there's someone up in that apartment who looks like that boy Bean...' But I do have terrible eyesight so there was no way that I was going to be able to tell for sure without either yelling out the window or going back down to the street, both of which felt beyond my sober powers.

Eventually I got a little more drunk, joined the rest of the party, played some old-school Tetris, talked for a bit with a girl named Madeline who just graduated from Parsons and wants to move to Antwerp, drank some more, and as the party wound down began discussing TV with Rachel, who seems to be one of the few people I know who watches as much TV as I do. In her defense, she wants to be a "pop-culture theorist" when she grows up (her words), although actually I'm not entirely sure whether that makes it better or worse. Either way I got to talk TV and not feel guilty for having no life.

She was quite drunk though, and started very obviously hitting on me after a while, which, to be completely honest here, something I'm desperately trying to get back in the habit of doing, made me feel a little bit uncomfortable. She's a perfectly nice girl, and I really enjoyed talking to her, but she's also ten years my junior, and I'm not sure that that's something I could be okay with.

I left precisely at 4:00 AM, maybe a little bit awkwardly. In the stairwell I passed a girl who was, presumably, lives in the building and was on her way home at this hour. We silently acknowledged each other as I stepped to one side to let her ascend past me. As the door to the street closed behind me I replayed the scene in my head, but instead of passing silently, I stopped, and said, 'Hi, my name's Bean. And I think you're incredibly attractive.' Is esprit d'escalier still the appropriate term if the stairwell is where you should have said what you should have said to begin with?