The Proposal

"...And I just want to say that I want to spend the rest of my life doing that with you." He concluded his monologue, as in slow-mo he hopped down from the podium he'd been standing on, walked up to his Girlfriend and proposed in front of a room full of audience members who had just finished watching the show for the evening. The room went silent, except for the occasional sob, as the Man got down on one knee and asked if She'd marry him. A small "Yes" boomed through the room as everyone erupted into applause. The happy couple embraced and kissed as the band struck a chord and played a love song.

I felt the unbidden tears roll down my cheek as I tried very hard to choke back a sob. That was such a beautiful moment to witness. I felt so unbelievably overwhelmed by how simple and lovely that honesty and courage was, and how it brought the entire room to silence. I tried to reflect on any other time I had seen a live proposal and couldn't think of any. That was my first one.

I wished that the girl getting kissed and hugged, covered in happy tears: was me. I wished beyond reason that I'd get a call, or a text or an e-mail or that somehow a guy from my past/present/future would come running into the room and, seeing me, come running up and grab me, bundling me up into an embrace before all to see and then tell me the same things I had heard come out of that other guy's mouth. He loved her. He wasn't afraid to tell an entire room. He wasn't afraid of what he felt for her, in fact, he embraced it head on!

I looked around the room at the other teary-eyed girls brushing the salty water from their faces and laughing with embarrassed giggles at how they had all individually "lost it" watching that pure moment of love and happiness. I smiled and laughed along with them. "Yeah, wasn't that funny? I lost it, too! Haha!"

It wasn't until I was on the train coming home later that night, when I buried my head in my hands and had a quick sob, did I realize how impossible that moment seemed for me. That was a fairy tale. A blunder, right? A wish that a young girl dreams of as she falls asleep, imagining her prince charming. Yet, there it was: right before me, happening in real time. It happens. I breathed deep and followed the dance song I had blasting in my ears to help drown out the hopelessness I was feeling. Everyone is different, and everyone has a different sunset they ride off into, that's all... It's not a matter of hopelessness, just patience and a determination to keep doing what makes me happiest in the meantime.

Awkward Friend(relation)ship?

Oh, Fuck.

I just said something that really hurt you, and I really said it unintentionally! I promise!

Oy. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. But, I won't say sorry, I'll just back peddle and try to compliment you a lot.

Does that feel better?

Can you tell I feel bad for making you feel bad without saying that I feel bad for making you feel bad out loud?

Complicated. Yes. Like our relationship, No?

Are we emotionally invested in each other more than what the standard opposite-sex friendship should be?
-----> I refuse to believe that we are (even though I know that we are).

Just stay away from me, ok? I'm going to unintentionally hurt you again by telling you about the guy I went out for dinner with, or what my Ex did recently or how I want to see that movie you want to see, but I want to see it with my sister, instead.

No, I'm too busy to hang out this week. Too busy to get dinner. Too busy to do anything, really!

Oh, Fuck.

I am so sorry.

I can't sort out my feelings about you, and you'll just have to forgive me for that, because frankly: I don't want to lose your place in my life because it gives me a sense of worth that is entirely selfish sometimes. Oh, and there are qualities about you that I find irresistibly attractive, and yet I cannot get over my fear of ruining our friendship if, once I've decided that I will sleep with you, I am no longer attracted to you anymore and I don't actually ever want to see you again because I'm reminded of how I feel horribly guilty about "trying you out" and then deciding that you were not what I wanted. And, I think you're in love with me, but not really me, because (apparently) I can be very different in "relationship" mode, and you're really close to me, so maybe that's not who you really want and that's a lot of pressure!

There. I said all of that with my eyes. And you know me so well, I'll bet you picked up on that.

I need more girlfriends.

Negativity

The dark and negative side of things suck.

I consider myself a glass half-full person, so when I find myself pulled into a fighting match where I beat myself up in my head, I have to realize that that is not who I define myself as: that it is a temporary cloud burst which will eventually rain itself out.

