I Want That One and I Want It Now

Lest you start to think my dear UmbrellaLove has completely fallen to the wayside, rest assured. I haven’t given up yet, and I haven’t been taken out by a Missed Connection gone awry (see "Are You My New Boyfriend?"); oh no, quite the contrary. It’s just that I wouldn’t want you to think I was rubbing it in or anything, by telling you stories about our first actual date last Friday night, or how rather fairy-tale it was that we walked through the Boston Gardens and the Common at dusk, and all the way to the North End, or how access to my old rooftop in that neighborhood was still unlocked, so we climbed the 5 stories to the roof (who wouldn’t score major points here?). Or how, after a drowsy, pleasant dinner and a follow-up of limoncello at a nearby café, we went to my old park on the waterfront and swung on the swing set and talked. Or how, despite some rather glaring differences between us, since that first date last Friday night we’ve seen each other two or three more times, and seem to be rather fond of each other. It was just so easy. I feel like a child who's been told yes too many times: like all I have to do is point to someone and say, I want that one, and if I cause a big enough scene I can have it. This is of course not the case, but as far as Missed Connections go this one was a pseudo-accidental rub of a genie's bottle.

I wouldn’t want to rub it in.

Instead, let me recount the surreal feeling of arriving to your own block after work in broad daylight on a Friday afternoon, and as you turn onto your street, noticing police cars and crime scene tape being strewn from tree to tree. I found my roommate sitting on the stoop, and she informed me that about 15 minutes before, she was awoken from a nap to two gunshots, and then the thunder of feet under her window along with shouts of we gotta get out of here! By the time I got there, the ambulance had already taken away the person who, according to neighbors, was shot in the stomach and had stumbled around the corner the way I was walking home.

The odd thing, among several odd things, is that I was supposed to be allowed to leave work about 20 minutes sooner, and didn’t. If I had, I’d have walked right into the confrontation. There were several other notable oddities: that the policewoman putting up yellow crime tape blocking off our street was the same woman who was first to arrive on the scene back in December, when not twenty feet from where I was standing, a woman got hit so hard by a truck that she flew through the air. I was the first person to her side, and I remember this blond policewoman kneeling in front of the bleeding victim as though her presence was all that was required.

And as we stood there watching our furrow-browed neighbors emerge into the sunlight, Kim got a text message from her friend David, hundred of miles away in Washington, DC. It said, “Shake it off.” He was of course quoting a song lyric. But still.

The world has felt on the verge of bursting lately. All kind of meaning lining up. All sorts of eccentricities emerging, and tempers exploding, and emotions going haywire. The city is full of sirens like I’ve never heard. It’s the best time to lasso a creative force and ride it til you can’t stand the saddle sores.