Lucy's Perfect Days

It seems like too much to hope for good times in the midst of all this trouble with CC.  But it happened. 

CC

CC is mad at me.  I am the bearer of bad news, the burster of the bubble, the rain on the parade. She is letting people think she is at Stage 2 because her doctor hasn’t given her an official diagnosis.  I think she is at Stage 3.  Yesterday I told her this. That was a mistake on my part.  Mostly because it made her sad and angry. And also because I don’t really know what I’m talking about. 

I just don’t want her to downplay things and end up not getting the right treatment from the right facility with the best doctors.  It’s not my business and I have promised to keep my mouth shut now. This is about no one but CC. I want to be a good friend to her.  Pissing her off at this point is a bad idea.

Another A
I’ve been seeing a man whose first name starts with A—let’s call him AL. He won the green card lottery a few years ago and has lived in New York for the last six years.  He’s from Dublin.  The accent is cute, but not enough to make communication difficult.  I don’t know how long he will be making an appearance in this blog.  We haven’t seen each other that much.  But so far, it’s fun.  I like him. 

On Saturday night, we went to dinner in SoHo after my bookstore gig ended and after he finished work.  He kissed me in the middle of a bar called Puck Fair. Ah the romance!

Then he got a call from work – end of date, I thought. Apparently not.  He decided not to go back to the office.  Grand Theft Auto would wait till Sunday morning, he said.

Okay, I said, but you’re not getting laid tonight.  He laughed and said he wasn’t really expecting that.

Then we went to his apartment in Brooklyn.  He has more books than I do.  He has a little gizmo that scans all the titles and he has a pretty accurate count of what is in his collection.  Very endearingly nerdy, especially for a girl like me.

I like this guy’s style.  Straightforward.  He makes fun of me a little bit.

No one got laid.  I want to see AL again.

Faith and Central Park
Faith is my ex A’s friend.  When my ex introduced us, I was somewhat put off by her I-am-a-strong-black-woman thing. I liked her immediately, but I am wary of self-labeling as defense mechanism.  To me, it is a too-transparent attempt to justify what has gone wrong.  And it means that a person like this would be easily offended by my mostly good-natured but politically incorrect commentary about life.

Yesterday, Faith and I went to see the last performance of the season at The Delacorte. The play was Euripides’ Bacchae.

I queued up for tickets at 9 a.m., she showed up at noon.  Before she arrived, I lay down on my blanket and listened to Bob Dylan and bits of opera. I almost wished she wouldn’t show up. It was cool and sunny in the park.  I could have stayed there all day. I lay under a canopy of trees, the sunlight drifting down between the leaves and water from the previous night's rain occasionally splattering down.  There were a few hundred people in line with me. 

We got our tickets and wandered around the Upper West Side together, got our nails done, drank wine, ate pizza, talked about her movie, talked about men. We carefully avoided the subject of A.  She is uncomfortable being friends with the both of us.  Understandably.  So I told her that we were fine, friends even. Does anyone ever trust an ex-girlfriend when they say this?

Faith is 40.  She is going a little crazy over a man she went out with once three months ago.  They had a falling out after one date and he called her again last week.  I’m not sure what is going on with that.  But I have to say, it was nice to see her shed that I-am-a-strong-black-woman armor and allow herself to obsess about something as simple as a date that didn’t go the way you would have wanted it to.  And to hope that it still has a chance to turn into something. 

Will Faith and I remain friends or was yesterday a fluke?

The Bacchae was probably pretty good.  To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention till the end.  It was a beautiful night.  Between the moon and the sky and the view, and the top of the turrets of Belvedere Castle that was visible from where Faith and I were sitting – I couldn’t concentrate. And later, raccoons that were supposed to be part of the play escaped their cages and I kept looking under the seats for that flash of red eyes. I kept thinking "this is the end of this lovely awful summer."

How could it be that this year, thus far, has been so bittersweet for me?  I don't think I ever truly knew what that word meant until the last few months.

Toward the end of the play, after Pentheus had died and his mother cradled his severed head, I finally started paying attention. The actress let out a wail that pierced the air and I myself tearing up.  I wish I could remember all those lines. “I love you more in death” or something like that. 

Of course, I was thinking of my baby. But honestly, it wasn’t so bad.  It was a reminder, that’s all.