Sometimes it can be a gorgeous day out, like today, with a small warm summer breeze pushing a few wisps of hair around, and a blue clear sky with a bright hot sun. I could be walking down a street admiring some grass in the cracks of the sidewalk when suddenly: the Dark creeps in. The Dark rolls over the blue clear day and tells me nasty things I don't want to think about. Why? Where does that come from?

I think that the Dark and Negative is a form of protection, honestly. The mean, negative thoughts can be a way to take my mind off of really thinking on something I don't want to think on, right?

Sometimes I meet people who seem to be in a perpetual twilight. Their sun only comes out occasionally, and even then doesn't seem to warm them up and help them grow to be the person they could be happiest being. Sometimes even being around those people brings on clouds of my own and I can find myself lacking the necessary "Vitamin D" to help my mind grow and stay healthy. Those people are tough for me to stay around for any length of time.

Not to dismiss sadness, anger, or frustration as bad places to be. There are times when I just need to be sad or angry. There are times when I purposefully call up to my sky and push the clouds in front of my sun and cry and feel really good about doing so. That's not what I call "The Dark." The Dark is when I'm not even aware of how negative I feel until I look down at my fingers and realize I'd been biting them the last few minutes, or when I get interrupted from thought to realize, in the echoes of the disappearing meanness, that I was calling myself names I would never allow anyone to call me. Why would I ever call myself those names, then?

We are our own worst enemies. We are the only thing keeping us from being the best version of ourselves, aren't we? I am thoroughly convinced that the people who are the best at what they do, are not the best at what they do, they just thoroughly and without any apologies believe that they are doing the best they can and that they believe that without any hint of hesitation.

I am working hard to be the best I can be, by forgiving myself when I am not.

Reflective Walk

I walked past the houses lined up along the promenade at 2:30am. I was the only person on the street. I had just walked inland from the beach where I had been hanging out with the last visitors of the HUGE party my family threw last weekend called the Hoover Hootenanny. I was walking back to my great Aunt's house on the Jersey Shore.

There was no one else awake, let alone out on the street. I looked with long indulgent stares at the cookie cutter Victorian architecture that passed me as I moseyed over to the house.

The sky was black, no stars.

The air was still, no wind.

The neighborhood was silent, no sound.

I felt wholly and completely alone, and yet not sad. Just thoughtful and reflective and overall excited about being on the Jersey Shore and away from New York for a night.

A lot has happened this past week, no boredom.

Oh, Summer. You rock.

My One-Year-Old

Today marks the one year anniversary of my blog!

Thank you, thank you. Yes, it's been quite the year, really. If one were to quantify this all in terms of men passing in, passing through, and passing out there wouldn't be a whole lot to this blog. I feel really happy with where my mind has expanded and explored in terms of what life in New York has thrown at me. Gone are the days of online dating, gone are the long bloated silences between entries in which I felt as if I had nothing poignant to say. Here are the plethora of entries, one parading on the heels of the next as each day seems to come with its own package of wonder and beauty and excitement.

Thank you for reading and sharing and responding. I've now officially reached over 5,000 hits (Yay!) and I'm growing every day from the readers I have in Russia, England, China, Australia, Germany, Canada, Spain, the US and Brazil. I hope to have more people I can share my thoughts with, because that really is a gift to me to be able to do.

Here's to growth! Here's to a really satisfying way of documenting my 20's! And here's to you: my readers! Without you, I wouldn't write publicly, I would just continue to fill up journals with thoughts that wouldn't get shared and by sharing them I feel bolder and stronger and far smarter.

Much love, you wonderful, fantastic readers. Here's to another full year!

Soaked

I was soaked. Drenched, sopping, dripping, filthy and carrying twenty pounds of groceries.

