about last night...

there were two pigeons trapped in the smoking corner as i left the house this morning. i've no idea how they got in, seeing as how the window was only open about three inches.

fucking pigeons.

anyway.

so, to say that yesterday was weird doesn't even quite begin to cover it. deeply bizarre with tinges of abject horror might be slightly closer to the truth.

first, the minor weirdness: i ran into someone i went to college with just outside my office building. she graduated two years before i did and she was shilling for greenpeace. hm. further proof that the world is really about the size of an acorn.

and, of course, there was the main event. seeing the ex. i can't...really even explain it. except that i remain completely right and vindicated in having done the right thing by ending it in september. that and i don't think he's changed a bit since i saw him last. same huge hair, same european-unwashed smell, same twitchy habits, same sanctimonious declarations about my friends and family, same fucking shirt he was wearing last time i saw him. it all added up to one big twitch-fest for me, for the following reasons:

1. when i cease to date you, you lose all rights to making editorial comments on my friends and family. i don't care if i agree with you that my mother needs to date, or that so-and-so is behaving like a complete fuckwit, or that my father is a control freak. you don't get to say that anymore.

2. the ex is hyperanalytical by nature. it's one of the things i loved about him, it's one of the things that drives me most crazy. particularly when he feels the need to overanalyze our relationship (or lack thereof) to my face. what girl wants to be told "yeah, while we were doing the long distance thing, you became more a metaphor than anything." don't want to hear it! and by this point in the game, i don't want to be his talking cure. i don't want to get mired in the what ifs and "this is what i think happened"s. i know what happened. i know all the what ifs that i need to. i know i fell out of love with him eight months before we broke up, i can only just now say that with conviction and without shame, and i want to move on with my life.

3. the phrase "oceans of strangeness" gets really fucking old the sixth or seventh time it's used in an hour.

4. i still hate his tendency to mangle words. "napukindes." "table-y wabel-y". napkins and tables. dah!

5. he still looks at me in that same old way. he tells me he still thinks about me all the time. and then he asks about my love life. i, naturally, suppress a shudder and plead the fifth.

6. and, of course, just the great mystery: how the hell does someone cease to change at all in the course of ten months? i can't measure how much i've changed! and i am thus untrusting of someone who's not done the same, at least fractionally.

fuck.

at risk of sounding callous...after seeing him yesterday, i find it hard to believe how very much i loved him once. i'm not sure i even enjoy his company now.

needless to say, it was a strange and weird meeting and after about two hours i really needed to run away. and so i did. and after i ran away, i did what every self-respecting urban warrior does when faced with a weirdness that is too horrible to imagine. i sat in the park. smoked a cigarette. made a few phone calls. did some shopping and got really quite drunk for a school night.

the final chapter of the evening was no less strange than the rest of it, of course. it was lovely, to be sure. i had good company, and i was in my favorite bar.

the choice of company in question is probably going to get me in trouble with someone else, someone who has a stake in the emotional well-being of my companion, which is something i apparently pose a threat to. and this person is probably going to think that i was...i don't know. leading on. which i wasn't. at least not intentionally. my companion for the evening was chosen simply because he was the one who said "i'm busy early in the evening, but call me later." and because he's my friend and i love his company. so i did. call him. the others i asked simply said "i'm busy. bye." so, yeah. not leading anyone on, here.

anyway. even if anyone had felt that i was doing so (leading on, that is), there's no confusion about that now. before the night was over, i was asked point blank what my policy was on dating my friends. and i really wished that the asphalt on broadway would have opened up and swallowed me at that moment. i was drunk, i was emotionally raw as a result of my experience with the ex...and all i wanted to say was that i'd already had to deal with the aftermath of someone else's heart broken at my decree today. don't make me do it again. please don't.

but of course i couldn't.

i just had to say that i don't generally date my friends because my dating scenarios always end badly (just look at the ex! just look at the bass player, robot boy, pbs man, religious iconography manic depressive, joe college!) and my friends are just not a price i'm willing to pay. of course, i had to tack on that i'd certainly thought about it, certainly thought about what it would be like to run around with him...because i have. i just always come down on the side of caution.

i don't think he believed me, though.

christ in a sidecar.

so, here i am, back in the office, slightly groggy from the wine and the subway and the general fucked-upness of last night. fortified by a bagel and a very large cup of coffee, anticipating anarchy wednesday with a...well, something not entirely akin to a grimace. young mister longacre is talking about time travel. i'm thinking about how to effectively waste today with amazing grace and style.

and praying, just praying that those fucking pigeons are gone by the time i get home.