11/23/10 crossing paths

She stands at the crosswalk, a little ways out into traffic: slim, fashionably dressed in all black without ostentation, long, fine straight black hair, pretty face, light brown skin, middle-eastern of some sort.

He runs from down the street, obviously on his way from somewhere to somewhere else: black baseball cap at a rakish angle, open, honest face, also in all black, also light brown skin.

He pauses in his run, touches her on the shoulder, looks sincerely into her eyes, says, "Hey, I really like your hair." and then continues running past us up the street without looking back.

"Thanks," she says lightly, without seeming to be fazed at all (do men do this all the time? do they know each other?), the light turns green, we all cross the street, different directions away from this moment.

9/17/09 - Because I promised

We return from the Aretha Franklin show at Radio City Music Hall weary, exasperated, underwhelmed with the performance. My body still buzzes with adrenenline from the end of the show where Katie, in contrast to her usual modus operandi, actually stopped a fight between two assholes sitting near us in our mezzanine seats.

There's a moment or two of bickering as we pack for tomorrow's journey to Connecticut for her cousin's wedding (do I have any clean clothes? Can I pull off stripes with pinstripes? Will you just answer the question?) until Katie, seeing that I am using the ironing board, throws down her unironed shirt on the couch with a sigh and goes to take a shower.

I pick up the shirt and, despite its being a girl's shirt and therefore constructed like the proverbial Chinese Algebra problem, I attempt to iron it, hoping that with this small act I can smoothe both her ruffled fur, and mine.