Let's rewind. An hour beforehand my sister and I decided that we needed to do some grocery shopping, except: we needed to go to it at the Super Stop & Shop that was a ten minute walk from my apartment. Leaving the house with our umbrellas in hand, we made our way down the hill of 48th street, under the trestle of the Long Island Rail Road, past the Home Depot Parking Lot to the entrance of the supermarket. To say that the rain pissing down on us was anything less than biblical, would be a gross understatement. Torrents of rain! Buckets of rain! Rain so thick and strong that when the wind blew the visibility fell to only a few feet. The lightening was striking mighty close as well! Each flash in the sky would immediately answer back with a loud chest exploding boom and crack, setting off car alarms and shaking the ants my sister and I had become, sending us scurrying and screaming and laughing.

I wore my flip-flops, knowing full well as we first set off that the sky would most likely open up and we'd get drenched. We went shopping, imagining in our ignorance that once done the rain would let up and we'd walk home in much cooler temperatures. We stepped out of the store and saw bedlam before us. It seemed that in the course of 40 minutes the entire street by the entrance to the Home Depot parking lot flooded with feet of water. Cars sat submerged in 4-5 feet of dirty, muddy, trash-filled destruction. The traffic was halted as everyone in their cars stared with a dumbfounded expression at the Noah's-Ark-worthy flood that had stopped up 48th street.

My first thought was: Oh Shit. I've never seen a flood before. I grew up in New York City and have seen plenty of houses floating away on boulevards covered in a free flowing river on CNN, I've seen waterfalls in the subways, and really, really big puddles on Broadway. But this: This sight before me was a new experience. Cars that had been parked on the street were nose deep, the sidewalk was completely lost, and small waves splashed up against the side of the buildings as cars stuck their toes into the water before deciding that the river was too deep to forge, and then turned around.

I looked at my sister. "We have no choice, we have to go through it."
"Are you sure?!" She asked looking slightly worried and thrilled.
"We have no other choice! This is the only way to get back to the apartment. It's this way or we have to walk about 40 minutes in another direction!"
We stood there in dumbfounded silence as we watched a brave soul forge the river. She was the first human we'd seen on the street. The tiny asian woman was wearing a garbage bag and was pushing a wire mesh cart. The water, at its deepest, came up to her hips. She soldiered on, clinging to the side of the chain-link fence like a subway rat to keep from being carried away until eventually reaching the shallows under the trestle on the other shore and then disappearing into the rain.
"If she can do it, we can." I said, determined. "Let's go."

To say that swimming through that river was just about the filthiest thing I have ever done, would be correct. There were leaves, grass, branches, McDonalds wrappers, greasy oil slicks, and most likely the dead bodies of discarded mob hits floating at the unseen bottom. I felt the floor with my flip-flops praying that the cheap $2 pair of thongs wouldn't snap in the water leaving me wet and shoe-less. The water got up to my mid thigh before it finally began to recede. I held the groceries up to my chest as I balanced the umbrella on my shoulder probably looking completely ironic and silly with an umbrella protecting my head from the rain while the rest of me was submerged in a flood.

I moved slowly up the hill from the disaster. Cars and trucks on the other side of the water looked on at the two of us as if we were the swamp things coming up out of the muck. One idiot decided that he'd drive on the sidewalk and crept past us in his white 4xNothing SUV. My Sister called out that he should turn around, but her voice got lost in the pouring of the rain and I secretly hoped that car would get swallowed up in the torrent.

I was so angry! Why why why was this happening to me!? WHY did we have to go shopping at that grocery store!? I felt the frustration of breaking up, coming back from vacation, changing plans, the pressure of turning 25 and bunking up with my sibling all bubble up, as if wading through that filthy refuse had unstuck all of that and floated it up to my conscious surface. A huge clap of thunder boomed and I screamed. I set down my groceries and took a couple of deep breaths. The rain poured and poured. My sister stopped walking and watched me appraisingly, as if waiting for a signal in which way to proceed. Is Natalie going to fall apart? Is she alright? I felt the water run down my back and closed my eyes. I felt like screaming more, so I did.

The thunder echoed in response. My sister, ahead of me, put down her bags of groceries. She analyzed my voice and body language, and: seeing that my response to our current circumstance was not directed at her, she breathed deep and walked on. "It's behind us now, Natty." She said matter-of-factly. "In fact, that was kinda' fun."

