text text text

i have long hated text messages, a passive form of communication (hmnn, is this that too? could be if anyone i wrote about knew of this blog, i guess). anyway, seems to me why text when a phone call will work? but i see its utility and i do it myself now sometimes.

the other evening i was walking about in the rain in the neighborhood of carroll gardens and i got a text that said, 'hi.' the prefix was 347, a cell phone code that, i think, is for new york city only. i was fairly certain it was my former super, the super super, writing hello. last we were in touch was around the time of obama's inauguration. earlier, he had given me the business about voting for hilary in the primary. mind you, he is not a citizen so cannot vote in any case, but felt that obama was the superior candidate. far be it for me to say that race was a factor in his choice (he is black, from trinidad), but i think race was a factor.

anyway, he stopped being my super last summer when my landlord sold the building to a new landlord. and i didn't much talk to the super anymore. by the time he contacted me around inauguration time, i had eliminated his number from my phone and this seemed to upset him (when he wrote then, i replied, is this ____? and he said yes, and asked a bit exasperatedly if i'd erased him. i didn't answer, in itself the answer).

flash forward to this past week and his 'hi.' i wrote back and said, i'd just been thinking about you. which was true, i had been the day before thinking that when we were in touch around inauguration we said we'd get a drink when i got back to nyc but then, of course, we never did. so he asked me, when was i thinking of him, and i replied, 'yesterday' and he wrote, 'i think of you always.'

which is a very lovely thing to write. it is probably even more lovely to hear it, or read it. and i suggested we finally get dinner. and he said, yes, sunday. well, guess what. it is sunday, coming up on 10 pm, i have heard nothing. now it's coming back to me that in two years of off and on flirting we never got more than one beer, because he has no follow through, not even for a simple, how've you been, what shifts and curves has your life ambled through in these past months? and i haven't even gotten a call or a text to say, sorry i've missed our date.

i don't even feel angry, or jilted, but a little annoyed since had i known i'd be free this evening, i'd have maybe gone to a movie or roasted beets i have in the fridge or any number of other things. but i don't care even enough to call or write myself and ask what happened. so that is that. i expect i won't hear from him for a while and then, some months hence, i'll get a totally unspecific note that says, simply, 'hi.'

rasta boys soccer coach

enough said.