People are usually amused but seldom surprised when I tell them how I met my boyfriend. A generic script is as follows:
“We met in a bar.”
“Of course. You would.”
It was the first Friday in March, I’d just gotten back from reading week, and I was at Gert’s. I’d had a paper due that day, so I arrived straight from the library, late enough for the bar to be packed already. There were people I knew scattered throughout the room and two people I didn’t know at my table. It was louder than usual—the engineers were throwing some sort of party, complete with a cardboard robot in the corner—and we could barely hear each other when we tried introducing ourselves. There was takeout detritus on the table, so I grabbed a slightly greasy paper bag and a pen and wrote my name. They followed my lead.
At the end of that night, or maybe it was the next Friday our group went out, I knew the Russian and I could be friends. Except in his unfortunate distaste for football, he seemed to be my dudely doppelgänger, down to the way he took his coffee (black, as is Right and Proper). We agreed that we should hang out sometime, so I typed his name—which I misspelled—and number into my phone.
By the end of the month, we were dating. It happened almost by accident. On our first date, we went to one of my favourite restaurants without considering the impact of the Saturday brunch rush on available seating and ended up side by side at the bar. He turned to me and asked what I was looking for, and I said I wasn't sure. Though I didn’t yet know that I’d be going on leave, I wasn’t looking for a relationship. If anything, I thought I'd graduate in December 2010, only a term behind schedule, which meant that I'd be leaving for good in the near future. Besides, I was still having an open-ended, blissfully noncommittal fling with a friend in the States, and I didn’t want to give that up.
But I liked the Russian enough to set a date for the following Thursday, which proved fortuitous for him, because on Wednesday, I had the Worst Date Ever with a guy I nicknamed—as I texted a friend from the restaurant bathroom, without thinking of the insult to dogs everywhere—the Golden Retriever. So even if the Russian were not a genuinely cool, interesting human being, he would have gotten a third date; since he is, it’s a moot point. He didn’t mind when I stopped in the street to pet dogs, he complimented my ability to give directions (and didn’t care when I laughed at him then pointed out that we were in my neighbourhood), and he found a ten dollar bill on the way back to my apartment. We used it to buy beer.
Despite one major hiccup and a smattering of smaller points of contention, I was pretty sure we were compatible. Because I was still nervous about committing in any way, shape, or form, Siren’s visit to Montréal early in April was timed perfectly.
Siren is one of my oldest and closest friends. She really deserves her own post, since she’s fabulous, but for now, our backstory in brief: We met as kids during a weeklong retreat at Camp Nausea (yes, that’s a nickname; no, I don’t remember the camp’s real name), lost touch for a year or two, then met again and really got to know each other at an art camp. Several years later, at that same camp, we were co-workers and co-conspirators, plotting to dump unwrapped condoms into the pool so we wouldn’t have to swim... but our adolescent adventures are off-topic. The point is, over the years we’ve built a rapport, and I tell her almost everything. I trust her judgement immensely.
Both the day of her arrival and the next afternoon, as we walked to Toi Moi to meet the Russian, I explained whats and wherefores of the situation.
When this story resumes: Siren meets the Russian! And Montréal has good weather in early April, but the apocalypse does not ensue!
Showing posts with label backstory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label backstory. Show all posts
29 January 2011
24 December 2010
"At the still point, there the dance is"
It is Friday again and I am not taking a ballet class. The studio closed early for Christmas Eve, but I didn’t even think to check until seven, when class is at 7:30 and I’d need to be on a train by then to get to Midtown in time.
When I took class last week, it was a nostalgic whim. I needed to cheer myself up, and I love the feeling of inhabiting my body that I get from physical exertion. That’s why I like the gym so much. Sure, I sometimes slack off for a few days, but I don’t think of it as a torturous chore, the price I pay to fit into the jeans I do (which is none of them, anyway, since I’m too short to wear pants off the rack and too impatient to shop until I find a brand that works for me). Exercising diminishes my anxiety, and considering that once I spent a year hiding in my apartment, afraid to run errands in my neighbourhood and utterly unable to attend school—as I alluded to in my first post, there’s a reason I’m on leave—that’s certainly a good thing.
However, this is not a paean to the effects of sweat on my mental health. This is about a decision I need to make: do I want to be a dancer again?
I don’t have the background that most dancers do, since I didn’t sew my first shoes until I was fourteen. Despite the extraordinarily late start, I danced four or five times a week from then until I moved to Montréal, where I kept meaning to join a studio but never quite got around to it. In winter term my first year, when I took ballet once a week at the gym—I recall telling myself it was just “to stay in practice until I find a studio”—I approached it recreationally. My attendance was erratic. I actually missed the last class, probably because of the guy I was dating at the time.
Gradually, then suddenly, it occurred to me that I wasn’t a dancer anymore, and I didn’t really care.