I looked at my soaked clothing and shook the wet hair out of my face before picking up the groceries. I felt better for screaming really loud. I felt like less of a victim and felt less sorry for myself with each step. I took another breath. Actually, as much as that sucked, it was kinda' fun, actually.

Concert in the Park

I sat staring at the magenta sky and allowed the music of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to wash over me like a wave of thick, creamy chocolate. I wriggled my toes in and out of the rich green grass of the lawn and shut my eyes from time to time when a particularly wonderful note was hit. Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Brahms lifted up and over the heads of the thousands of spectators reclining in silence to the beauty and wonder of the masters of music.

I've never heard the New York Philharmonic before. In fact, when asked if I wanted to go to the concert I hesitated, unsure as to whether I wanted to get lost in the crowds, search for a place to sit, buy food to eat, and potentially: get bored. The last time I went to the park to see a free concert I was a lot younger. My babysitter Pat took my sister and I to see Garth Brooks and all I remember of that experience was people walking on and across our blanket and Pat smoking like a chimney. Thankfully, I went with my better judgement and tagged along to see the music last night.

Rarely will a musical piece move me to tears. I work at a cabaret space in Manhattan and see quite a lot of live Jazz, Folk, World music, Classical and Alternative music. There have been a couple times in the two years I have worked there, that I have stopped what I was doing and just openly wept at the sound coming out of the musicians fingers/lips. I remember vividly when a folk group came in and a couple playing their fiddles were harmonizing and I could not keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks. Or, when a South Indian group came and played traditional Carnatic music and two violinists played as if making love to each other, I smiled and got teary eyed at the beauty of what they were saying with their music. 

It's lovely when experiencing a piece through the lens of your own life moves one to tears. Music which can transcend language and time and even cultural differences, can create a story that I can watch in my head and cherish on such a personal level, that the hopes of trying to describe that experience to someone else is all but impossible. Yet, there is a shared understanding when I look at a perfect stranger and watch as that person is probably going through their own version of the same ecstasy. 

I am so glad I went to that concert last night. Plus, the final cherry on that sundae was the firework show at the end. So awesome. And free?! New York: you can really rock. 

Pat

My babysitter, Pat, was the neighbor on the 2nd floor of the building I grew up in. I remember her as a big, tall woman, smoking a cigarette, all in black, and she had long dark hair she'd wear pulled into a ponytail at the base of her head and she always walked with a hunch, carrying her over-sized canvas bags over her back like a desert explorer might when the camel died of thirst. Pat used to be a Montessori tutor, so my Mom figured she'd be a good match for my sister and I when we were done with school and had several hours to kill before our parents got home.

Pat's apartment was unlike any other apartment I had or ever have been in since. Her husband, Bill, had painted the entire place from floor to ceiling, furniture included: with renaissance style murals. There were leaves and faces and trees and birds and white fences and flowers and clouds all over. The unit got very little sunlight so everything was shrouded in a twilight when one walked in, and because Pat and Bill smoked constantly the air had a heavy tobacco presence, giving the dimly lit murals even more of a mysterious air when, in the long afternoons, my sister and I would go exploring, tracing our fingers over the brush stokes and envisioning ourselves mapping out new territory.

The living room is where we spent the majority of our time. Pat and Bill had big maroon velvet sofas planted underneath victorian-tasseled lamps that were hand made. Because of all the cigarettes, everything stank of tobacco, including my clothes, which always had to be washed after a visit. I remember one day, while tracing a mural, I discovered a basket of crystals trucked behind the love seat I had been sitting on. In my young age, I thought I had discovered a basket of diamonds, and remembering that someone had told me diamonds were the hardest substance on earth: I stole a crystal, coveting its smooth, hard surface and wondering how I could test that claim. Later that evening, after I had been brought home for the night, I stole into our bathroom and after a few minutes of debate, dropped the crystal into the porcelain tub where it promptly cracked into 3 pieces. I stared in horror at what I had done: not only was that theory not correct, but now I could never return that diamond without someone knowing it was broken! I still feels pangs of guilt 20 years later when I think of how I carefully placed the pieces back in the basket of crystals and prayed no one would notice.

