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my super super called me last night. idle chit chat. then he tells me i must see the floors he refinished in the apartment below.

'are they nice?' i ask.

'they are beautiful,' he says, 'just like you, slush.'

now that's a nice thing to hear after what he said the other day. and then he made a date with me. which i am mixed about going on, cause he's my super and what if there's a problem, i mean in the apartment, and we fall out and he tells the landlady to evict. i guess the underlying note is that i don't really see it could go anywhere (not least because he's anglican and believes in hell and i am a j and so i think in his calculus am going there for shizz; and yet i say i'm openminded re dating but then maybe i'm not really as much as i want to be and also, why do all the blue collar dudes like me but the intellectual ones i can't seem to go out with?).

but anyways, i suggest a thursday night, and he says

'don't you go to work on friday?'

i respond yes, i do. and he continues,

'well, what if we have more than one beer, or we have beer and then some wine, like if we have dinner.'

and i say, 'yes, well, i can do that, all of that, and still go to work on friday—done it before, and i bet a grand i will again.'

and he asks again, 'you sure, i mean, we might have dinner, some beers.'

reply i, 'yes, i am sure. i can do that, drink more than a beer, drink wine, stay out after dark, and still go to work on friday. but you sound like you are not sure you want to meet on a thursday. if that's so and you'd prefer to meet on a weekend, that i can do.'

and so a date was made; except being the 'busy lady' i am, as my great auntie puts it, i gots no weekends free for some weeks. but i do wonder if i should cancel this whole thing already. i'm feeling utilitarian more than i am feeling carefree.

second chances

as my friend a knows, i'm all about second, third, one-hundredth chances. and so. and so—

while i promised myself not to text mr albania 2007 since he seemed to be making little to no overture in my direction, well, i couldn't help myself. so i texted him last week. and nothing. i've been rejected. a feeling amplified by my super-cute super who observed, 'slush, have you put on weight?' i attribute his admirable/questionable candor and seeming complete ignorance why that might be insulting to his being: anglican and trinidadian.

oddly, i was not so insulted by the comment as i might have been had it come from other people; his concern was so refreshingly lacking in the fraughtness of body image stuffs and so frank. and, no, gentle reader, i have not put on weight.

but so then back to mr albania 2007; i texted today again, against good, better, best judgement, to say, 'i'm meeting a and the gang at a bar to watch the red sox. come, won't you?' and posthaste thought it was stupid, how do you retrieve a text from the world? you can't. it's out there like a mean remark, lingering. and he wrote back and i don't know if i'm glad or not cause i don't really care if he comes to watch baseball with me. that's not what i am after with him. so why not be, like my super super, upfront? it's so much lighter.

and now: i take this opp to remind you and you and you of your setting-up task. with me. set me up. in a good way, for love, not a pratt fall.

R.F.P.

on the advice of an advisor i am putting out a request for proposals, so to speak.

i am telling everyone i know (and you too) that i want to meet someone and fall in love with him. i am telling you because you might well be able to help me. you know someone, i know you do, to set me up with. you might think it would not be a good match, but you never know if that water cooler fixer would laugh at my jokes and i at his. or that teacher who lives next door. or your sister-in-law's electrician. and i have no problem with divorced people, people with children, dyslexics. really. everyone has 'baggage.' my valise, for instance, has a busted zipper and a wobbly wheel. but it holds my clothes and personal affects!

do not tell me you don't know anyone. i don't believe you. i know you and your partner/husband/friends know single men. help me. i am asking for your help now. and i will ask for it/remind you of it, again.

i'm serious about this—thank you.

long in da toof

today i learned the exact etymology of that 'spression, long in the tooth, from my dentist whose name sounds like it comes straight from the encyclopedia of doctor seuss. the dentist was cleaning my teeth, see, and he said they were soooo clean, he said they were sooo clean that he stopped cleaning to ask me exactly what i do to them (it's funny, cause i think they're a little yellow, but i guess they can have that sunflower hue and still be soooo clean). and i said, 'well, sir, i brush twice a day.' and he said, 'do you floss?' and i said, 'of course!' and he said, 'not of course, not everybody does.'

