It’s one in the morning.
I zoomed into Lisa’s room
and threw myself on the bed where she lay reading
in a near virtuoso, Fosbury flop.
She bounced, jostled by my mechanical bed wave.
“I hate goodbyes,” I said, indignantly.
“You’re not strong on hellos” she said, not looking up.
“They’re so bone-marrow deep,” I went on, “they steal hope away.”
“Did that sound pretentious?” I asked her silence, a minute later, somewhat self-consciously.
Lisa took the yellow, #2-pencil out of her mouth—just long enough to answer.
When she studies, she chews on them, seemingly eating them like french fries.
“Yeah,” she says, “but I get cha.”
“I know,” I said, smiling at the ceiling, because in a rooted and real way, she always has.
I’d be a different person if we’d never met.
I feel very grateful for that.
“Your boy’s flown?” She asked, using her pencil to hold her page and finally looking up.
It was an ironic, near-rhetorical question, she knows he’s gone and she knows I know she knows he’s gone.
“Yeah,” I admitted.
.
.
Songs for this:
4am by girl in red
Don't Stop The Music by Rihanna
blushing! by BETWEEN FRIENDS

They're lovely.. Lovely like the color black. But black can be seen as scary… if you look at it from a different perspective and discard the negative.. You'll see that their lovely, lovely like roses
Roses are pretty like the night sky on the 4th of july.. Their lovely, lovely like greek
Greek is lovely like how they speak…. They're lovely and I don't want anybody… their lovely, lovely like ash in the sky… lovely like the name Ash… which is funny because that's their name… I love Ash.. i love you Ash <3 they are lovely and i don't want nobody

i look for you in the faces on the street
i ache for you in the songs that i sing

an out i didn't take
the memories unmade
a life we didn't live

he hurt me
but i hurt you
that's just the way it is

i'm so lost
first you love me
then treat me like trash
acting like i'm not there
...acting like you don't care

i don't understand what ive done to you
to make you hate me the way you do
is it really hate?
or only a facade?

i don't know how to feel
cause i don't know what's real
do you truly love me?
or am i only a means to an end?

A bluebird came streaking violently out of Central Park,
it blurred over the lanes of traffic towards 220.
I flinched in anticipation of the impact,
but at the last second it darted directly up,
as if caught in a sudden wind current.
“Did you see that?” I asked Lisa.
She didn’t, her phone was jiggling.

My boyfriend left yesterday
He had to leave before New Year’s eve!
he has to work and cannot play
he finally gets to run the hadron collider
go get em’ tiger
but I’ve decided
you can’t fight the zeitgeist
that when the cats away
the girls will have their day.

Someone start the music please,
because it’s NEW YEARS Eve!

Happy New Year’s Eve everyone!
.
.
Songs for this:
There goes my baby by Kelly Jones
Back on the chain gang by the pretenders

(A Christmas vacation vignette)

Lisa and I choppered onto Manhattan island yesterday morning. We’d both felt toasted—so we took naps—and yay! We awoke recharged.

Later that evening, Lisa and I were at the ‘Elsie’ Rooftop Bar, in Manhattan, waiting for Lisa’s boyfriend, David.
Ok, man-friend? More age appropriate I suppose, he’s 27, but that description doesn’t have the same bf slap.
Dave’s a Wall Street M&A guy and they’ve been together for over a year - a future for them seems very real.

Slinky, jazz-like versions of secular Christmas favorites were playing somewhere and it’s a groove I slipped into immediately. We had reservations and I’d misbegottenly hoped for a five-star, breathtaking city view, but the indoor tables turned out to have these uncomfortable, high-backed, bench-like seats that face away from the windows—***? I made a mental note to check website pix in the future. The place is in need of some serious feng shui-ing.

Disappointed, I asked for a side table where there was, at least, a pitiable skyline view and I placed my iPad, volume down, on the table so I could side-watch the Thursday Night football game—hey, I’m not meeting MY boyfriend, ok? As the official third-wheel, I figured I’d need a little entertainment.

After a few moments, a waitress came by and she paused to look us over with a cat-like indifference that signaled she was better than me, better than us really. She was just cooler.
I was delighted—why am I drawn to people who look down on me?
I suppose I need years of psychoanalysis—but who’s got the time?

I glanced at Lisa. We know each other at a cellular level. With a milli-second of lash flutterings and eye dilations, I asked “are you getting this?” And she affirmed that she was. Because we’re cyborgs. A couple of cyborgs.
Just kidding. We’re not cyborgs, neither of us. We wish we were sometimes—think of the advantages, you could complete college in a blink—wirelessly.