Pat and I spent long hours with each other. I remember Pat's low gravely voice, her southern drawl and her smoky breath. She always had new projects for me, pulling materials magically out of the shelves that lined the long hallway of the apartment. "Today we're using popsicle sticks, Honey." She'd announce. Or: "Draw with these crayons, they're brand new!" One day she said we were going to sew. She pulled out a bag of fabric and asked me to choose my favorite piece. I picked a lovely pink silk. I watched in awe as she cut the piece and then fitted it onto a wooden frame. "We'll be sewing on this, Honey." We spent hours hunched over the fabric, my young fingers clumsily working with the blue embroidery floss, Pat untangling knots and patiently rethreading my needle. I had gotten ambitious and wanted to sew "Daddy", but after the last curl of the second 'D' stopped at Dad. Pat taught me to embellish the word with a couple of flowers and I suddenly had the best present I had ever made sitting in my lap like a prized trophy. She looked over my shoulder at the cursive and smiled. "Great jawb, he's gonna luv it." She moved to get off the couch and then yelped. I jumped about six feet, I'd never seen a grown-up yell like that before! "Heavens!" She chuckled, pulling my needle out of the palm of her hand. "I must have scared you half to death!"

It was about a year later, as I was running down the staircase of my building to get to the lobby when I stopped suddenly at the door to Pat's apartment, my eyes drawn there by a white piece of paper. The paper announced Pat had died. I knew she had been sick, in the hospital with a brain tumor for a few months. But, there, taped on her door in a tiny matter-of-fact way was an announcement that Pat was no longer a person I would ever see again. I stood in the hallway for a minute processing this news. Pat was the first person I had ever known, ever really had a relationship with, who had died. I stayed rooted to the marble of the hall for a couple seconds before running on, as if by running faster I could pretend that the news I had just read wasn't true. She was dead. I thought only fish and gerbils died, not people, not Pat: the cigarette smoking, dark haired lady on the 2nd floor! It wasn't until her funeral did I really understand that death meant forever. I'll never forget Pat, and sometimes when I'm coloring a picture in, or threading a needle I think of her as a chapter of my childhood that even 20 years later I go back and re-read from time to time.

RIP Pat.

Ode to a Chair

I walked past the broken chair sitting liked a hunched bum on the sidewalk. The worn yellow stripes with the water stains at the bottom and the threadbare arms reminded me again of how much I had disliked that piece of furniture. It had been sitting in the apartment with a comforter thrown over it and had therefore given the impression that there was a far more comfortable seat under there. In fact, if one didn't know what was underneath that comforter to begin with, one would sit on that antique and for a split second think they were relaxing, until a lumpy spring began to poke into a butt-cheek.

In the daylight, in the heat, on the sidewalk, however, that seat sat like a faded bulge of yellow, exposed to the elements and left to its fate. I watched as a small sparrow flew off of the derelict, decrepit, crumpled (dare I say self-pitying?) chair and into a low hanging branch. I wouldn't sit there either, I thought. I knew that chair once as it had been when it was sitting in the still, dark apartment it lived in. It was given a second chance, taken off the streets in the hopes of providing a home with a more comfortable environment. It failed, however, moving from the living room, to the foyer, to being covered up with the comforter, to finally: the street again. That thing would probably be carried off to a garbage dump in Staten Island or maybe: some other poor sap would come along and, seeing only the possibility of how charming those little yellow stripes would be in their apartment (and ignoring the glaringly obvious water stains at the bottom) they'll pick that chair up and take it home. Who knows. After a second glance at the thing I didn't really want to find out what happened to it. It's a piece of New York City history at this point, it's moving on to another place.

