I went to North Carolina this weekend. In the past 3 days, I:
Got to see my best friend, the queen of apartments, grand poobah of nonsense, the best bullshit detector I have ever known and probably my favorite person in the world
Bought my first plane ticket for myself!
Drove to Boston for the first time by myself! Got very very lost.
Bought another plane ticket because I’d missed the first plane by 2 and a half hours
Flew for the first time by myself!
Befriended a drunk woman at an airport bar who was flying to Houston to meet up with her ex, a former patriots player who had invited her for a no-strings-attached (but possibly involving ropes) weekend of sex. She showed me pictures he’d sent her. He had a comically long jaw, like a horse, and an amazing body She told me about the reoccurring dreams she has where she has sex with a pixieish woman and scratched her nails down my shoulder and gave me her business card and said she could get me a job in neuro research in Boston. Our flight was called and she set her beer in front of me and I chugged it while she cheered me on. This all happened within ten minutes.
Befriended an elderly woman who was reading a book about WWII as I finished up Wolf in White Van, and we discussed suicide and genocide and social work and this detox shed she worked in for four years to dry out alcoholics before she went on to teach at U of Tx. Our seatmates looked very unhappy.
WENT TO THE BEACH WITH MISHA! It was a 3-hour drive there and back and it was amazing, this endless expanse of sand and umbrellas and towels, seagrass waving, waves rising up like green mountains and crashing into foam. We frolicked in the surf. Well, I frolicked. Misha was too dignified to do more than some light frolicking. I punched a lot of waves and sunbathed on a Darth Vader towel. I keep finding sand in places there should not be sand.
Ate at a marvelous restaurant owned by an old friend of Goeff’s, who I very much want to meet.
Watched Joss Whedon’s filmed-in-a-weekend-at-his-house version of Much Ado About Nothing and all my thoughts were in Shakespearean english for the rest of the night
READ ACTUAL BOOKS! And wrote a lot of stuff in Wolf.
Received a pleasant, handwritten personal note tucked into the drivers’ side window of my car that said “LEARN TO PARK BOZO”
Got lost AGAIN on the way back from Boston, and ended up circling a sketchy city that came out of nowhere in search of a highway I wasn’t sure existed. Accidentally pulled into a correctional facility at one point. Finally asked for directions from a pizza guy, who got me on the right track. In the course of this trip, pizza people have a 3 out of 3 record for getting me to the right place-- much better than the loan bank concierge, the Wellesley town community services lady who just wanted to get back to her phone conversation about her dog, and google maps.
Crashed into a guardrail on I-89 while trying to dislodge a spider from my window. The car is fine, just dented. I’m fine, not dented. I yelled “SHIT” and kept going. Not sure if I got the spider.
Seeing Misha really was perfect. It was a much-needed reminder that some things remain constant always, and some of those constants are always good. I missed her a lot. It’s still weird to not be spending every minute of every day together, like in high school, even though it’s been four years since then. It feels wrong to be separated.
Thus rejuvenated and exhausted, pining for a state I never expected to like, I face the rest of September!