š„ ("Nothing Sacred/All Things Wild" by Kevin Morby)
Forgive me, itās May 2nd.
On this date a lifetime ago, I slipped off my checkerboard Vans and into freefall with a drummer. I have a little bit of Marilu Henner Disease, but this one is an (un)easy recall, no signs of forced entry. It is not because I turreted it on my calendar moated by lefthanded hearts or because it is International Scurvy Awareness Day1; the next day was my first at a new job. Those anniversaries are often the only math I math as an adult: depending on said job I am counting down the days ātil my stock vests so I can quit, flying off like Hermes on little (closed-toe, I do not recognize any other kind) shoes festooned with wings of cash.
Anyway.
Drummer boy.
I drove to Westchester, which meant acknowledging that Westchester is a real place, which I was loath to do, and stayed for nine hours. Nine hours. First date. Nine hours. Most of it was spent talking, six feet apart, on an unremarkable couch - maybe it was slate, or ecru, or a lived white2. An unremarkable couch.
But I fell in love on that couch.
I drove away in agape silence. (And, really, in silent agapÄ.) All I could do was sit in traffic, mutely, dumbly, and play this song over and over. I had not selected it for the moment - like any great song and any streaming algorithm halfway great at collecting your data, it selected the moment and it selected me. I had heard it before, in the finale of the brilliant Kathryn Hahn miniseries Mrs. Fletcher, and found it holy and cruelly erotic: Springsteen borrowing the Graceland session band. It fit perfectly into Mrs. Fletcherās moment of surrender, to her younger lover, to her own younger heart, to ramifications, to sweat, to evanescence.
It fit into mine.
For all that happened after and for all that didnāt, it fit perfectly into mine.
In assorted happier things:
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New friend and Philly artist Sean Dooley (@musclespasm) painted a tiny portrait of my butt! I commissioned one and he asked if Iād be open to sending a few others he could sell and, still being surprised anyone wants to see what was a Hank Hill tushy until the pandemic, I happily obliged. This one is for sale, or you could commission your own!
This video from Taryn Delanie, who has a popular TikTok series in which she plays heavenās receptionist - sometimes she breaks format and does sincere ones for people who have lost loved ones. This entry below centered my heart in such a needed way today. Good people exist.
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Thank you for reading. I will be back to sunnier content when my PMDD takes a FUCKING HIKE, and if there just so happens to be a boy on a beige or dove or taupe couch in Westchester reading this: Iām surprised youāre up, dingus. Hi.
I learned writing this that it is also Take A Baby to Lunch Day, to my delight and to the chagrin of childfree liberal elites everywhere.
Something heād call me the second he read it.