and i felt like i was 10 y.o. and oh so proud of my good hygiene and it reminded me of when i was 12 y.o. and lived in the city of j'lem (the holy one with the dome of the rock and all the threats of bombing all the time) and a dentist there told me i had a cavity, my first, i think, and as i waited for the bus to return me to my 'hood, i cried and cried. it was a damp, grey fall day, i remember, kind of grainy, rainy, and this old woman at the bus stop asked me why i was crying. and i told her. but now, i see, what the bigger answer is, it's all so obbbbvious, as teenagers say with that extra dose of contempt: it was about decay, aging, betrayal. it often is.

how do you spell e-x-h-a-u-s-t-i-o-n?

ever been so tired everything you eat tastes a little like unpastuerized cheese? me neither. until today. i woke predawn, jetlagged still, and decided, among my breakfast to have some cheese i bought the other day and it's made everything today—fruit-flavored mentos included!—taste vaguely sour milky.

which is: unpleasant.

how i long for a piece of mouthwatering gator gum in all its neon glory.

had this whole long story to blather on about about some syrian dude whose mother i was nice to in the moscow airport (her suitcase was dripping olive juice) who then told me he knows nobody in nyc and wants to apply to residencies here and could i give him my number or email address and i did even though i don't give my number out typically but it seemed so american-suspicious-of-feriners of me not to. so i did. sorta like when you give someone a handjob because you feel bad that you've said you don't want to have intercourse. wait. did i write that? did that happen or did it only happen in a crap chicklit joint?

and then i got home and texted with my albanian friend. after having read how albanian (or is it bulgarian) gangs control the sex trafficking industry (a harrowing article you can read here), and got suspicious of his benz all over again. til a few weeks ago, i thought i was the trusting sort.

alls i want for xmas is to sleep 12 hours straight. invariably when i go to sleep i wake up precisely 7.5 hours later and it's not enough. ya hear!?!?

didja miss me?

bookends to my trip a la russe: arriving after 30 hrs travel at 1 am in st pete's, the guy who's sposed to meet me ain't there. i stoopid american girl. speak no russian. read no russian. taxi driver wants to take me for a ride. 'we go to econo hotel' and all i think is this is how people get into trouble. do i trust? have i choice? i go. it's fine. much relief. and sleep.

way home: on aeroflot (they showed da vinci code and when tom hanks proclaims at the end, 'god speed' well, in that brief but interminable utterance is all the cause you need to loathe his actorly bits). i fall asleep at the end of the long journey, before we descend, a russian lady feels the urge to get her rolling suitcase, is heavy, so are bricks, out of the overhead. slips, whacks me on the head, like a bat, it was the wheel part. i yelled out 'oh!' was i concussed? no sais.

other stuff: twas awesome in various ways, saw lots, ate lots—cheese, pickled yumminess of various sort (garlic cloves! cabbage! peppers! i think pickled things have now exceeded chocolate in terms of desirability). moscow was huge and makes nyc seem tiny...but also that's because of course the language is unintelligible to me and ignorant american like me did not learn alphabet before arriving. and the buildings—stalin's monuments are straight out of a batman gotham scary comic book—huge, muscular, formidable, forbidding, speckled around the city's ring road like mythic beasts scaring off the unhardy. the smaller streets have that mittel-europe look of budapest, prague—all emulating paris and versailles. i don't know how there aren't fewer broken legs because the women teeter on these spiky heels, and i was walking around like some american slouch in sneaks because the blisters on my pinkie toes made walking a true challenge (ask not about the pain when i punctured said blisters). everything was costly. really out of site or sight. i did not meet my oligarch mobster boyfriend who was supposed to suit me up and treat me right, whatever that means—cocaine, a firm arm on ass but all in the name of sexy! sexy! posh! that may not be my scene, as much as i will it to be.

glad to be home, mostly.