magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

Brunch today for the first time in about a month. Although not until 4:00PM, which is definitely pushing the brunch envelope, especially in this time of shortening days. There was a girl at the next table who had finished eating while I was waiting from Chris, but then sat and wrote in a notebook for the next hour or so, I think probably working on a novel.

Met up with Dave for a drink and a few half-hearted hands of card games, then a few more drinks when he left to get dinner with Abi and some of her friends. A "snack treat" and then on to Brooklyn, a guy that Chris and Christian work with was supposedly DJing at Union Pool.

After a couple more drinks there Chris begins acting a little weird, and says something like, 'Just so you know, before you guys ever hooked up, Channing apparently wanted to "jump my bones". But what I said at the Halloween party stands.'

'And this is relevant now because?'

'She just called me. I'm not sure I really want to listen to this voicemail.'

I pulled out my phone. 'Look, she called me too.' He listened to the voicemail, then texted her the address. 'How did she even know we were here?'

'Nick invited her. He's not aware of what he's doing.'

And I did feel quite awkward when she first showed up. But eventually we were all talking and drinking and things seemed fine. Chris left after a while because he works Sundays. We got more drinks. We danced. We were having a good time.

Channing disappeared at one point and Christian asked me where she had gone. 'To the bathroom, I think. Or maybe to get another drink. Or maybe she took off.'

'I don't think she would have just taken off.' I wasn't so sure, but as it turned out he was right, she was just in the other room. We sat outside while she smoked a cigarette. We got another round of drinks.

Nick and Christian both eventually left. Channing and I ended up sitting in a booth talking and laughing and when we had finished our drinks there were two virtually untouched rum and Cokes on the table in front of us and she asked me, 'Would you think any less of me if I drank that?' And when I didn't immediately respond she said, 'Well, it doesn't really matter, because I'm going to drink it anyway.' Exchanges like that, leaving aside the subtext of alcoholism for the moment (I ended up drinking the other drink), are one of the reasons that I find myself liking her.

Around 4:00AM the bar turned on the lights and started kicking people out. We found ourselves standing on the street corner, still apparently enjoying each other's company. I took a drag off of her cigarette and she said, 'Why don't you finish it. I'm going to hop in a cab and leave you to your long journey home.'

'Are you sure?' Things were getting awkward again.

'Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I have a new bed that I want to try out by myself.'

'Well that's just [ ... ].' I'm not at all sure what adjective I used here. There were a whole range of then running through my mind, from "understandable" to "mean". There was an awkward goodbye, she hailed a cab, and I began walking to the subway.

I pulled out my phone and text messaged her. 'Really?'

'what?'

'Really?'

'what do you mean?'

'I don't know, I guess maybe I was hoping for something more.'

'im definitely somewhere else right now'

'Okay. I'm getting on the subway now, but I'm not necessarily going to stop trying in the future.'

And as the subway train pulled into 34th Street, where the is some spill-over cell service from Penn Station, my phone beeped. 'trying rarely makes things happen.'

I typed back, 'Rarely is better odds than never.' But had lost service again by the time I hit send. I added, 'and I'm not ready to give up yet.' I didn't send it when I got home, but I started thinking of other things that I wanted to say. I'm not ready to give up yet. One of my charms/flaws is a David vs Goliath sort of occasionally excessive optimism. And yes, it may often leave me disappointed, but I don't think I'd really want to give up that sense of optimism either.