The years I spent in class were just a breezy “I used to” when men in bars asked if I danced, a pile of neatly folded pink tights at the back of my sock drawer, and a lingering lower back injury. Until I joined the gym last winter, I had forgotten all about endorphin rushes and the way it feels to collapse, muscles satisfyingly sore, onto a soft piece of furniture. When I got home from class last week, it was very much like getting home from the gym; first I sprawled out on the couch and drank a glass of water, then I cooked something.
But a studio isn’t like a gym. There’s no such thing as a recreational ballerina. If I want to keep taking class, going once a week won’t be enough, especially because the technical weaknesses I had as a teenager are still there, now coated liberally with rust. And although I’m slim and flexible for an ordinary person, I don’t, on a fundamental level, have a ballet body. And I, still unemployed, already pay for memberships to my gym and my dojo. When I math it out, the cons outweigh the joy I get from dancing.
Not going back is the rational, adult decision, and I’m definitely happy I’m in a place where I can think clearly. Still, I rediscovered something I loved last week, something that links me to an earlier time in my life, and I’m a little disappointed to be letting it go so easily.
(Title quoted from T.S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton.")
When I took class last week, it was a nostalgic whim. I needed to cheer myself up, and I love the feeling of inhabiting my body that I get from physical exertion. That’s why I like the gym so much. Sure, I sometimes slack off for a few days, but I don’t think of it as a torturous chore, the price I pay to fit into the jeans I do (which is none of them, anyway, since I’m too short to wear pants off the rack and too impatient to shop until I find a brand that works for me). Exercising diminishes my anxiety, and considering that once I spent a year hiding in my apartment, afraid to run errands in my neighbourhood and utterly unable to attend school—as I alluded to in my first post, there’s a reason I’m on leave—that’s certainly a good thing.
However, this is not a paean to the effects of sweat on my mental health. This is about a decision I need to make: do I want to be a dancer again?
I don’t have the background that most dancers do, since I didn’t sew my first shoes until I was fourteen. Despite the extraordinarily late start, I danced four or five times a week from then until I moved to Montréal, where I kept meaning to join a studio but never quite got around to it. In winter term my first year, when I took ballet once a week at the gym—I recall telling myself it was just “to stay in practice until I find a studio”—I approached it recreationally. My attendance was erratic. I actually missed the last class, probably because of the guy I was dating at the time.
Gradually, then suddenly, it occurred to me that I wasn’t a dancer anymore, and I didn’t really care.
The years I spent in class were just a breezy “I used to” when men in bars asked if I danced, a pile of neatly folded pink tights at the back of my sock drawer, and a lingering lower back injury. Until I joined the gym last winter, I had forgotten all about endorphin rushes and the way it feels to collapse, muscles satisfyingly sore, onto a soft piece of furniture. When I got home from class last week, it was very much like getting home from the gym; first I sprawled out on the couch and drank a glass of water, then I cooked something.
But a studio isn’t like a gym. There’s no such thing as a recreational ballerina. If I want to keep taking class, going once a week won’t be enough, especially because the technical weaknesses I had as a teenager are still there, now coated liberally with rust. And although I’m slim and flexible for an ordinary person, I don’t, on a fundamental level, have a ballet body. And I, still unemployed, already pay for memberships to my gym and my dojo. When I math it out, the cons outweigh the joy I get from dancing.
Not going back is the rational, adult decision, and I’m definitely happy I’m in a place where I can think clearly. Still, I rediscovered something I loved last week, something that links me to an earlier time in my life, and I’m a little disappointed to be letting it go so easily.
(Title quoted from T.S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton.")
10 December 2010
The Roommates, and a Brief History of Real Estate
When I chose McGill, I didn’t have a clear idea about what I’d be studying. I knew I wanted to do history, but I didn’t know much about the department or the professors in it. It wasn’t a major drawing point. The decision came down to three things: the appeal of living abroad, the appeal of living in a city, and the appeal of McGill’s particular housing situation. Students are only guaranteed a place in residence for one year, and many—most, even—of the options are not traditional dorms.
For my year in rez, I got my first choice: a single in one of the converted brownstones. The next year, I moved into an apartment with one of my housemates, but that only lasted a month before I found myself alone on the lease. My ex lived with me in practice, but not on paper, and when I decided to move, the apartment hunt was per my criteria and my criteria alone. I found a place I loved and, when he and I broke up the day before our third year of classes started, began living alone both on paper and in practice. I stayed there for two years, the longest I’ve stayed any place since I moved out of my parents’ house, and still hold the lease for it, although I’m subletting it right now.
So here I am in my third apartment. It’s not necessarily a place I would have chosen on my own, but it has its advantages.
Advantages!
