this again

It's past midnight and I should really be in bed, but my head feels like a jar of lightning bugs, thoughts flashing so softly and insistently that I know I'll never get to sleep. So instead I'm on my roof. I came up thinking I'd look at the stars, but no luck. They say, this town, the stars stay up all night....but I don't know, can't see 'em, for the glow of the neon lights. Lights or no, it's overcast anyway.

I just made it home from a birthday party in West Hollywood. We lounged on The Foundry's patio, sipped tequila, listened to the jazz band. I think I managed to keep my poker face.

The Foundry, of course, is where I began a very good second date with the boy I'm trying to forget about -- so naturally that's where we all wound up tonight, just to twist the knife a little. We almost went to The Village Idiot instead, not that it would have helped, since that's where I finished that second date. The Village Idiot is also where I spent a long and memorable evening with a different boy, late in the summer of 2007, shaking salt all over the table and tying straw wrappers into knots. Both The Foundry and The Village Idiot are right down the street from Angeli Caffe, the little Italian place where I ate gnocchi and roasted chicken and closed down the restaurant with the boy I was trying to forget when I started this blog.  

I've been dating too much, or living here too long, or something. All the memories are starting to layer. Some nights, every bar and restaurant and theater and club and cafe I step into feels like another stop on a historical tour of my checkered romantic past.

This boy I'm trying to forget. He took me to Geoffrey's one evening, which is this absurdly lovely restaurant in Malibu. Spectacular ocean views, and at night the big twisted trees glow over the patio, encrusted with white lights. He was the third boy I had been there with, a fact I was doing my best not to think about. But at some point during dinner, he asked me playfully to tell him about the best date I'd ever been on. And I had to shake my head and say I didn't want to tell him and change the subject. Because of course, the date that came to mind was one that had happened at that restaurant, on that patio, maybe even at the very table where we were sitting.

Some nights, the only thing I want is a fresh slate. Whether it's about the boy or the restaurant -- to stop thinking, this again.

It is, of course, raining up here on the roof. Just misting, really. Tiny drops spangle my computer screen.  As close as I'll get to stars tonight.