Goodbye you poor pathetic chair, good luck out there in the world! I won't really miss you, to be honest, as you were not very comfortable, nor were you very stable. You were pretty, once. And even with your arms worn thin by the hundreds of times people have rested there, and the lumpy cushion were once, in your better days, you provided a comfort for those needing a break from standing, you still can give off an impression of a cute, unassuming, slightly sad looking, take-me-home-and-love-me vibe which I am sure will serve you well if ever a time comes when you're fished out of the dump and used again.

Adieu.

Hanging Out

Chilling out in the summer is hard to do unless one has an AC.

But, hanging out? Really relaxing in the company of others and feeding off the creative energy of their bodies, and not feeling pressure to speak or do or act unless one wants to is: in my opinion, truly a wonderful level of friendship to be enjoyed by only the closest of friends.

And what causes that comfort? That level of trust, to know that the people who also happen to be in the room will be totally content to stay in their underwear all day and maybe debate taking a shower and maybe have to get up at one point and announce that they'll be back after they take a dump?  That comes from love. A love of the people around you. A love that transcends a need for sex or for drama or for stimulation, a love that occurs when one can be happy just sitting in the same confines of the same four walls as other people.

When someone has that relationship with others, be they roommates, relatives, co-workers, or best friends, that's something special. Lovely. A romance with other relationships that aren't just a boyfriend or girlfriend.

I love hanging out with other people who also want to just hang out.

Oh, hello delicious summer afternoons. I'm loving the sweet flavor of your laid-back kisses.

Extinction

Generally, as a human, I don’t give much thought to extinction. Total annihilation from the earth: not one specimen left of your kind, is not something Humans, as a species, need worry about in the near future (unless some terrible war, famine, or disease wipes us out). Yet, last night at work, as I stared at the beers on tap and thoughtlessly ran my fingers over the rough edges of the stainless steel bar I was standing behind, I thought of extinction in a more abstract way: as a means to explain why I protect people in my thoughts that I might otherwise dismiss forever.

The definition of Extinction has a couple of meanings, but they basically boil down to: “a coming to an end or dying out.” That definition need not wholly apply to a species, it could also apply to an emotion or a way to feel toward others, right? I reflected on how, in my mind, people have gone “extinct” within the universe of my brain. Their “species” no longer roam the fields anymore, save for a few traces, bones, and bits of DNA that could be left over for an excavation years later. 

I imagined the people in my life who have gone extinct. I reflected on how once, there was an abundance of them, and now: only pieces to dust off and look at in a museum. It made me sad. Humans can go extinct, just on a much smaller level than a mass apocalyptic melt-down of the entire race. The real scary part is when I realize that someone is on the endangered species list in my brain. Wait a minute, I haven’t seen that person in a very, very long time. How many of them are there? Are they being protected?! We need to make an awareness of this dire situation! Save them!  And suddenly, a person who is falling off the face of my map, may become the top of the list of important things to do. I should go see them. I don’t want to lose that friendship/relationship with that person! 

But, here’s a weird paradox: what if the species that has now become the top of the endangered list, say the American Burying Beetle, is really a nasty, gross, really hard to like, bug? Does one have to dismiss the disgust and still preserve the wonder that this insect is? Even if the Beetle is a total asshole to the ants and the grasshoppers, even if the Beetle is selfish and self-absorbed, that stupid Beetle that no one likes moves up to a new status which suddenly makes sightings an important discovery. So, an asshole bug is now a species that people want to see more of, because that means that that bug won’t be gone forever. 

People in my life are kind of like that. “Sighting today of that jerk from High school on the subway. Many thought that idiot would have been worm meat due to a lack of any foresight, however, recent steps have been taken to ensure that the otherwise massive waste of public oxygen, will be preserved in memory to the best of our ability for future generations. Although many have cited that the Jerk is the reason for getting accused of cheating on that quiz freshman year, it is important to remember that in the delicate web of life, that person still plays a part.” 

