Epiphany in Baltimore

Sunday, Apr. 11, 2004

Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com

Tonight, as I eat my Easter Sunday dinner alone and spend an hour or so signing up for (and playing with) Friendster, I wonder where the line between contented solitude and plain old loneliness is drawn. I'm just not sure.

My boss got married for the first time at 33 or 34, and is now pregnant at 35 or so. She once said something a year or so ago while at the bar that has stuck with me. On marriage, she said, "Yes, I do like it. It's just nice to, you know, have somebody waiting for you at home." It's not very deep nor very profound, but I've taken it as an insightful look at relationships. It's been a while for me, but I think I'm out from underneath the once-bitten-twice-shy cloud that has shadowed me for a year or so, and just about wading out of the feeling-feeble-because-of-the-surgeries creek as well.

(I do, however, find my tires still stuck in the quicksand of weak metaphors, though. It's depressing to look at my entries from a few years back, because I was a much better writer then. No wonder readership is down. But I digress.)

Anyhow, I'm feeling a little down right at this moment, which often happens after a heavy weekend of working at the restaurant, like this one. Working so hard and so long over so many hours makes it easy to lose sight of what's important. Or maybe it just makes you dwell on it. I don't know. But I left feeling good, and now, after staring at the computer screen for too long and cooking myself an excellent dinner of salmon steak and couscous in my very, very quiet house (even Holden and Tobey seem laconic, Holden strangely uninterested in my food and Tobey strangely uninterested in my lap), I'm feeling a little bit off.

Anyway, I think it's time to get myself back out there.

I actually have a little bit of a crush right now. And I'm not just talking the Polish girl, who seems more and more unattainable. (Okay, tangent.) We were chatting the other day, and she's unhappy because she has no Visa and my place of employment will still employ her because they're sponsoring her citizenship, but this also means they can kind of lowball her and treat her shitty because she has no other options. I come into work and she's just getting off and is looking sad with her pouty lips, and I smile at her and she throws her arms around me in a big hug and tells me she needs to get married, presumably for a Visa. I tell her that if she marries me, she could still have a Polish last name (yup, my grandpa was a Polish immigrant). She tells me that she'd need to keep her name, and I tell her that I'm progressive like that and it's fine with me. Then I tell her that my grandpa's from Poland and that I know the country and being married to me would be like being at home (damn! I'm getting very bold with this girl), and she, displaying the clever wiseass-ness which I love, quizzes me on simple questions that I really should know the answer to: Does Poland have a coast? (My answer: um, no. Her answer: Yes, the Baltic Sea.) Name any two cities besides Warsaw and Krakow. (Uh... there are other cities?). So I didn't do very well. And it didn't matter, anyway, because she only likes scuzzy tools who play in punk rock bands and not decent guys with good jobs who would like nothing more than to take care of her.

Sorry for the tangent. But if you saw how beautiful this girl was, you'd excuse it. It's all for naught, though.

Anyhow, about the actual crush that I started writing about: Her name is, um (thinking of psuedonym...), Dar (because she likes Dar Williams), and she sort of exists on the outside of our teacher group. I mean, she's a teacher, but is more sort of a friend of a friend. She played a couple games on our softball team, but then - get this, this is awesome - went on a cross-country jaunt with her sister on a tour of major and minor league baseball parks. And she loves live music, especially folky stuff. Doesn't she sound perfect for me? So she's also attractive, cool artsy glasses and dark brown hair. And she's a teacher and she came into the restaurant today and waited with her friend to sit in my section! Isn't that a good sign?

So I talked with her a lot because it was between our Easter Brunch seating times. We talked fantasy baseball (!), housebuying, and spring break. She's cool. At one point, I found myself stammering stupidly and had to excuse myself to talk to another table even though they really didn't need me.

Anyhow, I like her, but I think she might be seeing someone. Her roommate (a better friend of mine than she is, so far) says she thinks she is, and she did mention dinner with a "friend" tonight, and I know he's a lawyer and he's nice. So, she finds a nice lawyer to date and I can't find one nice lawyer in the whole fucking city to help me with my case that is three weeks away. (Woah, bitterness, chill) I'm hoping she can make it to my house concert this Friday with Sam Shaber, but she's another one of these teachers who work two jobs and is scheduled to work that night.

I will keep you updated. If you made it this far, I'm very impressed.