17 May 2016

We Don’t Wear Signs.

by | posted in: Chicago, Luv | 5
German stamp for social welfare, 1982. Image: Wikipedia.
German stamp for social welfare, 1982. (I like the roses.) Image: Wikipedia.

I leave Thursday morning. I’m going to California.* Claus will leave a couple hours after me on a flight to Berlin.

Very glamorous-sounding, isn’t it? California. Berlin. It would be glamorous if we were each on our own private jet. It would be glamorous if we were meeting up in Havana next week at midnight. We’re not. It’s the end of something and it cannot be denied any longer. Oh, you can give me a virtual knock on my chin and tell me that if it’s meant to be it will be — and I do appreciate it — but I’m cynical and jaded tonight. Any chance I had of being glamorous at all is gone with this grumpy look on my face. That’s me: grumpy and sitting in coach with a totebag. Somebody take my picture!

We went to the store tonight to get eggs. Claus’s omelettes are world-class and I wanted one more. We were standing in line for the checkout and I was leaning up against him. He had his arms around me. It wasn’t a yucky PDA; we just looked like a happy couple, or at least a couple that wasn’t actively mad at each other. So I’m hanging on him and thinking how it’s going to be to go to the store alone again, how it’ll be to not have a tall body to lean up against, and I’m pretty sure I saw something. I saw a gal in the line next to us looking right at us and she looked really bummed out. At best, it was a “Gee, that must be nice” look; at worst, it was an “I hate love” look. Whatever it was, when I saw her, she looked away quickly and bought her frozen peas.

I’ve been there. You see a couple all clingy and sweet and if you happen to be in a bad mood for whatever reason (especially for a love-related reason) you think, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Must be nice. Get a room!” And if that’s what was going on with this gal, and I think it was, I wished I could’ve said:

“We look lovey-dovey, it’s true, but you don’t know what’s really going on. He’s leaving for Germany the day after tomorrow and we don’t know how to date across an ocean. We think we’re just going to go on with our own lives and see what happens if he gets a job here in the future. We’re too old to like, profess love in blood on notebook paper and send a bushel of postcards to each other every day. We’re going to try and hold this loosely, if that makes sense. Neither of us have done this before. And I’m turning thirty-seven this summer. It’s relevant, somehow, but that’s a longer discussion. Do you want to go get a drink, maybe? Just hang out? Talk stuff over?” 

Approaching the young woman and sharing this with her seemed like a lot of work, so we just paid for our eggs and green onions and walked home. She walked home. Everyone walks or drives home and you don’t know their lives. Appearances aren’t always what they seem and even if they are what they seem — a happy couple, being sweet on each other in the grocery line — there is always, always more to the story.

*I’m visiting my favorite auntie for a few days, full reports from San Francisco/Sacramento. It’s really good timing.

5 Oct 2014

Anniversary Eve: Sonnets and Hotness

by | posted in: Art, Luv | 0
This photo captures something about me and Yuri. It's hard to explain. Photo: Lloyd Wright; A Midsummer Night's Dream, Children's Shakespeare Festival, Folger Shakespeare Library.
This photo captures something about me and Yuri. It’s hard to explain. Photo: Lloyd Wright; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Children’s Shakespeare Festival, Folger Shakespeare Library.

One year ago Saturday, I met a fellow in Chicago by chance — or fate, if you like.

I had arranged to buy a bitcoin and he was the person who was to sell it to me. The first thought I had when I saw him that morning was, “He’s younger than I expected.” He was wearing a ball cap and cute glasses, sucking a strawberry smoothie through a straw, and he was about to go into his job at the Board of Trade. And he was smart enough about bitcoin to explain to me how I would actually buy one. My second thought was, “This guy is cooler than I will ever be, ever.”

We did the surprisingly uncomplicated transaction. I thanked him and walked away, proud owner of a bitcoin or two. About three minutes after we basically told each other — sincerely — to have a nice life, I get a text message. I look at the screen of my phone. It was the guy.

“Are you single?”

As I live and breathe, that is how it all began. “Are you single?” A year later, I’m sitting on a sofa in New York City, night air on my shoulders through the window of our apartment on St. Mark’s Place. There’s a homemade apple pie on the sill, still warm. I made a pot roast today, too, and when Yuri tried the first bite, his eyes rolled back in his head and he said, “God, I love you.” I asked him to tell me what he thought when he first met me, if he had any idea I’d be feeding him homemade pot roast within a year.

“What was I wearing that day we first met?” I asked him. “Do you remember?” I definitely do; I can remember what I was wearing at times in my life far better than I can recall dates, names, or how to spell “bureaucracy.”

“You were wearing a skirt,” he answered. “And high heels.” Correct.

“What did you think about me?”

“I thought you were really hot,” he said, still happy about this. “I was thinking, ‘This chick is into bitcoin. That’s crazy. That’s so cool.’ And I was really hoping you’d be hot.”

Aw.

I’ll be out of town for our actual anniversary, so we’re going to celebrate Tuesday night. I’ve been feeling much better the past couple days, so we’re going to brave dinner at a farmy-tabley place in Brooklyn and then we’ll see a Rufus Wainwright/Robert Wilson creation at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). These two artistic heroes of mine have joined forces on a selection of Shakespearean sonnets; music by Rufus, staging by Bob. (Google the show and look at the visuals — we’re in for a treat.)

And now, because Shakespeare is so good and I’m feeling tender as a pot roast toward my beau, Sonnet 19, which is all about how Time can and does destroy everything, but if my love exists in my poems, he will live forever. Take that, Time.

SONNET 19
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,
And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O, carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.