It also comes with two roommates, henceforth Flyover and Florida—so named for reasons of geography, although as I later learned, Florida grew up a few blocks away from my parents’ house in Westchester—both of whom I met in the summer of 2009. There’s a photo of us from a party, which I jokingly refer to as “Why I Live Here Now.” The night it was taken was the first time I met Florida, and we talked about sports because that’s my default when meeting new people. We didn’t have another conversation until the day before I moved in. It’s probably fortunate we get along. Sure, he sometimes plays Call of Duty: Black Ops for hours at high volumes, but at least he roots for the Giants.
Which brings us to Flyover, who was a 2007 bandwagon fan but otherwise more closely allied with losing franchises from all over the Midwest (no, seriously, in order of rooting interest: Bengals, Lions, Rams). We’d only met once before the party, and he thought I hated him, so he bought me drinks and we started an ongoing argument about whether the 2004 draft day trade for Manning was a good idea. Since then, we’ve been friends. Whenever I came back to New York during the year, he provided me with a non-suburban, non-dorm place to crash. And he’s the one who suggested I move in when I mentioned that I was returning to New York.
Could I say more about them? Probably. But for now, this summary should do.
For my year in rez, I got my first choice: a single in one of the converted brownstones. The next year, I moved into an apartment with one of my housemates, but that only lasted a month before I found myself alone on the lease. My ex lived with me in practice, but not on paper, and when I decided to move, the apartment hunt was per my criteria and my criteria alone. I found a place I loved and, when he and I broke up the day before our third year of classes started, began living alone both on paper and in practice. I stayed there for two years, the longest I’ve stayed any place since I moved out of my parents’ house, and still hold the lease for it, although I’m subletting it right now.
So here I am in my third apartment. It’s not necessarily a place I would have chosen on my own, but it has its advantages.
Advantages!
It also comes with two roommates, henceforth Flyover and Florida—so named for reasons of geography, although as I later learned, Florida grew up a few blocks away from my parents’ house in Westchester—both of whom I met in the summer of 2009. There’s a photo of us from a party, which I jokingly refer to as “Why I Live Here Now.” The night it was taken was the first time I met Florida, and we talked about sports because that’s my default when meeting new people. We didn’t have another conversation until the day before I moved in. It’s probably fortunate we get along. Sure, he sometimes plays Call of Duty: Black Ops for hours at high volumes, but at least he roots for the Giants.
Which brings us to Flyover, who was a 2007 bandwagon fan but otherwise more closely allied with losing franchises from all over the Midwest (no, seriously, in order of rooting interest: Bengals, Lions, Rams). We’d only met once before the party, and he thought I hated him, so he bought me drinks and we started an ongoing argument about whether the 2004 draft day trade for Manning was a good idea. Since then, we’ve been friends. Whenever I came back to New York during the year, he provided me with a non-suburban, non-dorm place to crash. And he’s the one who suggested I move in when I mentioned that I was returning to New York.
Could I say more about them? Probably. But for now, this summary should do.
04 December 2010
[insert your favourite cliché about beginnings]
In the interest of saving time, to get started without several posts composed purely of (the admittedly requisite) backstory, I'll tell you this about myself:
Often enough, "I'll go to Fairway tomorrow" turns into "shit, I haven't bought groceries in two weeks" turns into "FreshDirect it is... what do you mean, it can't be delivered today?"
Now you know things about me! Whatever else you extrapolated from that anecdote, I think it's obvious I have a penchant for procrastination and live in New York. In fact, I celebrated my 22nd birthday here last month, just like I'd always assumed I would. However, I could never have predicted the context.
For the past four years, I've been here:
Montréal, any given day between November and March.
Based on those numbers, I wouldn't blame you if you logic-ed it out and concluded that I've graduated from college and am still adjusting to the Real World, where I am neither supposed to treat my apartment like a giant walk-in closet nor display empty bottles of alcohol like hunters' trophies.
Nope, still at it!
Alas, that's not the case. I'm currently on leave from school because I was too stubborn to take off last year and so screwed it up. Even though I needed this break, I hope to be back in class by summer term because my current situation is transient and I feel like my life is on hold.
Often enough, "I'll go to Fairway tomorrow" turns into "shit, I haven't bought groceries in two weeks" turns into "FreshDirect it is... what do you mean, it can't be delivered today?"
Now you know things about me! Whatever else you extrapolated from that anecdote, I think it's obvious I have a penchant for procrastination and live in New York. In fact, I celebrated my 22nd birthday here last month, just like I'd always assumed I would. However, I could never have predicted the context.
For the past four years, I've been here:
Montréal, any given day between November and March.
Based on those numbers, I wouldn't blame you if you logic-ed it out and concluded that I've graduated from college and am still adjusting to the Real World, where I am neither supposed to treat my apartment like a giant walk-in closet nor display empty bottles of alcohol like hunters' trophies.
Nope, still at it!
Alas, that's not the case. I'm currently on leave from school because I was too stubborn to take off last year and so screwed it up. Even though I needed this break, I hope to be back in class by summer term because my current situation is transient and I feel like my life is on hold.
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