this year

"Ben's in town for the wedding.  He's staying at our place this weekend," I say.

It's a Wednesday night and I'm threading through the puckered traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard, talking to Morgan while I drive.  A few miles away, she's doing the same thing on Los Feliz Boulevard.  (Welcome to social life in Los Angeles.)

"Oh, IS HE."  Her voice is heavy with significance.

"Yes, Morgan, he is."

"Don't you take that tone with me, Clare Alexandra."

"No, no!  Really!"  I acknowledge the obvious:  "I have decided to do something novel and not hook up with him this time."

There's an unmistakable snort on the other end of the line.  "Clare, listen to me," she says.  "You are one of my best friends.  I think you are beautiful and smart and you can do anything you put your mind to.  Except that if Ben Harmon is anywhere in a five-mile radius, you are going to make out with him, no matter what you have decided."

The truth is that we've had this conversation quite a few times before.  I go ahead and deliver my line:  "Oh, shut up, I hate you."

Two years ago, I said that because she was right on the money.  This year, though, I just say it because it's what I've always said.  In fact, the weekend comes and goes as I suspected it might, without a single untoward incident.  There's some alcohol involved, but everyone sleeps in their designated beds.  There are no awkward moments in the morning -- just sleepy hugs goodbye so he can make his early flight.

Afterwards, I stand on my front porch, staring up at the little strip of sky slowly brightening between my building and the one next door.  Maybe this is what growing up feels like.  But I'm pretty nostalgic for all the years of bad decisions, and I go back to bed -- clean, unrumpled, hangover-free -- feeling strangely sad.

can't trust that day

From the ankles down, I look like Barbie.  Some mornings, the only thing that's going to get you out your front door is a pair of 4-inch peeptoes in hot pink patent leather.

(I may or may not have bought these as a birthday present for my best friend a couple of years ago...and then kind of accidentally kept them.  The moral of the story:  Always make friends with women who share your shoe size.)

From the ankles up, I look more or less like a homeless person.  Aside from the shoes, I got dressed this morning entirely in items that were lying on my bedroom floor.  I also ate Trader Joe's Cheese Crunchies for breakfast, and then spent at least an hour peering diligently but uselessly at the statements for my retirement account, which might as well have been written in Sanskrit for all the sense I was able to make of them.

Now, at 6 o'clock, the course of my day is easily traceable by the items strewn all over my desk.  They include:  A dried-up bottle of Elmer's glue; a dead plant; three empty Diet Coke cans (One of our partners frequently stops by my door, shakes his head, and intones, "Aspartame, Clare!" before shuffling off down the hallway); many tiny Post-its full of illegible but undoubtedly important scribblings; one plush monkey that shrieks when you squeeze it in the middle; about two dozen red pens; and a rotating emergency light, of the type you might find on top of a very small toy ambulance, if the ambulance was purple.  Don't ask me; I don't know either.

I have a date in two hours.  It's going to include an "It's not you, it's your cigarettes" speech, and that is going to be uncomfortable.

Oh, it's such a Monday-ish Monday.

poetaster

Today, a boy sent me a poem -- I can only assume he authored it himself -- that rhymed the word "soul" with "facial mole."

Thought you'd want to hear about that one, blogland.

vikram, part 1

July: Nick is making fun of me again. I’m telling him the latest news, but he can’t keep the characters straight, so I have to go through and remind him of all the names.

Him:  generic white names

all of them

I could have pulled them out of a hat

Me:   next time I am picking someone to date I will find a Vikram, 

      okay?

just for you

October: I’m at a Halloween party in someone’s back yard, drinking cheap rum from a red plastic cup. I’m dressed like a Girl Scout, in knee socks and a skirt that would horrify my mother. I am too old for this.

But when he walks in, I perk up a little. He’s instantly noticeable, even in the middle of his pack of friends, and I think it’s his build – slim hips, broad shoulders under a thin tee shirt. And dark skin. Big liquid eyes. I won’t even notice until we go on our first date that his nose is also big.

I make eyes at him once or twice. Being a girl makes things so easy. (Okay, this skirt probably doesn't hurt.) In any case, it works: He comes over to introduce himself.

"Hi," he says, extending his hand. "I'm Vikram."

Bingo.

a brief tale of ice cream

I came home and there was the wedding invitation lying on the kitchen table, addressed to my roommate.

The picture is adorable. He's tall and lean and blond, with a button-down and a Crest smile. She's tall and lean and brunette, in a crisp white shirt and a grey cardigan, her smile equally fresh. They could have been clipped from a magazine.

He asked me out once, I think, or tried to. I was pretty excited about that.  

I bet you have a story to tell was the sentence that sprang to mind when I first met him -- a rare reaction for me. He'd lived for two years in rural Russia; I made him talk to me about it. And then, weeks later, there was this Facebook message.  He wanted to know if I'd be up for "grabbing a pastry or a salad or an ice cream - it's really quite arbitrary - and talking literature sometime."

I said yes. Then never heard from him again. It may have had something to do with the fact that one of his best friends had asked me out the week before.   

The best friend became a story in his own right, one I wouldn't trade. But I've always been secretly disappointed about that ice cream that went uneaten, that literary conversation that never happened.

And now here we are. No more what-ifs or maybe-one-days. He is officially and permanently off the market.

Another one bites the dust.

let's go with that

"Your voice," he texts me, "sounds nothing like I had it in my head."

I sigh, and answer:  "I get that a lot.  People who've only heard me on the phone invariably assume I'm older than I really am."

I have a voice that is described on good days as merely "deep."  On bad days, I get, "You sound like a man."  (Coincidentally, my sister says that more often than anybody else.  Something about being the most genetically similar person to me on the planet exempts her from being tactful.)  The voice is an advantage in my professional life, since I work with a lot of clients exclusively via phone, but in most other situations I'm just a bit of an auditory oddball.

I have a standard response to comments on the subject. "Well," I’ll say, "it comes in handy when you want to do the Jessica Rabbit thing, but a career as a famous soprano is out."  When singing, in fact, I'm a contralto -- although applying that term to my warbling is probably an insult to any number of leading ladies.  Per Wikipedia, there are quite a few of them.  Fiona Apple, Toni Braxton, Judy Garland, Lady Gaga, Patsy Cline, Etta James, Alicia Keyes, Chaka Khan, Annie Lennox, Reba McIntire, Stevie Nicks, Katy Perry, Carly Simon, and Amy Winehouse are (although the meanings of the term are a little looser outside of classical music) also considered contraltos.

This boy and I have been trading texts and the odd voicemail for weeks.  At some point, I make a cheeky comment about whether or not we'll ever see each other in person.  He answers:  "Yes, Clare, we are going to hang out, you with your sultry voice."

Sultry.  That sounds good.  Let's go with that.

the view from wednesday

He calls me darling.  Gets away with it because of the accent.  The truth is I kind of like it.

Sunny in Los Angeles this week.  I'm still wearing boots and tights; I haven't caught up to the weather.