Anyway, back to the narrative. The waitress reminded me of when I was starting high school and my mom and I toured colleges, how snooty the Harvard people were, even though I’d been accepted and offered a free-ride scholarship—I mean, shouldn’t we all have been one, big, self-congratulatory snooty-group together?
(Of course, I chose Yale because the people were totally friendly).

“I better get used to it,” I side-bar’d Lisa, who got the reference to my upcoming, year-long, master's program at Harvard—because we’re cyborgs. I handed ‘Laura’ (our snooty waitress was tagged) my Black American Express card, which got her attention, and said, “start a tab please—someone will join us—run a 40% tip too,” I added with a smile. She practically jogged off to get our drinks and hors d'oeuvres and I turned my attention to the game, you know, to catch up.

I love Pro football—it’s not really fall without football—is it? Even though Tom Brady retired. This all goes to say that I’m a pro football ******. Lisa likes it too, though she’s not totally obsessed.

Just after Laura brought us our martinis and ‘poached lobster’ slides, a random, well-dressed man (he was wearing an expensive Brioni, wool linen silk suit), 35-ish, receding mousy-brown hairline, high-ball glass in hand, took the opportunity to stop by and chat. “SO,” he said, in a deep, jolly, ice-breaking salesman’s voice,
“You girls like football?”
I decided that the suit was too shiny for a Brioni—was it a Zegna?—I idly wondered.
“We’ve boyfriends,” Lisa announced, almost apologetically, nodding to include me—in case he missed the plural. Undeterred, he swiveled my way—as if he needed a second opinion—and asked me,
“What do you like about football?” He sounded somewhat condescending to me, so I did what I always do with condescending males—I played the ‘ditzy-girl’ card, “The costumes,” I answered.
“The uniforms,” he gently, fatherly, corrected—before rocking back a little on his heels and sipping his drink.
“And the hats,” I updogged, but before he could digest my reply, David, Lisa’s man-friend, arrived on the scene.
“Sorry to be so late,” he said, giving me a little, jiggly, 4-finger wave, shedding his coat and giving Lisa a smooch on the top of her hair.
The salesman wordlessly took his leave.
It’s a night on the town—let the 3rd-wheeling begin!
.
.
Songs for this:
Diamond Dave by The Bird and the Bee
You Belong to Me by Vonda Shepard
.
.
And a Christmas Playlist - because the big day is 8 days away!
http://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_24.mp3

can you tell me with your lips how your eyes perceive me?
do you see me as an intricate basket with colorful beads?
done so by ancient hands so expertly weaved?
can you tell me the secrets of the soil that clasps the roots of the trees?
can you tell me all the names and whispers you hear in the breeze?
can you tell me how you always know the ice is thick enough to walk on after the winter's fourth freeze?

can you tell me how your eyes always know how to find me through a drunken crowd?
even through all the smoke from the hundreds of people creating this dust cloud
can you tell me how you always know when I'm saying things out loud?
even when the music is blaring
and the bartenders can't read the words people have mouthed
and say "sorry, if you want a drink you'll need to shout"
can you tell me why you smile when I lean out the window as you drive over and over again circling this roundabout?

Can you tell me how you've always known the tone of my breath and the song of my soul?
Can you tell me why somedays it feels like our first time meeting at a school dance back in the days of old?
Can you see us standing at the table with the snacks and the spiked fruit punch bowl?
Can you see me trying to catch the words of this song in whole? they're playing this new type of music, "have you heard it before? you ask me, they call it rock'n'roll"
Can you tell me you'll walk me home? hold my hand like it's the first time and forget I live just three houses past the big light pole?
Can we keep talking and maybe kiss at the end of this stroll?
"Can you tell me something about you?" I ask because knowing you deeper is a different type of beauty to behold
I smile as you tell me "I always loved when my aunt would make her thanksgiving broccoli and cheddar casserole"

Can you tell me how with you nothing feels like sin
even when your lips trace over every inch of my skin?
Can you tell me how you know to always lift my chin
to look you in the eyes even when the woes wear on me from where I've been?
Can you tell me how you felt about me when you watched me order a cocktail with my favorite gin?
but now Can I tell you how long I've I loved you? it's actually long before I even knew our time together would begin

The girl I used to be
Could never live without
The boy I thought you were

But now the woman I am
Can live without
The man I know you have become