Raconteur squared

Last evening, Yahoo Personals Boy came to see me perform. It was a solid show, and I whisked him out of the theater so that I wouldn't have to invite SB Thursday along to the Lakeview with us. There was an awkward little two step that happened when SB Thursday stepped unknowingly between YPB and I, asking what I was up to. I politely said I had to hang out with a friend and that I'd see him the next evening, which is tonight, which is why I'm writing at all...I'm wasting time before I head over to his party so that it's not just he and I there, drinking beer and making awkward small talk.

YPB and I like to tell each other stories. One story will dovetail into another and another, without any time spent on reflection or questioning, just an endless stream of anecdote. As someone who routinely walks to work without moving her eyes up from the book she's reading, this is quite a workable communication style for me. I get the sense we're more comfortable talking about life than living it. It's the attractive relational hamster ball of the actor/writer/artist...we can observe the world, we can run around in it, but the emotional distance provided by a good story protects us a little from actually having to deal with the world.

So YPB and I sat at the Lakeview and began our story cycle. At some point, his hand bumped mine and our fingers wove together. Neither of us made any outward sign that we noticed this...the stories just kept going. Then, my forefinger trailed up and down his forearm as I told him about my semester in England. His arm slipped behind me and his hand curved around my waist as he talked about being in Hawaii in the Navy. As I began to regale him with an anecdote about my favorite 24 hour bakery in Boston, his head dropped low and he kissed my collarbone. At that moment, the thens and one times of our stories ceased to be of any relevance. We surfaced from the past for a while and felt what it was like to be in the world. So far, the world isn't too bad.