So, as I felt the lifeless dry blast from the air conditioner above my head, and smelled the fumes of money and metal last night at work, I tried to switch my brain to thinking about what is worth saving. Total extinction is pretty extreme. And when someone goes extinct from my life, like a friend or lover, the web of life changes and shifts. A person’s memory is important, and should be protected, even if there are highly unpopular qualities of that being, right? The asshole Beetle really is an asshole... and would the web of life really be changed in a negative way if that Beetle was let to die out? Hmm, actually, the scientists are still out to lunch on that idea. 

Creative Fiction

"What are you doing tonight?" He whispered in my ear. I felt my head get hot as I tried not to think about the blush that was probably covering my face.

"Um. I'm busy." I whispered back. I tried not to smile too much at the prospect of saying 'No.'

"So, when can I see you again?" He replied. I felt like I had come to a cross-road. Honestly, I didn't want to see him again. His hazel eyes were cute, and the brown hair was soft, but other than a hot make-out or two, I didn't see this going anywhere.

"Are you on Facebook?" I asked, suddenly getting more serious. I wiped my sweaty hands on my shorts and stared straight ahead at the dancers swaying wildly to Rihanna, I usually stare into the middle-distance when thinking about what to do or say next. Possibilities began racing through my head: maybe I'm making this all up and he really is an interesting person and I'm only trying to find things that are wrong with him so as to distance myself from entering into another relationship? Or, maybe he just wants to see me again so we can jump into bed and then he'll buy me breakfast and then we can pretend that we'll see each other again (even though we won't).

"Yeah." He murmured, coming in closer to my neck. I could feel his warm breath on my skin and imagined his lips touching mine again. I shuddered. Nope. Don't want this anymore.

"Great! So, I'll look you up and maybe we can meet up sometime." I blurted, shifting away a bit and running my hand through my hair. It was really hot and humid in the club and my fingers stuck as they went through the sweaty hair making my seemingly casual act a more painful, awkward jerk than what I had intended. He sensed my nerves.

"You OK?" He asked.

"Totally." I said. I smiled to give him the idea that I meant what I said. I was ok. Really, although I felt myself get annoyed. Why was I in this club? I got talked into going out so as to see New York night-life and I suddenly regretted going at all. Hazel eyes was kinda' cute, but honestly, I wasn't looking for a dude who goes out and fist-pumps in clubs until 4am. I picked up my cup of water and sipped delicately still focusing on the horizon in front of me. I felt the cold water on my tongue and down the back of my throat as I tried to reason myself into staying on the bench in the dark corner of the club rather than getting up suddenly and looking for my friends. I chose the latter. "Well, I gotta go." I stammered, jerking to my feet and putting my now drained cup on the closest table. "Um. Thanks for the make-out." I turned and walked away from his puzzled face. I felt like laughing, but dared not to within 20 feet of this guy. I found my friends over by the bar looking tired and ready to go home.

"This place kinda' blows." I said to the group as I walked over.

"Oh yeah? We saw you making out with that Guido over there, Nat. He's still looking at you."

I shut my eyes in embarrassment and felt his look boring into my back like two hot laser beams. "Yeah... Well, that was a spur of the moment thing." I stammered. "Wanna get out of here?"

"Did you get his number? He seems really in to you."

"No. He's just... not my type. I'm not looking for anything serious right now. Plus, I'm feeling really overwhelmed by his after-spray. I can still smell it on my shirt. I think that's enough of him for a lifetime." I giggled, feeling really mean and vindictive. Am I being evil? I totally toyed with that guy and I don't give two cents for what he might be feeling. I recalled seeing him on the dance floor and dancing a couple songs with him before sitting down on the bench and feeling him pull me into the kiss.

"Ooookay. Let's get out of here then." My friends said, making their way toward the door.

I followed, the last in the line. I chanced a glance back at the guy to see if he was still there. He wasn't. He had gotten up and was now dancing with another girl. "Bastard." I mumbled. Then laughed. I'm jealous over him not being totally torn up about not getting my number? He's here to bag a chick, not to get his heart and hopes broken over one rejection. Next time I go out: I'm going to a cafe in Brooklyn, I promised myself.