Boydown at the Billiburg Corral

Sometimes we get roped into pseudo-dates. Sometimes, despite a severe allergic reaction to soy the night before, we agree to join our friends to send off a Spanish opera critic on his last night in NYC for an indefinite period. Sometimes everyone else cancels by midnight so the opera critic winds up doing the thing closest to begging which still allows him to maintain a wee bit of pride. Almost always, I cave when a milestone of some level is turning sour. And so began this particular pseudo-date, which only really entered that state once the guy I’d actually been seeing joined us.

Conclusion: further affirmation that people are silly.

The evening was fine enough. We roofed at Bar 13 until it shut down, then opted to return to the Burg for my convenience and bars in which we could still have actual discussion. Opera Critic of Spain (OCS) complained of the texts he was getting from ‘one of [his] New York lovers’ who is good but loves him too much. Woe, oh woe, to be loved too much. Meanwhile, TMS’s Spidey Senses were apparently tingling the moment I’d stepped out the door to go out with OCS as his texting began pre-OCS meet-up, then only escalated the longer I was out. Meanwhile, OCS and I were having conversation that was lovely in the way of similar experiences and views, though not dazzling or revolutionary, not that I have the energy for revolution. Or discussing revolution. Hasn’t that been done to death? Aren’t we living in the world’s most complacent nation of modern times? Come now. No, come. Now. Do it. Mach snell!

OCS repeated his fondness for the dress I’d been wearing when we first met, one he dubbed my Sunday MoMA Dress. The dress and I deliberated, then accepted this title. We spoke a bit of design and artists, and of course Netrebko (because she really is a treat and a half), before he titled me the Swedish Aesthetic. Yes, he knows I am not solely Swedish, but we agree that it sounds better than Nordic Aesthetic or Scandinavian (too long), or Pablo’s title for his next portrait of me – A Nun Named D: The Japanese Jew of the North.* OCS likes titling things it seems. And the texts kept on a-comin’.

“Geez, is this guy an imbecile?”
“I don’t think so. No, he’s actually at least fairly bright, though I don’t know him well enough to more precisely gauge that. We’ve been dating just about two weeks. You’d like him well enough though.”
[text: in the burg? Where are you?][S's. You’re welcome to join.]
“So what else should we say for the story of how we first met when I am your fake boyfriend going to meet your family when I return?”
“Where’d we leave off?”
[text: Pants. Pants now. I’m putting on PANTS, for you.][return text: Never let me hear you say those words again. Hurry up.]
“We were leaving the performance.” (Bit centered on the ‘leaving’ action, weren’t we?)
“Oh yes, then…we walked out to a full moon and a string quartet playing waltzes by the fountain.”
“Strauss?”
“Shostakovich.”
“Very nice. I like Shostakovich very much. And so I waltzed you around in the moonlight, your head tilting back so your face was beaming up at me and your eyes filled with the lights of the square and the stars.”
“But not square stars.”
“Never those. Not for you. You should have…fireworks of stars.”
“Agreed. Then what?”
“Yes, then what?”
[text: on s 6^th, right?][the volley continues: Yes. It hasn’t moved. It tried to but I clubbed it like a baby seal.]
“Another mojito?”
--Lock eyes, clear the space. Sound of ‘shoomp, shoooomp.’ Let it resound…--
“Mmm.”

Minutes later, TMS arrived. Quick moment of ‘oh, you’re here alone with a guy’ but obviously nothing’s up so whatevski. I am not evil. He knows this, or should, or will, or won’t. And here’s the point where Maleness took over.

“I am going with D to meet her family.”
“As my fake boyfriend.”
“We’re getting married.”
“Fake married.” Look across table of ‘Did you get a lobotomy while I was in the bathroom?’ He smiles back. This may or may not have been an answer in the affirmative. TMS does well though with challenges and I’d noticed he seems to even enjoy asserting himself in the gentlest way possible at all times as the alpha male. By the time he stepped back to the bathroom, OCS said he really liked him.

We all went to another bar together after that, TMS citing OCS needed to visit a truly dive bar before leaving America. They’re male. They agreed. A place 2 blocks from my home was the winner, though we left within an hour. Here’s where it got especially odd, and – I admit - enjoyable in a psychological study kind of way.

“Do you want me to call a car for you?”
“Yeah, man, where are you staying?”
“At D’s.” WHAT?! Would be nice to ask first, don’t you think? But, okay, he’d drank a lot, maybe he didn’t want to deal with a long cab ride at 4am and wasted in a foreign land.
“Well, we do have a couch you can sleep on.” We enter. TMS goes to bathroom. OCS walks into my bedroom and starts looking around, assessing the space and its contents.
“This is your room, no? I like it very much. Somehow it’s existential.” Whatever. I’m tired, but stand in the doorway because I don’t want any funny business (yes, I just wrote that, hush). TMS returns and OCS goes to the bathroom.
“What’s going on? Your room-mates are sleeping, right; we have to be quiet?”
“Yes. They’re sound out and have to get up early. Now quick, flop out in the bed and don’t leave it.”

OCS goes to the couch, I wash my face and emerge. He asks if TMS is staying in my room all night. [Pause for baffled moment of Things I Could Say.] I nod, he says he’ll go and won’t let me call him a car. And there ended that particular strange exercise in male competitiveness with TMS the victor, though I don’t think he really was relishing it and instead questioning what was up. Ah well. He left two hours later in the midst of a panic attack, work blamed. Likely true, in the immediate sense. Still, I felt rather badly. Not at all the situation I had anticipated. Keep in mind, OCS wasn’t even interested until TMS was involved, or if he was then he’s just not too swift about the effect of essentially admitting to being a male slut who faults women for caring for him.

It’s not judgment. It’s just another one to cross off.

*(Disclaimer: though so frequently confused for one, I am not a nun. He speaks of setting this portrait’s scene in a bordello, though, so you see the bite. Neither am I Japanese, specifically, nor Jewish except maybe a pinch on the Polish line. Pablo, his mother one of the mystical Jews of Andalusian Spain, just calls things as he feels they should be. And he can do that, after all. I give extra wiggle-room to people who’ve been imprisoned for Premature Anti-fascism. How fabulous is that?)